This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Australian Aboriginal Deities gathers four creator figures from different Aboriginal nations, showing both a shared Dreaming pattern and how differently it is held from group to group.
Baiame, the Sky Father and creator figure of Kamilaroi, Wiradjuri and neighbouring nations of southeastern Australia, is credited with shaping the land during the Dreaming and establishing law and ceremony, known through public ethnographic record and rock art rather than secret sacred material. Bunjil, the Eagle creator ancestor of the Kulin nation peoples of what is now Victoria, is likewise credited with making the land, the people and the law during the Dreaming, and is represented in a well known and publicly accessible rock art shelter in the Grampians, Gariwerd.
Rainbow Serpent is the widest of the four, a creator being of great significance across a large number of Aboriginal nations, associated with water sources, fertility and the shaping of the land during the Dreaming, known under many different regional names and honestly not one single uniform figure but a widely shared and independently developed pattern.
Wandjina, the rain and cloud ancestors of the Worrorra, Ngarinyin and Wunambal peoples of the west Kimberley, made the country, its water and its living things, gave the law, and put themselves into the rock of particular places where their images remain; a Wandjina's presence in a place is understood to hold the monsoon to its proper season, and behind the individual figures stands Wunggurr, a diffuse life force in water and deep places. Authority to paint a Wandjina belongs to people of the three custodial peoples who have been through their own law, and this atlas records what the Wandjina are and who holds them without reproducing or inventing any image of one.