As Cowara watched, he saw the clouds coming in. The two spirits, Mulgar and Balbarighn, began to fight. As they fought, they pushed Walgin, the rainbow, down onto the country. As the rainbow dipped onto the country, Cowara saw it as a Biddi, a pathway, up into the sky where Mulgar and Balbarighn were fighting. As he flew up along Walgin, the rainbow, he looked into the sky and he saw lots of stars. These stars had fire magic within them. He thought to himself, “This is where Mulgar and Balbarighn must have found their magic.” While the spirits were fighting, Cowara saw they had left their magic unattended. He took the magic without them noticing.

He made his way back to Walgin, the rainbow, and fell back down onto the country. Flying off with the magic, he made his way through the country. Mulgar and Balbarighn, the thunder and lightning spirits, continued to fight until they found their magic was taken. When they looked along the rainbow from the sky, they saw it was Cowara, the purple-crowned lorikeet, who had stolen their magic.

The sprits grew very angry. They made their way down the rainbow, down to the country. They began to pursue Cowara. The bird knew the two spirits had plenty of magic and that they’d soon catch up to him and take back the magic of fire. Cowara thought,

While he wondered, Yonga, the kangaroo, jumped past. Cowara thought to himself, “I could hide this magic in the tail of the kangaroo.”

So Cowara took the magic he had stolen from the sky spirits and hid it in the kangaroo’s tail. The kangaroo jumped across country in one direction while Cowara flew off in the opposite direction, trying to evade the two spirits. Eventually though, the spirits caught Cowara.

“Where’s our magic?” they demanded. “I hid it in Yonga Ninda, the kangaroo’s tail,” he replied. Cowara and the two spirits set out to find Yonga, who had the magic in his tail. After much searching, they finally found him. The two spirits sang a song, trying to extract the magic from the tail. But their song could not retrieve all the magic from the Yonga Ninda, the kangaroo’s tail. They thought to themselves, “Where can we hide this magic so that it’s not always seen, not always out there?’ They thought to themselves, “We will hide the kangaroo’s tail inside Balga, the grass tree.”

They sang a great song and the kangaroo’s tail with its magic was hidden inside the grass tree. They also punished Cowara for taking the magic.

They said, “For taking our magic and putting it into Yonga Ninda, the kangaroo’s tail, we shall punish you. You will also be put into the kangaroo’s tail.” They sang the song and they hid the kangaroo’s tail and Cowara in the Balga. Now, each year, as the cycle of the seasons change from Makuru to Kambarang, we see the tail begin to appear. A spike grows from the top of the grass tree and is known to our people as the kangaroo’s tail. During Djilba you will also see the flowers, which will become many. When we look at them, we are reminded of the many stars which are the source of the great magic.

The kangaroo tail is also known as Marramidi, fire stick. As the flowers fall, they leave behind nobs shaped like the beak of Cowara, protruding along the spike. When Cowara’s beak appears like this, these fire sticks can be used to create fire, to keep our families warm when we tell this story in yarns, or Wongi, around Kalleep, the camp. There we tell the story of Cowara and how the magic still exists within the fire stick where the spirits gave us the ability to create Karla Maarban, fire magic.