While he remained on Tya,the earth, Baiame let his imagination run riot. He fashioned mountains, covering them with trees and spreading a blue mist over them; he delighted in sending water spinning and laughing down their sides; he lined the banks with fragile plants that drank from the streams and bent over them in gratitude; at other times he swept his hand across the land and smoothed it into mallee-covered plains and sandy desert wastes. Tya grew and took form in his skilful fingers. Above it the pellucid wonder of the sky changed in colour from earliest dawn, when the stars winked out, to the brazen blue of midday, and the soft veils of evening.' (Introduction)