How The Possum Was Made. 
  

 
In the painting can be seen:

Top left: The two fisherman and their tribes.
Bottom Left: The fish the normal tribes people catch from the banks using lines.
Bottom Right: The tree net in which the two fishermen caught many fish.
Middle Bottom Right: The thief stealing the fish from the nets in the pond.
Middle: Two tribesmen chase the thief (the possum) up a tree after he changed himself by using his spell.
 

The Story

It was thought the first possum that ever lived began life as a man. The story begins with two brothers who were expert fisherman. They were dissatisfied with the way all the other tribesmen caught fish standing on the bank of the river so they decided to travel on a carved out log that they scoured out with a knife made of rocks. Their idea was successful.

One day whilst fishing on their logs, it became extremely hot, so they grabbed a huge branch from a tree and placed it in the V shaped end of the boat giving them shade. As soon as they had placed the branch on the boat, the wind took them quickly down stream with the branch acting as a sail. When the winds turned around in the evening on their return, the branch also assisted them to return much faster.

Seeing how the wind assisted them, they then decided to build a sail out of the large pandanus leaves, leaving less area for the wind to escape and making it faster for them to move. The old sail, they left to drift behind the boat, and to amazement when, they arrived home, found that fish had been caught in the tree net they had made by coincidence.

After a few days they had caught so many fish they not only had enough to feed all their tribe, but also were able to barter for other products from other nearby clans. Their surplus in fish resulted in them having to store their fish in a nearby pond whose tributary ran off the main river. They banked the pond with more trees so the fish could not escape.

One day a stranger came to their district, unseen by anyone in the village. He was a cunning man who lived a lonely life, keeping himself alive by stealing food wherever he could find it. When the thief found the pond full of fish, he lived on this for many weeks.

After a while when the fish were not being caught as constantly as before, the tribes people went to investigate why their stock was being depleted. The tribes people took it in turn of watching the pond to observe if any other animals or thieves were taking their fish.

Sure enough, they spotted the stranger who immediately ran from the scene. The thief could not run fast and the tribesmen were closing in on him. He suddenly remembered an old spell he had been told which he quickly used. By using this spell, he turned himself, his legs and arms into small feet with claws and placed fur on his back and shrinking himself in size dramatically. His spear which helped him steal the fish, turned into a tail. The thief, as soon as he had turned himself into this animal, clawed up a very tall smooth tree, which was so smooth man could not climb it.

Angry about the situation, the tribesmen also knew of another spell that they used to enable them to place a spell on the thief so that he could not reverse himself back into a man.

So the solitary fish thief became a possum - a possum whose children and children's children are thieves who sneak into encampments of men at night to rob them of food. 

Price:  $3,900.00 AUD