With The Rainbow Serpent, Dick Roughsey shared the spirit of our country. His work is a gift to us all | Alexis Wright

I feel immense joy in knowing this book has remained in the Australian psyche – for all who live here and call this country home

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It’s with good reason that The Rainbow Serpent by Dick Roughsey has continued to be an Australian children’s classic for 50 years.

This beloved work, which was first published in 1975 and is competing in Guardian Australia’s reader poll of the best Australian children’s picture books of all time, tells the powerful creation story of the Rainbow Serpent from the perspective of Roughsey (1920-85), a senior Lardil man from Mornington Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria and a gifted author and artist, whose traditional name was Goobalathaldin, meaning “rough seas”.