In the time before time, in the age the Wurundjeri call the Dreaming, the world was still being sung into shape.

The rivers had not yet learned their paths. The mountains were still settling into the earth. And across the dark land, there was no warmth. No flickering light. No fire.

But in the sky above, the stars had already begun to gather. Ancient witnesses to a story that was about to unfold on the banks of a great river.

Along the banks of the Birrarung, the river of mists, the river that would one day be called the Yarra, seven sisters lived together.

They were the Karatgurk.

They alone in all the world possessed the secret of fire. Each sister carried a live coal on the end of her kannan, a long, fire-hardened digging stick that was both weapon and instrument of life.

With their coals they cooked the sweet roots of the murnong, the yam daisy, pulling the golden tubers from the warm earth and roasting them over flames that only they controlled.

The sisters guarded their fire jealously. It was their power. Their knowledge. Their light in a cold, dark world.

In those days, Waa the Crow was not yet black.

He was a clever bird, a trickster and a schemer, but also a creature of great hunger and restless curiosity. He watched the Karatgurk sisters from the shadows of the manna gums, mesmerised by the glow of their fire sticks and the sweet smell of roasted murnong drifting through the evening air.

One day, Waa found a cooked yam that the sisters had left behind. He bit into it and tasted something he had never known. Warmth. Sweetness. The alchemy of fire transforming raw earth into nourishment.

From that moment, Waa wanted fire for himself.

He asked the sisters. They refused. He begged. They turned away. He pleaded. They laughed and walked on.

And so Waa, as tricksters do, began to plan.

Waa worked in secret.

He crept through the grasslands, catching snakes, long dark serpents with quick tempers, and buried them deep inside an ant mound, covering them with earth and debris.

Then he went to the Karatgurk.

"Sisters!" he called, his voice bright with false wonder. "I have found something extraordinary. In this ant mound, larvae, fat and sweet. Far tastier than your murnong. Come and see!"

The sisters looked at one another. They were suspicious of Waa and his clever tongue. But curiosity, that most human of weaknesses, drew them closer.

One by one, they planted their digging sticks in the earth beside the mound and began to dig.

The snakes erupted from the earth.

Hissing, writhing, furious, they struck at the sisters with bared fangs. The Karatgurk screamed and leapt back, snatching up their digging sticks and swinging wildly at the serpents.

They struck with such force, such desperate terrified power, that the live coals flew from the tips of their sticks, scattering across the ground like a shower of falling stars.

And Waa was ready.

In the chaos, the clever crow darted between the flailing women and the thrashing snakes, scooping up the glowing coals and hiding them in a kangaroo-skin bag. By the time the sisters had driven off the serpents and caught their breath, their fire was gone.

Waa spread his wings and flew. Up, up, beyond their reach, carrying the secret of fire away from them forever.

Waa flew to the tallest tree and perched high above the world, clutching his stolen treasure.

But he was not alone for long.

Bunjil the Eaglehawk, the great creator spirit whose wings had shaped the mountains and whose law governed all living things, saw what Waa had done. He called up to the crow: "Give me some of those coals, brother, so that I may cook a possum."

But Waa, ever the trickster, refused.

Word spread quickly. Soon, creatures gathered beneath Waa's tree. Animals and birds and spirits of the land, all shouting, demanding that the secret of fire be shared with everyone.

The noise grew deafening. The crowd pressed closer. And Waa, frightened by the chaos he had created, flung handfuls of live coals down at them.

Kurok-goru, the little finch, was fastest. He snatched up a coal and tucked it behind his back, which is why, to this day, the fire-tailed finch wears red tail feathers.

But fire, once freed, does not obey.

The scattered coals caught the dry grass and the fallen bark, and a great bushfire roared to life. A wall of flame raced across the land, consuming everything in its path.

The fire reached Waa, and his pale feathers were scorched permanently black. From that day forward, the crow has worn the colour of charcoal. A reminder of his cleverness, and its cost.

The fire threatened to swallow the entire world. Trees exploded. Rivers steamed. The sky turned the colour of blood.

But Bunjil, the great creator, would not let his world be destroyed. He raised his wings, and with a power born of the Dreaming itself, he halted the fire's advance. The flames shrank. The smoke cleared. And when the land lay still again, blackened but breathing, fire belonged to everyone.

The world would never be cold again.

And the Karatgurk?

The seven sisters, their fire stolen, their power released into the world, were lifted from the earth by the great wind of the Dreaming.

They rose. Higher than the manna gums. Higher than the smoke. Higher than the eagles. Up through the cooling air and into the endless dark of the sky.

And there, they became stars.

Seven points of light, clustered together like the embers on their digging sticks, burning still, burning always, in the constellation the Western world calls the Pleiades.

If you look up on a clear winter night, you can still see them. Seven sisters, holding their fire sticks, glowing softly above the land they once walked.

It is one of the oldest stories on Earth, carried in the mouths and memories of the longest continuous culture the world has ever known.

Look up. The sisters are still there. They are still burning.