Devil's Marbles

The Devil's Marbles are a formation of naturally rounded and oval boulders located south of Tennant Creek in Australia's Northern Territory. The rocks are a traditional aboriginal sacred site to the local tribe. They believe that the rocks are the eggs of the rainbow serpent. Over the decades, the ceremonies and stories related to the Marbles have largely been lost, but the site is still very important to the tribe.

One of the marbles was removed from the formation in 1953 and taken to Alice Springs to form a permanent memorial to John Flynn. At the time this was seen as a way of remembering his link to the outback, but in later decades it was a source of great controversy because the rock was removed from a sacred site without direct permission of the tribal elders. In the late 1990s, a boulder swap was arranged, and the missing marble was removed from the grave, cleaned, and returned to its original place. The grave is now marked with a similar boulder donated by the local Arrernte country.