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Alcheringa, or the Dreamtime
Thuwathu and Minyindagarr together are one of the Living Gods, a giant two-headed sea turtle. They’ve been sleeping in Gaia at the bottom of the sea for millions of years; Australia is their dream. Each struggles for dominance against the other, Thuwathu trying to bring Metropolis to their dream, Minyindagarr trying to bring Gaia.
There are places--physical locations--where the conflicting dreams of this double power clash with such intensity that the reality can be physically dangerous. These are known among the Aborigines as "Sacred Story Places," and only someone who has been assimilated into the landscape can enter without causing meteorological disturbances.
Minyindagarr created sacred bonds with the early Aboriginals of Australia--the Ancestral Beings of the Kaiadilt, Yangkaal, and the Lardil. He bound them to the land of the Dreamtime, so they would always keep it at the threshold of Gaia, and so they would always be reborn as the protectorate of the natural world. Thuwathu, seeking allies, reached out of their own dreamworld and found them: Europe’s lictors, who agreed to send their countries’ lepers, madmen, and criminals to Australia.
People who come to Australia often fall ill, as neither head recognizes them and so they send out a kind of psychic antibody to repel them. Thuwathu will accept anyone who stays in the cities long enough, but to be accepted in the outback one needs to re-enact the sacred rituals that bound the Ancestral Beings to Minyindagarr.
No other dreamworlds can be accessed through Australia; someone who tries will find themselves floating above a surreal simulacrum of the continent, where the sky is an infinite, breathable ocean, and they are staring in the immense shut eyes of Thuwathu or Minyindagarr.