Tucked into the busy streets of Naarm's inner-north, Northcote Town Hall is home to a giant showcase of Kaurna creation story and knowledge.

Coming to Wurundjeri Country from what is now Adelaide and the city's surrounding area, Tarutharu, the Kaurna Skink is a 27-metre long illuminated installation guided by senior Kaurna man and cultural custodian Jack Buckskin and visually expressed by Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara artist Elizabeth Close.

Tarutharu is part of Darebin City Council's mutli-art FUSE Festival.

Local puppet company A Blanck Canvas helped develop the installation, initially as part of a number of large-scale inflatable installations for the Adelaide Zoo as part of Illuminate Adelaide a few years ago.

Ms Close, with cultural permission, explained the Kaurna creation story of Tarutharu.

In the beginning there was only man, she told National Indigenous Times, who was cut in half by Tarutharu's tail to create woman, man's equal.

"Woman followed her husband because he knew how to live on the land, but she developed her own culture and her own law…and her own responsibilities of overseeing culture and governing her own ceremonies and her own responsibility and her own relationship with country," Ms Close said.

"It's a very important creation story, but it's also one of duality…the important relationship between man and woman…and the role of Tarutharu in creating those two sides….the foundation of Kaurna people."

Mr Buckskin, who consulted with Elders on the project, also lends a narrative to the work in both English and Kaurna.

He is more than qualified with the authority to tell the story, Ms Close said, as strong Kaurna leader, educator and founder of cultural initiatives in South Australia.

Tarutharu is a "striking" project full of energy, light and movement added to by animatronics in the head and tail of the skin, Ms Close added.

The skink is set to take over the Civic Square at Northcote Town Hall Arts Centre, just off High Street on Westbourne Grove at the top of the hill from Friday through to Sunday, September 7.

Tarutharu's unveiling coincides with FUSE Festival's installation opening party, featuring First Nations drag group The Motherless Collective's (MoCo) Cerulean and Stone Motherless Cold.

Ms Close said she is excited to bring creation stories from one part of the country to another, showcasing it, and possibly challenging people to "more broadly about Aboriginal and Torres Islander" people and culture.

"The other wonderful thing about this piece of work is that the amount of engagement…being able to see this work myself when I first saw the work installed…being able to sort of stand back and watch families, young families engage with this work," she said.

"We're in a climate that's so elevated, and there's so much division and so much angst, to see young children engaging with Aboriginal art and culture in such a positive light. That's really buoying for me as an Aboriginal woman, and to think this is the world that I want for my children."