Sunset on Port Hacking, Sydney, NSW. The Sun and other celestial bodies are significant in the traditions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Photo Nick Lomb
Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have been developing complex knowledge systems about the Sun, Moon and stars for tens of thousands of years. This knowledge relates to the changing seasons, when to hold ceremony, when to hunt, fish and harvest food, and navigation. This information has been passed down the generations through song, dance, story and art, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples still use it today.
Aboriginal people in New South Wales and Queensland used the relative positions of stars in the sky to help each other to develop star maps that represented Dreaming tracks crisscrossing the country. Ghillar Michael Anderson, a Euahlayi Law Man, explains that these star maps were a memory tool for the Dreaming tracks and songlines that led people long distances to ceremonial grounds. The connection between Indigenous communities long distances apart is also found in song. Meriam Elder Alo Tapim sings the song ‘Gedge Togia’, which describes the Moon rising over Mer (Murray) Island in the eastern Torres Strait. He explains that the lyrics combine both Meriam (eastern Torres Strait) and Kala Lagaw Ya (central western Torres Strait) languages. The song and dance describes the Moon rising over Mer as seen from Mabuiag Island and demonstrates close connection between the islands. As with all Indigenous songs and dances, it is not a performance, but rather a transfer of knowledge.
Indigenous Australians also gleaned important information about seasonal change from the properties of stars. They often used bright stars as calendar markers. In the Kaurna traditions of the Adelaide region, the star Fomalhaut signalled the start of autumn and the coming of the wet rainy season. This told the Kaurna people that they needed to build waterproof huts. In the Sydney region, Dharawal elder Les Bursill explains that the rising of the Pleiades star cluster just before sunrise signalled the start of winter, the blooming of the wattle and the northerly migration of the orca.
The Pleiades star cluster seen through a large telescope. © Australian Astronomical Observatory/David Malin Images
In the traditions of the Boorong people of western Victoria, long ago a drought struck the people. A woman named Marpeankurrk went in search of food so her people did not starve. Tired and frustrated, she sat and overturned a large stone. Underneath were plentiful larvae of the wood ant. She told the people and they feasted on the nutritious grubs. In honour of saving the community from starvation, when she died she went up into the sky as the red star European astronomers call Arcturus. The Boorong now call it Marpeankurrk, and her northerly appearance in the evening August sky marks the time of year when the grubs are ready to collect. When she sets at dusk in late September, the grubs are no longer in season. This account was told to Victorian colonist William Stanbridge in the 1840s by two unnamed Boorong men who prided themselves on being expert astronomers.
Dr Duane W Hamacher, Lecturer & ARC Discovery Early Career Research Fellow, Nura Gili Indigenous Programs Unit, University of New South Wales