Australian Aboriginal Astronomy

A. Australia’s Aboriginal people, living under a dazzling canopy of constellations, absorbed the night skies into their cultural, social and spiritual life. The position of the stars, the motion of the planets, and astronomical events such as comets, meteorites and eclipses have informed their cosmology and traditions. "Spirituality, sacred law, kinship, cultural rules about who you can marry, where you can go, what you can do, how society works… all of this social structure is written in the stars," says Dr Duane Hamacher, a lecturer at the Nura Gili Indigenous Programs Unit at the University of New South Wales, Australia.

B. Hamacher, working closely with Aboriginal elders, is uncovering a wealth of astronomical knowledge. He takes the example of the Pleiades, one of the closest star clusters to Earth. He explains that the Pleiades rise early in the morning, just before the sun comes up, and are visible for about 15 minutes. This signals the time at which flowers appear on one type of tree, the start of winter, and the orca* migrating north. These observations indicate that the early Aboriginal astronomers took an intellectual approach that sought meaning in, and application of, astronomical phenomena. And nowhere is this more evident than in how they used this knowledge to navigate their vast, and sometimes featureless, island continent.

C. Professor Ray Norris, an astrophysicist at the Australian Telescope National Facility and adjunct professor in Indigenous Astronomy at Macquarie University, Sydney, recounts an occasion while bushwalking with Bill Yidumduma Harney, an Aboriginal elder: "Bill can name about 5000 stars. Most Western astronomers can name only 20 or 30 on a good day … He looks up at the sky and knows how it changes with the seasons, with the time, in ways I don’t actually quite understand. And for him it’s completely intuitive … he looks at the sky and knows it reflects what’s on the land."

William Stevens, an Aboriginal astronomy guide who conducts the Dreamtime** Astronomy tour at Sydney Observatory, explains how some Aboriginal people use the constellation of Scorpius for navigation: "We don’t see a scorpion; it’s actually a map for us," says Stevens, adding that people use the stars to travel from one clan group to another.

D. Norris considers the study of Aboriginal astronomy an opportunity for Aboriginal communities to gain access to information that may have been lost after European colonization of Australia. This giving back of knowledge, as Norris describes it, "could promote community pride and provide educational material for young Aboriginal people." This could also provide an opportunity to help foster a better understanding and appreciation of Aboriginal culture among the wider Australian society.

E. Perhaps the most beguiling application of astronomical observation is associated with the behavior of one of Australia’s most iconic birds, the emu. "The Emu in the Sky", as it is called, describes a carving that is clearly visible on a rock located in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, north of Sydney. It depicts an emu in a somewhat unnatural position for a real emu, with the legs folded behind it. That is, until it is observed that there is a huge and dark shape in one of the "dark" areas of the Milky Way that resembles an emu. This "emu" swings around the sky each night, its starting point at dusk changing as the year goes by and the seasons change. In April the body of the "Emu in the Sky" reaches a certain angle, and people know it is the season to go and find fresh emu eggs, a rich, highly valued food source. When the angle of the representation of the emu on the rock face matches the "Emu in the Sky", the harvest might begin. The folded legs signify that the emu is sitting on the nest.

The Emu in the Sky exemplifies one of the key principles of Aboriginal cultures: what is in the sky is of what is on Earth. Aboriginal people also apply this concept to construct annual calendars. Often based on six seasons, Aboriginal calendars are relatively complex and are generally constructed from the heliacal rising of stars, i.e. when the star first becomes visible above the eastern horizon for a brief moment just before sunrise.

F. Dr Philip Clarke of Federation University Australia has documented how the Kaurna Aboriginal people of South Australia use the rising of what they call Parna, one of the brightest stars in the night sky. Its appearance just before sunrise indicates that the hot, dry summer is ending and the autumn rains will soon arrive. The lands of Kaurna include the Adelaide Plains, which are prone to flooding. Therefore, knowledge of when the arrival of autumn is imminent allows them time to build their large, waterproof huts, which are known as wurlies.

Not only were the positions and movements of individual stars used to predict seasonal changes, the scintillation*** of stars also informs Aboriginal astronomers of a change in the weather or season. "They can tell by the degree of how much the star twinkles or changes colour to gauge the amount of moisture in the atmosphere," explains Hamacher. "They then know whether a storm is approaching or the wet season is coming."

G. It is clear that Aboriginal cultures contain a wealth of astronomical knowledge. This knowledge incorporates a deep and sophisticated understanding of celestial and terrestrial events and should be viewed through the prism of an interconnected world-view: a paradigm in which the Aboriginal people saw themselves not as separate external observers, but as an integral component of nature and the universe.

* orca: a type of whale
** Dreamtime: the time of the creation of Earth, the sun and stars according to Australian Aboriginal people
*** scintillation: twinkling