Australian Aboriginal astronomy

The astronomical systems passed down thus show a depth of understanding of the movement of celestial objects which allowed them to use them as a practical means for creating calendars and for navigating across the continent and waters of Australia.

[2][3][4] Many of the constellations were given names based on their shapes, just as traditional western astronomy does, such as the Pleiades, Orion and the Milky Way, with others, such as Emu in the Sky, describes the dark patches rather than the points lit by the stars.

One of the earliest written records of Aboriginal astronomy was made by William Edward Stanbridge, an Englishman who emigrated to Australia in 1841 and befriended the local Boorong people.

[5] A constellation used almost everywhere in Australian Aboriginal culture is the "Emu in the Sky", which consists of dark nebulae (opaque clouds of dust and gas in outer space) that are visible against the (centre and other sectors of the) Milky Way background.

[6][7] The Emu's head is the very dark Coalsack nebula, next to the Southern Cross; the body and legs are that extension of the Great Rift trailing out to Scorpius.

[6] In Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, north of Sydney, are extensive rock engravings of the Guringai people who lived there, including representations of the creator-hero Daramulan and his emu-wife.

[9] Bruce Pascoe's book Dark Emu takes its title from one of the Aboriginal names for the constellation, known as Gugurmin to the Wiradjuri people.

Told by a number of peoples across the country, using varying names for the characters, it starts in Martu country in the Pilbara region of Western Australia (specifically, Roebourne[15]), and travels across the lands of the Ngaanyatjarra (WA) to (Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara, or APY lands, of South Australia, where the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara peoples live.

When the constellation is close to the horizon as the sun is setting, the people know that it is the right time to harvest emu eggs, and they also use the brightness of the stars to predict seasonal rainfall.

[17] In the Western Desert cultural bloc in central Australia, they are said to be seven sisters fleeing from the unwelcome attentions of a man represented by some of the stars in Orion, the hunter.

[23] The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney holds a 2013 work by the Tjanpi Desert Weavers called Minyma Punu Kungkarangkalpa (Seven Sisters Tree Women).

[24] In March 2013, senior desert dancers from the APY Lands (South Australia) in collaboration with the Australian National University's ARC Linkage and mounted by artistic director Wesley Enoch, performed Kungkarangkalpa: The Seven Sisters Songline on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra.

[17] The Wirangu people of the west coast of South Australia have a creation story embodied in a songline of great significance based on the Pleiades.

[32] The Yolŋu people believe that when they die, they are taken by a mystical canoe, Larrpan, to the spirit-island Baralku in the sky, where their camp-fires can be seen burning along the edge of the great river of the Milky Way.

In the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park there are a number of engravings showing a crescent shape, with sharp horns pointing down, and below it a drawing of a man in front of a woman.

While the crescent shape has been assumed by most researchers to represent a boomerang, some argue that it is more easily interpreted as a solar eclipse, with the mythical man-and-woman explanation depicted below it.

[45][41] Stories enrich a custom-linked calendar whereby the heliacal rising or setting of stars or constellations indicates to Aboriginal Australians when it is time to move to a new place and/or look for a new food source.

[41] For example, the Boorong people in Victoria know that when the Malleefowl (Lyra) disappears in October, to "sit with the Sun", it is time to start gathering her eggs on Earth.

In 2009 an exhibition of Indigenous Astronomical Art from WA, named "Ilgarijiri", was launched at AIATSIS in Canberra in conjunction with a Symposium on Aboriginal Astronomy.