For the Wardaman people, south-west of Katherine in the Northern Territory, law is written into the stars which is observed for dreaming, songlines and navigation across great distances.
Wardaman people have an intrinsic and extensive knowledge of the night sky.
They observe how the stars shift across the night and across the year.
They watch the stars travelling, inch by inch, each night.
The sky is their watch and their calendar.
The evening star, the morning star, the midnight star help them pinpoint what time it is in the night.
Yondorrin, the Milky Way, also known in other parts of the country as the dark emu or the emu in the sky, turns and helps tell them when it will be daylight.
It twists full circle during the year.
They lay down at night and observe the sky.
They know its patterns — what will come back, how often, where and what time of the year — and have explanations for its irregularities.
The star people were the creators of the landscape and they still watch down to see that they are caring for the land and are a part of everyday life.
In the middle of the night, the stars are blinking like a sparkle.
That’s the star people sitting around talking.
During the day they disappear, go to sleep.
The Wardaman people have names for hundreds of stars visible to the eye.
They are linked to many different stories.
But Wardaman people also use the night sky for many practical reasons.
Much of their travelling is done at night time, when it is cooler and they can use stars as maps.
Different stars are used for navigation on long journeys, pointing them to different areas like their base place, camping place, waterholes, ceremony place and trade routes.
They also closely observe the planets visible to the eye.
Planets form part of a dreaming track that their ancestors used to walk across the sky, on the ground people walking back and forth make a track or pathway on the ground.
It’s like a highway.
Red and yellow ochres from here are considered powerful, and traded with other groups for use in ceremony.
The paths were also used to trade boomerangs and spears and hold ceremonial meetings.
Four directions are yiyanggu (north), namanyu (south), gorro (east) and jongan (west).
The emu’s foot points them to the south.
The moon is like a compass in the night, when they follow the stars, they have the shadow of the moonlight to help with direction.
They observe the moon’s different brightness coming from the sun depending on the time of year, and they understand that it is close to the Earth, unlike the stars.
All of the creation world is linked with cultural astronomy by stories relating to the stars, the moon, the sun, and the planets that are passed on from one generation to the next.
The sun, they say, is constantly chasing jalala or the black hole.
A solar eclipse is observed as an evil spirit swallowing the sun.
When people see a comet or shooting star, that’s sending a message that their family has passed away.
Grasshopper (planet Venus) wakes them up in the morning with a breeze.