Songlines zig zag across Wardaman land, connecting different clan and totem groups and neighbours on the boundaries, linking tribal groups across the whole continent.
The songlines were created in Buwarraja, the Dreamtime.
By law, neighbours share ceremony and language, land and water, maintaining peace and respect throughout the land.
When the people go to where the songline finishes up on the boundary, the other mob will join them.
The neighbour then carries the songline their way.
There are seven or more neighbouring groups, and they can understand one another’s language.
They have ceremonies on the boundaries.
They send a message out and they come.
If the neighbours send a message out, the Wardaman people go.
They each recognise where their dreaming goes and stops.
There are two main songlines for Wardaman people.
The Southern Cross is at the centre of their two complex songlines.
The first starts with the Creation Dog Mardboronggo, who will later become a dingo.
He appears with a bag of songs and chases the Kangaroo People all over the country creating Songlines and landforms.
The songlines are written into the stars and are watched by their two major Wardaman creator spirits Sky Boss Nardi and Earth Mother Dundgdung.
Constellations are travel stops - connected with different Dreaming law and knowledge - along songlines on the land.
As Wardaman people walk along that track, they sing their song.
Two songlines lead to a special time of year, October, when there are the brightest skies, before the big rains of the wet season, Yijilg.
It's when young people are preparing for initiation and elders prepare for ceremony at the ceremonial area, the Southern Cross.
Along these songlines, young people learn practical knowledge such as home-building and food-gathering, as well as traditional song, dance, ceremony and ancestral law.
They lead to boys becoming men and girls becoming women, and ensure the continuation of Wardaman people and their culture.