Mount St Benedict College acknowledges and pays respect to the past and present traditional custodians and elders of this nation and the continuation of cultural, spiritual and educational practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Ancestors have walked this country and we acknowledge their special and unique place in our nation’s historical, cultural and linguistic identity.
Visitors should be aware that this Research Guide may contain images or documentation relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are deceased.
Astronomy : sky country
The First Astronomers by 
For more than 50,000 years, Indigenous Australians have incorporated celestial events into their oral traditions and used the motions of celestial bodies for navigation, time-keeping, food economics, and social structure.
Certain important stars and asterisms are seen as the skyworld counterpart of many terrestrial animals, and their annual appearance and movement through the night sky informed people of the seasonal migrations, lifecycles, abundance and food resource availability of the animals they represent.
Exploring the Moon's gravitational effect on the Earth through the retelling of a Yolngu oral tradition.
After nearly three decades of research, he is regarded as one of the world’s leading authorities on Australian Aboriginal night sky knowledge; and in 2004, he worked in conjunction with the Lake Erie Nature and Science Center Planetarium in Ohio, on the creation of a show that features Indigenous Australian stories of the night sky.
Australia is a large country with different climates (such as temperate, tropical and arid). The Northern Hemisphere model of the four seasons (Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring) does not fit with Australia’s different climatic regions.
First Nations Elders are expert observers of the stars. They teach that everything on the land is reflected in the sky, and everything in the sky is reflected on the land. These living systems of knowledge challenge conventional ideas about the nature of science and the longevity of oral tradition. Indigenous science is dynamic, adapting to changes in the skies and on Earth, pointing the way for a world facing the profound disruptions of climate change.
Aboriginal Australians have been observing the stars for more than 65,000 years, and many of their oral traditions have been recorded since colonisation.
Indigenous song Twinkling Stars tells science of the seasons.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people carefully observe the positions of the stars and subtle changes in their properties, such as brightness, colour and sharpness. These all have practical and social meaning that demonstrate careful scientific inquiry.
For thousands of years, First Nations people have studied the night skies to predict weather patterns, navigate seas and rivers and understand the seasonal behaviour of plants and animals (Hamacher et al. 2019). First Nations astronomy knowledges have always been an active and integral part of First Nations Creation stories, and these knowledges have been passed down through generations through songs and stories.
