On April 20 2023, at approximately 11.27am local time, the moon will pass in front of the sun to create a shadow over Exmouth on Western Australia’s Coral Coast. Nori Jemil explores WA’s dark skies—and how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people have been making sense of them for millennia.
On my first ever trip to Australia, already somewhat aglow with bonhomie and glasses of Margaret River red, I made my way out of a sprawling, Spanish hacienda-style house in a quiet, tree-lined garden suburb of Perth.
Laying down alongside friends on the dewy front lawn, we were instructed to look up. Pupils expanding, we soon became accustomed to the inky darkness of Western Australia’s post-midnight sky. What we couldn’t adjust to quite so quickly was the mind-blowing experience of witnessing so many stars in greater clarity, number and brilliance. The longer we looked, the more they appeared.
None of us had witnessed anything like it.
Australians call this the ‘Lucky Country’, but the enormous and sparsely populated state of Western Australia, or WA, is arguably the most fortunate of all when it comes to astronomy, thanks to low-level light pollution and mostly guaranteed clear summer nights.
WA constitutes about one third of the continent of Australia, and is completely encircled by ocean and desert. Often derided for having the world’s most famously isolated capital city, it’s now enjoying bragging rights as a hotspot destination for astrotourism. And, in a world where around 80 percent of the population is living under light polluted skies, that’s no small thing.
As if they didn’t already have it so good, astronomically speaking, Western Australians are gearing themselves up for the stargazing event to overshadow all others—the only total solar eclipse to occur in 2023.
It will take place on April 20th 2023 over Ningaloo or Nyinggulu, the name given to the coastal area by the First Nations Yinigurdira, Thalanyji and Baiyungu people, and the town of Exmouth, on the North West Cape around 1,250 kilometers north of Perth.
As humans, we’ve borne witness to this strange phenomenon for aeons, when our closest star, the sun, is slowly obliterated and a blanket of apocalyptic darkness engulfs the Earth. Rick Tonello, Chief Astronomer at the Gravity Discovery Center and Observatory at Gingin, approximately 80 kilometers north of the capital, says, “Observers can expect to see the Sun’s bright disc slowly being covered by the silhouette of the Moon to produce a diminishing solar crescent.”
And as most people will have seen in photographs of previous total solar eclipses, as the Sun disappears, the ‘diamond-ring effect’ (or Baily’s beads) will occur when the final rays of sunlight pass between the valleys and craters on the Moon’s surface.
Tonello explains that while the process of the Moon moving across the face of the Sun will take hours, the actual moment of totality when the Sun is completely obscured will last for only 62 seconds.
“Eclipses are rare phenomena that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people know well. They understand their mechanics and we know Torres Strait Island people predicted them. This is no easy feat, so it is important to recognize their scientific accomplishments in this regard.”
- Duane Hamacher
Despite the short lifespan of this celestial show, there’s a worldwide trend for eclipse chasing, no matter the distance or cost. Known as umbraphiles due to the umbra, or shadow, that’s cast over the Earth, eclipse lovers have long been planning this trip to Exmouth, a fairly remote corner of WA famed for its reef, whale shark and humpback whale season, plus a thriving fishing community.
I was in Perth when the countdown to the astronomical event was publicly launched in April 2022. Though this was the first time your average West Australian had heard about it, hotel accommodation around Ningaloo was already nearly fully booked—although extra sites have opened up recently for self-contained campervans and trailers, and details about a ticketed eclipse-viewing site will be released shortly.
Tourism Western Australia says that up to 25,000 visitors are expected to descend on Ningaloo, with many of those arriving from all over the globe.
Eclipse chasers are, by necessity, forward planners. And with our current tech, that’s easy enough, but according to Duane Hamacher, Associate Professor in Cultural Astronomy at the University of Melbourne and author of The First Astronomers: How Indigenous Elders read the stars, Indigenous peoples didn’t need telescopes or NASA data to predict changes in the moon.
“Eclipses are rare phenomena that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people know well,” he tells me. “They understand their mechanics and we know Torres Strait Island people have predicted them. This is no easy feat, so it is important to recognize their scientific accomplishments in this regard.”
His colleague, anthropologist and geographer, Marcia Langton, a descendant of the Yiman and Bidjara nations of Queensland and Foundation Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies and Associate Provost, has written that, “The knowledge of Elders is a part of the legacy of thousands of generations of people watching the skies and tracking celestial affairs.”
“Oral traditions tell of phenomena that long predate their discovery by Western scientists,” adds Professor Langton. She confirms that early Indigenous astronomers knew about the movements of the Sun, eclipses, sunspots, solstices and the seasons in enormous detail through daily observations, remembered in oral traditions preserved in narratives, songs, designs and dances.
Extensive research with Indigenous Elders for Hamacher’s book demonstrates that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been carefully observing and reading the stars for millennia, and this is shaping a global understanding of our place in the Universe and guiding research into modern astrophysics.
The sky has the power to remind us of our place in the cosmos, as well as shedding light on how we exist on our own, fragile planet.
As Hamacher stresses to me, “We must acknowledge and pay deep respect to the people and their Systems of Knowledge that have been developed and maintained over tens of thousands of years. It is essential we all listen and learn.”
On special Aboriginal Astronomy nights at the Gingin observatory, Western Australian Elder Dr Noel Nannup shares the Dreamtime stories of creation and how the constellations we see in the Australian night sky have always been a part of his ancestors’ spoken history. In many of the more than 250 Aboriginal cultures of Australia, oral traditions describe a dynamic between the female Sun and male Moon, typically involving one pursuing the other across the sky from day to day.
The Worl Wangkiny center at the Perth Observatory in Bickley was opened in March 2020 to also give more prominence to the voices of WA’s First Nations astronomers. And through Astrotoursim WA, the process of creating a joined-up, Aboriginal astro trail throughout the state, with local guides taking the lead in sharing their stories, is well under way.
Madeline Anderson of the Beemurra Aboriginal Corporation at Yallalie Downs, remembers the tales told to her by her grandmother. In an interview with ABC Australia, she says it’s not only that these stories need to be shared, “but it’s part of who we are, it’s part of our identity, and it gives us a sense of belonging and connectedness to the land.
My nephew Miles accompanied me recently on an Aboriginal Astronomy night at Gingin. He’s the same age I was when I first gazed up, awestruck, at WA’s night sky. Not able to see him at all, his intake of breath in the pitch dark as we stood in the observatory grounds, looking at the constellations and the Milky Way, said it all. His next, quietly spoken words were almost the same as those I’d uttered decades ago—that he’d never, ever seen a sky quite like it. Looking now at photos of his upturned face in silhouette under the glittering cloak of night, I wonder if this might be the spark of a lifetime obsession for him too.
I’ve witnessed more than one life-changing epiphany brought on by being out under Australia’s canopy of stars. Kununurra-based photographer Ben Broady even credits the night sky with restoring his faith in life.
This year, he tells me, he packed up his 4WD with camping gear, his camera and his dog Kobi “to head bush”. Once the sun had set and the Milky Way appeared, he says he lay there in awe, and a nostalgic, familiar feeling came over him. He realized then that, “it was always there, all the inspiration and motivation I thought I had lost, in the bush under a Boab tree and the Milky Way. Tears were streaming down my face and I could barely sleep from the profound experience.”
Like Australia’s first astronomers, Broady was witnessing the forces of nature told in Indigenous stories, sleeping on the ground for days, and letting the sky and the earth envelope him. “The universe is part of Aboriginal culture from Dreamtimes way back” says Kevin Barron of the Beemurra Aboriginal Corporation. People were accustomed to sleeping under the stars, On Country (physically on traditional land of their Indigenous group), and in tune with the signs and seasonal shifts that helped them to survive.
The sky has the power to remind us of our place in the cosmos, as well as shedding light on how we exist on our own, fragile planet. While our terrestrial concerns are far from petty, especially in these times of war, climate change and economic crisis, they can temporarily pale into insignificance when put in front of a meteor shower, shooting star or the Milky Way. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, we may all, at one time or another, be in the gutter, but there’s often spiritual salvation and hope if we can turn our gaze to the stars.
***
Adventure.com strives to be a low-emissions publication, and we are working to reduce our carbon emissions where possible. Emissions generated by the movements of our staff and contributors are carbon offset through our parent company, Intrepid. You can visit our sustainability page and read our Contributor Impact Guidelines for more information. While we take our commitment to people and planet seriously, we acknowledge that we still have plenty of work to do, and we welcome all feedback and suggestions from our readers. You can contact us anytime at hello@adventure.com. Please allow up to one week for a response.
Award-winning photographer and travel writer Nori Jemil lives between London and Perth, Australia. She writes for numerous publications including Rough Guides and National Geographic Traveller UK, teaches travel photography courses, and is the author of 'The Travel Photographer's Way', published by Bradt in 2021.
