The Tasmanian starlight that leaks down from the floor of heaven fills the night sky with radiance and mystery. I gaze up at these silver pins as perhaps another being gazes down upon our planet’s lights that shine so hopefully up into the darkness. Perhaps one man’s head in the stars is another man’s feet on the ground. I don’t know. The world has always seemed an upside down place to me.
I have been obsessed with the mystery of starlight all of my life. I’ve spent many hours crooking my neck and staring into the night, searching for the familiar patterns that always bring me comfort – for in a fast-changing world, the stars are something one can rely on, a foundation for one’s life.
That a foundation can be above rather than below is an intriguing idea. If I could solve this riddle I’d be a wise man. Alas, I am just a star-struck stargazer, less wise than I was as a child when I knew where the Milky Way was and that was all I needed to know. As one get older, one unwraps simplicity and creates complexity.
What can the stars teach us about things temporal? Can they bring simplicity back to our souls? I gaze into our dark island heavens for advice.
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The silky patterns above pre-date human time, unchanged in their designs since humans first started to gaze up at them from fire-lit river camps and rifts of Africa. Early on, humans saw lessons in the stars, gave them names and stories, creating a mythology about them that continues to this day.
The Karanga people of South Africa believed that the stars were the eyes of the dead. That’s an incredible concept – are the dead watching over us every night?
The Tswana believed that stars are holes in a rocky blue vault. They believed the stars of the Southern Cross were giraffes. African Bushmen saw the Southern Cross’s two pointers as male lions.
We see what our experience allows us to see.
According to George Augustus Robinson, “Aboriginal Tasmanians spoke of the subject of stars with great zest.” Robinson wrote of the Palawa people’s cosmic spirituality and their “star gods”. Tasmanian seer Mannalargenna was one of our island’s earliest star seekers. Mannalargenna said that his clanspeople came from the Milky Way and that Mars was the foot of Ancestral Beings and the Milky way was his road. How many roads must a man walk down, indeed.
Mainland Aboriginal Australians created rock engravings of emus, possums, fish and canoe constellations to explain the stars. Some tribes believed the dark shape formed by the Southern Cross to be a stingray and the pointers to be sharks. The stars for them were stories to pass on and lessons to learn from the Dreamtime.
What came first, the Dreamtime or the stars? What was before either? I ponder.
The logic-minded Greeks were in fact just as mystical. They created the Zodiac (a “circle of little animals”) to explain how the earth moved through the cosmos. They named stars (mostly of Arabic origin) after memorial deeds done by gods and heroes and beasts. The constellation Scorpio was a giant scorpion sent by Gaia to slay the giant Orion when he threatened to kill all the beasts of the world. How logical is this?
One can imagine the Greeks leaning against marble columns by candlelight, marveling at the ghosts above, trying to make sense of the heavens – at the very same time that Tasmanian Aboriginals are sitting by firelight on the shores of Hazards Beach teaching their children about the stars.
To sit with them would have been to sit with enviable storytellers and stargazers.
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The 18th century English astronomer William Herschel wondered how many stars were in the universe. John Lennon wondered how many holes it would take to fill the Albert Hall. People wonder about strange things. Herschel thought the Milky Way was the entire universe so he counted all the stars in it and created perhaps the first and only map of the universe. Herschel’s map looks strikingly similar to traditional Aboriginal star paintings. It seems one has to be part mystic to attempt to understand things such as stars and holes.
We post-moderns hardly notice the stars anymore, washed out as they are by city lights and our disconnection with the night. We hover inside our homes counting pixels instead of stars. We have forgotten the magic dome of inky darkness and the pearls of light that beckon above us each night.
Somehow stars have lost their lustre in the age of reason. We have forgotten that we are surrounded by a canopy of intrigue and wonder.
We are fortunate in Tasmania as it is easy to leave the lights of towns and see the stars in all their glory. Go up to the Central Highlands and look up at the mysterious Magellanic Clouds above us – they are haunting with the tease of life in other galaxies.
The clarity and sheer abundance of stars we can see from Tasmania is something we should promote as another of our enviable tourist assets. Come to Tasmania, where the air is clear and the stars stills shine like the day they were born …
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I have come to think of the stars as another type of wilderness, a place of darkness and light, unexplored vistas, foggy dreamscapes and secret glades – a place to wander and explore.
The stars are a wild place of wonder and childhood rhymes and wishes in the night, a place of may and might. The stars are a place of hope.
Scientists bring us down to earth and tell us that stars are suns, with our closest being Alpha Centauri, a mere 4.3 light years away from us. That is only a little more than 40 trillion kilometres. This is an unimaginable distance since we can’t yet travel the speed of light and not many cars can travel 40 trillion kilometres without stopping to refuel.
If we could travel at the speed of light (so theorises Einstein) we would eventually be able to journey back in time and see the birth of the stars. What a trip that would be.
Some of the stars we see at night shine from suns that might not even exist anymore – they may have burned out long ago and we are only seeing the dying embers of their once glorious history. This is perplexing and slightly unsettling.
Are we only looking up at the past when we look at the stars? What if none of the stars we see actually even exist anymore? How would we know it? Will the stars simply disappear one day and leave us just ashes? I shouldn’t think about such things, but I do.
We have forgotten what the stars have to teach and, perhaps more scarily, we have forgotten how to learn from them; sometimes I think we have forgotten the art of wonder.
Go bush. Seek the hinterland, hike up to Mother Cummings Peak or sail out to sea towards Flinders Island – go anywhere away from town lights and simply look up. You will get a surprise. Relearn the stars and the wonder of your childhood will return.
How significant or insignificant is our blue home in the universe? The stars invite such speculation. It is good to be perplexed and not have answers. It is good to be baffled, to be set in place and realise humans are not the centre of existence and that we really are only guessing as to our place in the scheme of things.
I like to wonder how far the universe reaches – could it really go on forever? Is there an endless endlessness around our little earth? How did time begin? Too much thinking like this can do a man’s head in.
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Have you spent more of your life looking at traffic lights than looking at the stars? This imbalance can be reversed; there is still time. There is still time to learn from the diamonds of hope that shine above.
Sometimes late at night, after gazing at the stars and losing track of time, I sail across the heavens like quicksilver. I slip across the powdered lights to faraway galaxies. Time and distance merge fluidly and become interchangeable. It’s easy to do. One can be a time traveller with a simple tack towards imagination and a mainsail full of reverence.
Anyone can learn to sail the stars. Just look up and imagine stingrays and emus. Try to count the stars and the holes in between. Fill the Albert Hall of your mind with wonder and childhood simplicity.
Look up at the stars shining down and be flabbergasted by what you see. Walk in the stars. Mystery is good for the soul.
Learn more about astrophotographer Richard Higby here.
Don Defenderfer is a native of San Francisco who once went on a holiday to Alaska where he met an Australian who told him to visit Tasmania. So he did, and while here he met a woman. That was 30 years ago. He was state coordinator for Landcare Tasmania for many years, a job that allowed him to be inspired by not only the beauty of the Tasmanian landscape but by the many people that are trying to repair and renew it. He has a Masters Degree in Social Ecology and a Bachelor of Environmental Studies with a minor in writing. He has published three volumes of poetry, and his work has appeared in newspapers and periodicals, including The New York Times and The Australian.
