Gawaargay
Authors: Youla Azkarrula, ASE Tech Team
Gawaargay is the spirit Emu in the Sky, located with its head in the Coal Sack, and its neck and body stretching out through the dust lanes of the Milky Way (Warrambul) past Scorpius.[1]
Etymology and History
There is a connection between emu in the sky and the ceremonial (bora). In one of the common times for the bora ceremony, August, the Milky Way/Emu in the Sky is a vertical feature pointing to the south-southwest in the evening. There was some relationship between the Bora and the emu, as male emus care for emu chicks, and elder men take young men through the knowledge ceremony that is the Bora.
Variant Spelling
- gao-ergi ('emu in the dark space under the tree', where the tree is the Southern cross, Yarran, and the dark space is the coalsack)
- Gowargay (the featherless emu)
- Gawarrgay (the ceremonial name for emu in the sky)
- dhinawan (Gamilaraay/Yuwaalaraay language for the real emu bird on the Earth)
- ngurran.gali (Euahlayi, meaning an emu sitting)
- dthnarwon.gulli (Euahlayi, meaning emu in the water)
Identification, Observation Time, and Activities Related
The Euahlayi and the Kamilaroi see it with legs in April and May, when it is female and chasing the males. The depiction is likeː
an emu running, and when it runs, it sticks its neck out. When the old people saw this shape in the sky they knew that the emus were laying their eggs, so the old people would go out into the bush to find the eggs for food. When the eggs are visible in the body of the Emu in the Sky, that’s the time (April) for hunting the eggs.
This story corresponds with the rock engraving of the emu at Kuringai Chase National Park, which aligns with the Emu in the Sky at this time of year (Norris & Hamacher 2009, pp. 13 14).
From June to August it is male and sitting on its nest without legs (the males brood the chicks), and this is a signal to collect the eggs. When the eggs push down to the legs (end of June), the chicks are forming, so stop hunting eggs. In the evening in late August it is vertical in the sky, and the head and body form two "eggs", meaning the eggs should not be collected.
Later in the year, it appears on the horizon, so it is believed to be sitting in a waterhole, meaning the waterholes are full. “if you can see the head of the Emu in the Sky, the waterholes in country are full, and if it is not visible, they are empty”, which may relate to seasons.
When they are empty the water goes back to the belly of the Emu. The appearance of the Emu in the Sky has connection to movement in country, as well. When the head appears in February, people start moving from their summer camp. When the legs appear in April, people go home to their winter camp. When the neck and legs disappear around August-September, the belly is still there, and represents the egg, which is now developing into a chick.
When it is below the horizon, then it is on Earth as the Black Emu, which is rarely seen.[2]
Mythology
Everything up in the sky was once down on Earth because that’s the way it started out, and the sky and the Earth reversed.
IAU Working Group on Star Names
Weblinks
Reference
- ↑ Robert S. Fuller and Ghillar Michael Anderson in Stellarium; printed in appendix of Hoffmann and Wolfschmidt (eds.): Astronomy in Culture – Cultures of Astronomy. Featuring the Proceedings of the Splinter Meeting in the Annual Meeting of the German Astronomical Society, Sept. 14-16, 2021., Reihe: Nuncius Hamburgensis 57, tredition, Hamburg & OpenScienceTechnology Berlin (cBook)
- ↑ Fuller, R. (2014) PhD thesis
