Yalibirri- Emu in the Sky

Sonya Edney

$6,400.00

In this painting, Yinggarda Wadjarri artist Sonya Edney paints the Milky Way in the night sky over the desert. She relates, “When we were younger, we used to go out bush and we camped out under the stars. My nanna told us kids about the sky stories, about the stars. It was so beautiful sleeping out under the desert sky because all you could see were the stars that lit up the Milky Way in the night sky and the dark patches within it.”

Unlike Greek celestial tradition, which focuses almost exclusively on stars, Aboriginal astronomy focuses on the Milky Way and often incorporates the dark patches between the stars. The Emu in the Sky, a story that has featured in Aboriginal story telling for thousands of years and across many language groups, is an example of this.

The Emu’s body is made up of the dark patches in the Milky Way. Look closely at the Southern Cross and you’ll see its head as a dark smudge tucked near the lower left hand corner of the constellation. Its neck passes between the two pointer stars, and its dark body stretches the length of our luminous galaxy.