💾 Archived View for tilde.town › ~vidak › substack › mirrabooka.md captured on 2024-08-25 at 00:25:06.
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-11-04)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
# Mirrabooka I was recently relayed a story. I am permitted to share it with you. I think I had better, since it is very well at risk of never being told again. An Oral Tradition can be stamped out, in much the same way a Written One can. Anyway, this is not about the stamping out. After meditating a little on the 2023 Australian Referendum, and its horrific failure, I feel as if some absolution has fallen upon me. I was recently in the outback, or what people in Perth would call, rather ignorantly, 'the Wheatbelt'. I was with an Elder, we were standing by a dam. It was cloudy, but the Constellation of which he spoke was famous; ubiquitous. This much is confirmed in his story that he relayed to me. In Stradbroke Dreamtime, the well known Aboriginal poet and Aboriginal rights campaigner Oodgeroo Noonuccal gives us an account of how the Constellation of Mirrabooka came into being. It is based on the stories she heard when she was growing up with her Aboriginal family on Stradbroke Island off the coast of Queensland. This Elder--who is known to you, standing by the dam, L.G., V., N., and J., and others. He turned to us, and said: Biame, the Good Spirit was extremely busy keeping an eye on the Aboriginal people but found he could not watch them all the time. He decided that he needed the assistance of someone to help him in his guardianship of his people. He chose a man named Mirrabooka who was not only loved by everyone but also looked after the welfare of his people. So, according to Noonuccal, 'Biame gave him a spirit form and placed him in the sky among the stars, and promised him eternal life. Biame gave Mirrabooka lights for his hands and feet and stretched him across the sky, so that he could watch for ever over the tribes he loved. And the tribes could look up to him from the Earth and see the stars which were Mirrabooka's eyes gazing down on them'. https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/campbelltown_observatory/home/areas_of_research_and_teaching/aboriginal_astronomy/mirabooka_-_the_southern_cross