The Ballard project visited a remote area, dark-sky site that enabled a group of Aboriginal students, from Governor Stirling Senior High School (aged up to 16 yrs), to participate in a one-week journey (between 18-22 August 2025), to Lake Ballard and Morapoi Station. Lake Ballard is an important dark-sky remote-area landscape in Western Australia, located approximately 800 kilometres by road, from Perth, and about 200 kilometres north of Kalgoorlie. Near the western end of Lake Ballard, in the vicinity of “Pyramid Hill” is the “Inside Australia” project by UK sculptor Sir Antony Gormley. The project visited the installation of 51 metal sculptures around “Pyramid Hill” and across the dry lake surface of Lake Ballard.
Cultural experiences
Morapoi Station and Elder Greg Stubbs, welcomed all participants on the first evening, with a “welcome to country” that took place in the evening, around a campfire. Daytime activities in the vicinity of Morapoi Station enabled the students to experience a range of Aboriginal cultural activities. Student activities included bushwalking, boomerang throwing, food preparation (damper), learning Indigenous language, hand-carving “tapping sticks” made from local acacia wood, harvesting honey ants (dug from the ground; students and adults experienced the very distinctive contrasting sweet honey and astringent flavour), campfire storytelling (“yarning”), and group-based Aboriginal dance and tapping stick performance. We stayed at Morapoi Station, and we travelled the 100km from Morapoi to Lake Ballard, for the on-country viewing of the Milky Way and to visit to the “Inside Australia” sculptures.
Encountering the Cosmos at Lake Ballard
Our activities at Lake Ballard included visiting the “Inside Australia” sculptures, climbing “Pyramid Hill”, observing the sunset shadow, campfire dinner, storytelling, preparing red-filtered torches, dark adapting our eyesight, skywatching, cultural sky knowledge, star viewing, using telescopes and timelapse astrophotography. We experienced the extraordinary view of the centre of the Milky Way galaxy pass directly overhead. Our activities were based on experiential on-country activities, which are, in part, inspired by the approach of Greg Quicke, as described in his 2016 book “Earth Turning Consciousness: An Exercise in Planetary Awareness”.
Experiencing the Heart of the Milky Way, directly overhead
A major highlight of our journey was our experience of the very centre of the Milky Way galaxy, pass directly overhead. This remarkable view is only possible in the southern hemisphere, from the approximately latitude of 30 degrees south. No-where else on our planet is this particular view possible. The best time to experience this sight is when the sky is very dark, typically during New Moon, and away from artificial light sources such as cities. The “centre” of our galaxy visually appears as the brightest part of the Milky Way, between the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpius. This part of the cosmos first becomes visible directly overhead, in late March / early April, just before dawn. The last opportunity occurs in about early-mid September each year, just after evening twilight. At all other times of the year, the centre of the Milky Way cannot be seen directly overhead during night-time. Our project was timed specifically to take advantage of the last main opportunity in 2025 (during the dark sky conditions of New Moon), to witness the centre pass overhead.
The importance of protecting dark skies
Dark night skies are a vital prerequisite to preserve, maintain and communicate Australian Aboriginal sky knowledge. Several sky patterns originating from ancient Aboriginal culture in Australia, are recognized from dark areas in the Milky Way. Visibility of these “dark nebulae” are drastically affected by urban light pollution. This prevents or severely restricts their appreciation by those who live in urban, light polluted areas. Maintaining dark skies for the benefit of all, is a vital goal. Western Australian Aboriginal astronomical knowledge is intimately based on awareness and experience of dark night skies. During our site visit, students watched the documentary film, “The Borderless Sky, the Aboriginal Sky of Australia”.
Aboriginal knowledge of the night sky; shared stories
Dark skies are essential to be able to clearly view the “Emu” in the night sky, a large sky pattern recognised by many Aboriginal communities in Australia. The Emu is formed by the dark areas in the Milky Way. Lake Ballard is recognised as “Seven Sisters” country (Gormely, 2007). Quinton Tucker explains:
The Lake Ballard’s geographic location is very important to our people. It’s got a really dark sky and that shows the dreaming of the Emu in the sky plus the Seven Sisters, the Pleiades, which we have a particular storyline with it. The Seven Sisters is connected right across eastern Australia and it covers the whole landscape of Western Australia. The Seven Sisters dreaming includes a story that has been developed over generations and that story has been told about the way that we view the landscape and about the story in it talks about it’s a women’s dreaming conversation and there’s a story there that is so powerful to our people that we love to share it to the next generation as they come through. We call the Emu in the sky the “garlia”. The garlia is a very important feature of the night sky, but it’s also an important and a sacred animal to our people. As you know, the father looks after the eggs. And when the eggs hatch, the chicks follow the father around for a long period of time until he’s ready to run away. But there’s another story behind that. And those are the stories that we want to share with our younger generation.
