Pleasant Hills is the perfect place to indulge in a little ‘star gazing’, at least when the skies are cloud free. In recent times when movement has been restricted so much, it is the perfect activity to occupy all that extra time. A little searching on the internet can let you know what events are coming up. Recently we have had meteor showers, blood moons and the very interesting clash between Venus and Mars.
Indigenous people have always relied on the night sky to guide their travels and also form the basis of many of their mythologies. Here is an “uplifting” tale (we all need something uplifting in these times) which also has similarities to a tale recorded in New Zealand by the Maori people.
The Legend
There was a time, before time began, when there was no sun, moon or stars. The sky itself was clamped firmly to the earth. The noisy, garrulous Magpies, growing tired of the cramped conditions in which they lived, crawling in their narrow confines with no opportunity to use their wings, held a conference, from which emerged a suggestion that if they cooperated by thrusting at the roof that pressed so heavily upon them, they might be able to raise it above the earth.
Each bird secured a stick, holding it firmly in beak or claw. At a given signal they all pressed their sticks against the firmament. At first there was no movement, but as they strained their feet on the ground and pushed their sticks against the solid mass above them there was a creaking and groaning.
“Harder! Stronger! Firmer!” the leader shouted. A crack of light showed on the near horizon. The birds could feel the massive bulk lifting. “It moves!”, was the cry from a thousand throats and the higher it went the easier it became for the birds that pressed on it.
The dark shadows rolled away. Sunshine was there, wind, trees waiving in the breeze far below, seas unknown, undreamed of, rolling in blue and white and silver in the golden rays. Untouched now by the sticks that had prised it loose, the sky floated into the immensity of space, a pathway for the goddess of the sun, the god of the moon, and all the starry beings that someday would take refuge in it.
And… each day that the sun rises from the journey of night the earth is greeted by the vociferous chorus of Magpie song, as it was on the day of its first rising.
(Abridged from: Aboriginal Legends: Animal Tales by A. W. Reed)
Bob Marshall