13 Navigation

While there is no written evidence of extensive navigation across the ocean by First Nations from Australia, this was a common skill in the region. It is assumed that First Nations in Australia adapted the technology of the Macassan traders as well as already having the seafaring knowledge to travel across the open ocean since they were assumed to arrive in Australia by sea (Briggs, 2023).

The use of dugouts with outriggers would have enabled open ocean travel as far as South America (Gray, 2015) when First Nations’ navigation skills were sufficient to traverse the open ocean. The knowledge of ths astronomy was vast (Johnson, 2014) and the skill of open sea navigation was documented well by Lewis (1972):

Since the place where the sun rises or sets varies even on the equator by 47⁰, it follows that some fixed points of references are necessary on which to orientate the seasonally changing poitions of the sun’s rise and set. This is most conveniently provided by the stars (Lewis, 1972, p.79)

This navigation process was summarised in Briggs (2023) as:

The night sky was used as a calendar and a series of interconnected maps. These maps were used extensivly to predict all sorts of things in hunting and gathering, such as seasons, weather conditions and resource management (Briggs, 2023, p.73)

…the most acurate direction-indicators are stars that sit low in the sky, having just risen or being just about to set. These are called horizon or guiding stars. This process can be summarised as ‘steering towards the setting points of stars, by maintaining an angle to the sun, swells, and wind and occasionally judging latitude by the unaided eye when a particular star was passing directly overhead’ (Johnson, 2014). The procedure was to know which ‘star rises or set in the direction of the island you wish to visit’ and to follow it.(Briggs, 2023, p69).

However the process requires a broad knowldge of the sky as all stars:

rise in slightly different places and follow different trajectories, so that some stars stay in the sky longer than others….This means that a navigator can only use a rising star for a certain period of time. When this star goes too high in the night sky or veers too far in one direction, the the navigator used the next start that rises on the horizon’ (Briggs, 2023, p.70)

Aboriginal Australians possessed the necessary astronomical knowldge required for sea travel common amongst Pacific Islanders:

The Aboriginal Australians could also give, with a fair degree of accuracy, the time of the heliacal rising of any star. They clearly knew the stars rose in the east and moved across the sky to the west as does the sun, They also knew of the more gradual annual shift of the star groups, and based complex seasonal and ritual calendars on the locations of particular stars at dawn or dusk (Johnson, 2014, p.82)

Importantly this knowledge was retained through songlines of the land and sea which are ‘mirrored by sky Songlines, allowing people to travel vast distances and highlighting the deep connection they have to earth and sea’ (Carstens, 2016, p.35). But also the ability to travel between islands was dependent on the prevaling winds and swells. ‘Wind and swells are connected and apparently ocean swells are consistent and predictable across the Pacific in the trade wind seasons’ (Briggs, 2023, p.67).

Also the ability to find the next landfall was important, even if the direction of the island was known and  ‘…other things that navigators used to identify where land was [included] cloud formations over islands and the reflections from lagoons of atolls. Birds in the sky were another sign of land nearby’ (Briggs, 2023, p.67)

Briggs (2023) also notes that the sun or moon and stars were generally visible to seafarers, as cloud cover at night rarely lasted more than three days and clouds disperse at night. Also cloudy wether is seasonal and predictable, along with the winds. ‘The winds across Oceanis allowed people to sail in most directions at some time during the year with the wind behind them’ (Briggs, 2023, p.68)

This was important as the outriggers could not tack close to the wind, although the Pacific Islanders adapted the Macassan design to sail closer to the wind (Briggs, 2023). The hull was designed as a deep-V and often a long steering oar was used which reduced the sideways push of the wind ((Briggs, 2023). Also double outriggers up to 450 feet long were used to allow the carriage of more crew and products for supplies during travel and trading.