Australia's Winter Solstice

 

In the Northern Hemisphere, the summer solstice has been and gone, accompanied by the usual celebrations at Stonehenge and no doubt other such stone henges in parts of Europe.

The degree of effort expended on building these huge cosmic calendars is an indication of how important the precession of the seasons was to ancient peoples. While the summer solstice is important, marking as it does the height of summer and the start of shorter days, the winter solstice, which coincides with Christmas, is a much grimmer time, with freezing days, long, cold nights, and food shortages. Christmas is a fun time for us but in the past, Yuletide was a ritual to guarantee the return of the sun.

Here in Australia the Northern Summer Solstice coincides with our Winter Solstice. Our much milder climate means the weather when the winter solstice occurs is nothing like as severe. That said, like all traditional cultures, the aboriginal people were very aware of the sun and the seasons. They knew that sunrise shifted as the days progressed until, at a certain point, sunrise shifted the other way. That point was a solstice and often it was 'marked' as something like 'when the sun rises over that hill, from tomorrow the days will be shorter'. There is one place in Victoria where lines of stones appear to indicate the summer and winter solstices and the equinox. This website gives more information and a photo. But there's nothing to rival Stonehenge.

Aboriginal tribes used their knowledge of the sun, moon, and stars to know when certain crops were ready for harvest, or when animals were on the move. Coastal aborigines also had a good understanding of the moon's influence on tides – that is, the highest tides coincide with the full moon.

As in other parts of the world, eclipses were considered bad omens but some tribes had a clear understanding of what was actually happening. In their traditions, the moon man and the sun woman were making love. But other tribes thought the darkness obscuring the sun was a bird, a possum, or someone's dark magic. For everyone, eclipses and comets represented times of evil magic and death. Of course, there were people who knew enough to take advantage of such periods, using magic of some kind to ensure the return of the sun or moon, or for the comet to disappear.

At the moment, sub-tropical Queensland is enduring a particularly bad cold spell, with overnight temperatures plunging to as little as 4C. I can hear you Northerners giggling. It's cold for us and even colder away from the coast. That said, our days are bright and warm, early 20s centigrade. 

Here's a picture I took the other day at the beach.