Associate Professor Duane Hamacher has highlighted how First Nations cultural astronomy demonstrates deep scientific sophistication embedded across tens of thousands of years.

He explained how Traditional Owners used the stars for seasonal forecasting, navigation, and understanding complex atmospheric patterns.

“You have to pick very specific stars. It’s going to depend on their declination, it’s going to depend on their right ascension, their position in the sky, relative to the ecliptic, relative to the equatorial plane of the Earth,” Duane said.

He highlighted the incredible complexity of Torres Strait Islander traditions predicting total lunar eclipses through oral systems.

“What has never been given credit is the fact that the Torres Strait Islanders did this through oral tradition. There were no written works to tell you, there were no star charts,” he said.

The research challenges historical dismissals of Indigenous sciences and highlights how knowledge was maintained with exact precision.

“If you’re going to convey information, you create narratives, and these narratives are going to have multiple layers of knowledge embedded within them,” Duane said.

Work is ongoing to embed these cultural astronomy principles into national and state school curricula.

“If you can combine astronomy in with Indigenous knowledge and history and culture, you’re going to create a different angle for this,” he said.

Partnerships with Mob are also expanding local night sky tourism and dark sky preservation across Victoria.