Songlines

de Margo Neale, National Museum of Australia

Seven sisters leave Roeburn in Western Australia, tracking east over 500 square kilometres to the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunyjatjara (APY) lands in the Northern Territory and South Australia. The sisters are pursued by an evil shape-shifting spirt, a man called Wati Nyiru or Yurlu, who drives them across the land and into the night sky where they become the Pleiades star cluster. "The sisters don't want to marry the Wati Nyiru, but the Wati Nyiru was a really tricky man," said Tapaya Edwards, a cultural ambassador of the Pitjantjatjara nation. This creation story is shared by many clans in the Western and Central deserts, and it has now influenced a major Australian exhibition described as a world-first in scale and complexity.