The ancient seasons of Australia

September 23, 2021 12:38 AM

Aboriginal Australians were acutely aware of the annual cycles of their home. Researchers at the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO have compiled calendars detailing the many seasons of Australia based upon their understanding.
posted by adept256 (8 comments total)

We really should have listened to them a long time ago. The European seasons don't make any sense in this context. Some of these calendars include a burning season, not a time when the peril of wildfire was greatest, but safest. They knew burning was necessary and when the best time to do it was.

I used the past tense in the post because, well... the genocide. This is just a fragment of the wisdom hard won by millennia.
posted by adept256 at 12:55 AM on September 23, 2021 [5 favorites]

Hey, that's really interesting. I clicked on a few examples and concluded "Heck, these folk are really into the fire". But further investigation made me realise that Australia is a continent and, for example, the Yawaru live by the coast and have a weather eye open for monsoons and tides. Language is the lens through which we all view and integrate the world we inhabit. Your view, and my view, is one view and so limited in scope and a compress on our imagination.

"The European seasons don't make any sense in this context.". Too right; but they make sense in Europe. Lammas on 1st Aug is Loaf Mass made with the new corn: not obvious in modern English. The revolutionary French calendar was a conscious intellectual attempt, down to each day of the year being associated with a plant or animal - Peony for my birthday.
Autumn: Vendémiaire Vintage; Brumaire Misty; Frimaire Frosty
Winter: Nivôse Snowy; Pluviôse Rainy; Ventôse Windy
Spring:Germinal Germination; Floréal Flowery; Prairial Meadows
Summer: Messidor Harvest; Thermidor Hot; Fructidor Fruity

Dang, derail! Let's go back to people who care about koalas.
posted by BobTheScientist at 4:47 AM on September 23, 2021 [1 favorite]

This is great!

Actually, I really want this in kids picture book format, preferably as a large series for places all around the world. Although I now live somewhere that the tradition four season books work well for, I didn't grow up in one, and snow normativity bugged me as a kid.
posted by puffyn at 5:47 AM on September 23, 2021 [2 favorites]

My region does not have a calendar listed. There's nothing even remotely close.

That speaks to me of how much has been lost. Deliberately destroyed. Not even stolen, because theft denotes worth. Just...cast aside, burned to clear the land for people who did not deserve it.
posted by Jilder at 6:07 AM on September 23, 2021 [3 favorites]

The two language groups around Melbourne aren't listed. From what I recall, Melbourne falls on the boundary between them, and they have different calendars (I believe one has six seasons and the other seven).
posted by acb at 6:19 AM on September 23, 2021 [1 favorite]

These are really interesting, thank you for posting this.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:47 AM on September 23, 2021

The guide for communities that want to add their calendar is fascinating.

Jilder: I wouldn't assume that nobody knows the calendars from your area just based on these two sites, they are missing some of the largest aboriginal communities I know of. Here is some information about the calendar used by the Wurundjeri people around Melbourne.
posted by bashing rocks together at 9:50 PM on September 23, 2021 [2 favorites]

I was thinking that it would be good to have a tool which could tell one the date in the indigenous calendar of wherever your location was set to, though it looks like the calendars are not calculable a priori but depend on environmental observations, like customary English definitions of spring that depend on whether Bill Oddie sees a chaffinch or something. Which also depends on an environment which has changed since European colonisers arrived. (One could probably tell if it's Biderap in the Kulin calendar from BOM temperature/rain data, though good luck finding foraging wombats to find that it's Warin.)

Someone else pointed out that if there were to be an empirical calendar of seasons in Australia today, it would have two seasons: Lockdown and Bushfire.
posted by acb at 8:21 AM on September 24, 2021