Public record. Cite, do not wear. Not a Songline map. Not a homepage item.
Cite-not-wear · public layer only
This brief records public layers of Dharawal and Sydney Basin knowledge that named holders and institutions have chosen to share for teaching and site care. It is not a closed cosmology. It is not a TerAustralis story. It does not complete, fuse, or extend Songlines. Starlines, CrystalCore, Catch, Gate, and CICH remain other objects.
Restricted, gendered, or community-only knowledge is out of scope. We do not ask for it. We do not invent it. This page is noindex. It is not a door on www.teraustralis.com.au.
Country is not a backdrop. In the public Dharawal accounts used here, sky, land, sea, animals, plants, people, and the spirits of the dead form one living field. The sitting is written on Dharawal Country (Sydney south-west sandstone, including the Campbelltown–Bradbury–Appin corridor). That is geography and responsibility. It is not a selected berth.
If a place is named for industrial work, Traditional Owners first. Document 16 §5 and Document 06 hold the legal floor. This brief does not weaken it.
| Thread | Public record | We do not |
|---|---|---|
| Biame / Baiame | Sky creator in many south-east accounts, including Dharawal. Collaborative Dharawal publications (Bursill and others) discuss Biame and possible related engravings. | Identify a specific unpublished figure as “the” Biame of this sitting. |
| Burriburri | Whale dreaming as told by Raymond Ingrey (Dharawal, La Perouse), published via Gujaga Foundation and ABC Deep Time. A large whale-and-calf engraving at La Perouse is named in that telling. | Retell the vessel story as project lore. |
| Seasonal calendar | Dr Frances (Fran) Bodkin’s D’harawal seasons and cycles. Public poster and later illustration work exist. | Treat the calendar as a TerAustralis operations timetable. |
| Pleiades / Seven Sisters | Thin record. Turner 2014:24 (quoting Bursill): Pleiades, Orion group and Aldebaran rise with flowering, temperature, fruit. Evening-rise = spring is Fuller 2018 Bursill, not Turner. Wider Seven Sisters Songlines belong to their custodians. | Complete or fuse those Songlines. Import Arnhem Wawalag/Wagilag as Dharawal public teaching. Starlines is this project’s own coinage. See §2.4. |
Spirits of the dead returning in low cloud, and later readings of 1770 sails, appear in some public Dharawal commentary. They are cited as that commentary. They are not a launch metaphor.
The full public telling is Raymond Ingrey’s, as taught to him. Read it there, not here.
Landscape names that appear in those public tellings (Gangmangang / Windang Island; Kamay / Botany Bay; the Illawarra coast) remain their geography. This sitting does not retell the journey, the vessel, or the transformations. Catch (recover, refurbish, fuel) is not this story.
South-east public accounts of a sky creator (Baiame / Biame / Baayami and related spellings) belong to the peoples who hold them — including Gamilaraay, Wiradjuri, Wonnarua and others. They are not one story and not this sitting’s.
Dharawal public teaching in the collaborative volume by Les Bursill, Mary Jacobs, Deborah Lennis, Aunty Beryl Timbery-Beller and Merv Ryan names Biame as sky spirit creator. We cite that book. We do not retell a creation cycle. We do not identify an unpublished engraving as Biame.
NSW lists Baiame Cave (Hunter Valley, Wonnarua Country) as a heritage place. That is a different Country. It is not a Dharawal plate and not a TerAustralis illustration.
Some south-east protocols restrict public use of the name. This sitting uses it only as already published by those named Dharawal collaborators, and as an archaeological type-label (Baiame-type / Daramulan-type). Ceremony is out of scope.
Dr Frances (Aunty Fran) Bodkin compiled D’harawal: Seasons and Climatic Cycles from interviews and writings of Traditional Knowledge holders; Lorraine Robertson illustrated. Public posters and excerpts (including Georges Riverkeeper and Food Fairness Illawarra) carry six seasons. Stories on dharawalstories.com are held, per that site, by Gawain Bodkin-Andrews.
The clock is not Gregorian. Public teaching says seasons turn on plant flowering, fruiting, and animal behaviour. Months below are the rough European equivalents used on those posters, not the season itself.
| Time of | Weather name (public) | Rough months (poster) | One public trigger |
|---|---|---|---|
| Burrugin (echidna) | Tugarah Tuli — cold, frosty, short days | Jun–Jul | Forest Red Gum (Eucalyptus tereticornis) flowers; echidnas in line |
| Wiritjiribin (lyrebird) | Tugarah Gunya’marri — cold and windy | Jul–Aug | Gossamer Wattle (Acacia floribunda); lyrebird calls |
| Ngoonungi (flying fox) | Murrai’yunggory — cool, getting warmer | Sep–Oct | Waratah buds; flying foxes at dusk |
| Parra’dowee (eel) | Gooray’murrai — warm and wet | Nov–Dec | Coast Myall (Acacia binervia); eels moving downstream |
| Burran (kangaroo) | Gadalung Marool — hot and dry | Jan–Feb | Hickory Wattle (Acacia implexa) |
| Marraigang (quoll) | Bana’marrai’yung — wet, becoming cooler | Mar–May | Lilly pilly fruit; quoll calls |
Published spellings vary (Gooray’murrai / Goray’murrai; Murrai’yunggory / Murrau’yunggory). Use the book.
Public excerpts also carry camp, fire, and food cautions. Those belong to the calendar and its holders. This sitting does not teach them and does not run Catch or CrystalCore on this timetable. Stars are not in the public season excerpts cited here; the Pleiades row in §2 stays a separate, thinner local note.
This is the thinnest public thread on this page. It is not a Songline.
What is general, not Dharawal-specific. Across many Aboriginal cultures the Pleiades are a group of sisters. Central and western desert Songlines (including Kungkarangkalpa / Minyipuru) are living and belong to their custodians. Wurundjeri have a different public sister-story (Karatgurk). None of those are this sitting’s to complete or fuse. Starlines remains this project’s own coinage.
What the Sydney Basin literature actually cites — split.
Turner 2014 p.24 (quoting Bursill): for Dharawal people, the rising of some star groups — Pleiades, the Orion group, and Aldebaran — coincides with plant flowering, temperature change, and fruit. That is the only star-rise sentence we treat as Turner.
Fuller (2020 thesis, p.117) then records a separate Bursill conversation (12 February 2018): evening rising of the Pleiades heralds spring; “Wagalag Sisters who dream the new season”; Orion’s Belt signals summer. Fuller & Hamacher (2023) compressed 2014 and 2018 into one Turner footnote. This sitting un-compresses them.
Turner 2014 is unpublished (ATSI3006 / listed by Fuller as an honours study). Not found in UNSWorks. Visible only as quoted in Fuller. Not a map of Country. Not a ceremony. Bodkin’s public season excerpts cited in §2.3 do not name the Pleiades.
Name collision — do not copy. The 2018 Bursill line (and Bursill’s 2014 interview with Turner, Fuller appendix) uses “Wagalag / Wawalag” in a Dharawal context. Wawalag / Wagilag / Wagalak sisters are ancestral beings of Arnhem Land (Yolngu). Bursill analogised. Analogy is not identity. This sitting does not attach that name to Dharawal land or to the Pleiades here.
We do not identify unpublished engravings as the Seven Sisters, import desert Songlines, or treat evening rising as a TerAustralis calendar.
The Basin holds one of the densest concentrations of Aboriginal petroglyphs in Australia — on the order of two thousand recorded open engraving sites plus shelter pigment sites. Most locations remain unpublished to protect them and because they are sacred. This sitting will not list them.
Style. Simple Figurative: outline figures, pecked then abraded. Public motifs include marine animals, land animals, human figures and footprints (mundoes), objects, and larger ancestral beings.
Date. Grooves are not directly radiocarbon-dated. The style is generally associated with the last several thousand years. Occupation of the region is much older. Treat dates as provisional.
Living status. Not prehistoric relics. Cultural landscape for Dharawal, Gai-mariagal, Dharug and neighbouring peoples. Knowledge holders are the authority where they choose to speak.
Culture-hero types (research labels, not identifications on this page): Baiame-type; Daramulan-type. We do not pin a name to an unpublished platform.
Jibbon Head, Royal National Park, near Bundeena. Public material records the Dharawal name as Djeeban / Djeebahn (“sand bars at low tide”). The most extensive engraving complex in the park that is signposted for visitors. Public interpretive record: whales (including overlapping orcas), stingray, turtle, wallaby/kangaroo, and a human/ancestral figure.
A viewing platform and boardwalk keep feet off the rock. NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service records conservation work with Local Aboriginal Land Council and community. That is care, not a tour product of this sitting. We do not publish a site map. We do not use Jibbon as a Catch or Starline plate.
If a holder has not put a thing in public, it is not in this brief.
We stand on Country that is already spoken for. Public teaching may be cited. It may not be worn.
Gold is the grid. The dark is still Country.