Connecting with Country
A modern songline through ancient skies
The Solar System Drive travels through Gamilaraay / Kamilaroi / Gomeroi Country — traditional lands whose people have kept a profound connection to these landscapes and skies for tens of thousands of years.
“The land is the source of all life, and we are its custodians, not its owners.”
Gamilaraay Country
This vast nation spans northern New South Wales and southern Queensland, encompassing all five Drive routes as they converge at Siding Spring. As Australia’s first International Dark Sky Park, the Warrumbungle region holds a shared heritage of astronomy — modern science beside ancient Kamilaroi knowledge of the stars.
The Dark Emu in the Sky (dhinawan) is a central motif: not a join-the-dots of bright stars, but the dark dust lanes of the Milky Way. Its position through the year guided ceremony, travel and the seasons — the same sky the AAT still opens to each night.
Guardians of the wild places
In the Pilliga and along the Drive, Gomeroi stories speak of the Hairy Man or Yowie — appointed by Mother Earth as protector and custodian of the forest since time immemorial. Modern sightings and local lore carry the same ethic: these beings watch over the land and withdraw when heavy disturbance breaks the ancient balance.
At Hickeys Falls, between Uranus and Saturn on the A39 Newell Highway (Dubbo route), local knowledge tells that the Yowie is known in this area. Respect the wild places. The old stories live on.
Other cultures carry a similar figure — the Manx Fenodyree, a powerful helper who vanished from the free, shared world when offered the clothes of settled property. Different countries, the same warning: do not civilise the last wild thing out of existence.
The Drive is not just a road. It is a modern songline, where the stars above and the land below tell the same story of connection, custodianship, and wonder.