Ancient stories in the stars revealed at Indigenous-owned observatory

A remote Indigenous community in South Australia are now the owners and operators of a stargazing facility in partnership with rocket launch company Southern Launch.

The Koonibba Observatory will allow tourists to understand more about Indigenous astronomy.

More than a dozen Koonibba community members have signed up to receive training from Southern Launch on how to operate the deep-sky telescope.

When Geraldine Ware was growing up in the remote Indigenous community of Koonibba, she would look up at the stars as Elders passed on the ancient stories of her people traced across the skies.

Now, her remote community in far west South Australia has opened a stargazing facility to help tell those stories.

The Koonibba Observatory was built in partnership with space services company Southern Launch and has a vantage point to view the existing Koonibba Test Range facility, about 40 kilometres north-west of Ceduna on SA's far west coast.

Ms Ware, now chairperson of the Koonibba Community Aboriginal Corporation board, said it was exciting to think of the possibilities the facility would unlock for her community.

"We have got about 20 [people] to be trained up, so hopefully they'll get perfect at it, and then we can start our tourism in the future," she said.

"There are stories from when we were growing up, sitting around fires and looking at the stars, and we can see it, way further on, looking out now."

The new observatory includes a Sky-Watcher Flextube 400P telescope, which extends more than 150 centimetres.

However, not everyone from Koonibba, a community of roughly 140 people, more than 96 per cent of whom identify as First Nations, was confident the observatory could convey the ancient stories in the stars or the traditional owners' sacred relationship to the night sky.

Googatha* elder Aunty Sue Haseldine was born on Koonibba Country when it was still an Aboriginal mission, before its 1975 transfer to the Aboriginal Land Trust.

"The stories that have left Earth live on in the sky … I teach my grandchildren and great-grandchildren how to find their way home by the stars," she said.

She worried that guides might oversimplify Indigenous astronomy for visitors, rather than respect its deeper cultural significance.

"Are they sharing the right [stories], or are they just doing something to keep the tourists happy?" Aunty Sue asked.

Southern Launch chief executive Lloyd Damp said the facility cost more than $1 million to build and was designed to draw in tourists.

He said it would also allow people to view the adjacent Koonibba Test Range, from which the Australian space company has launched commercial rockets since September 2020.

"The facility will support the community as more and more visitors come to watch rocket launches and satellite re-entries," Mr Damp said.

Koonibba Community Aboriginal Corporation chief executive Corey McLennan said the Koonibba Observatory was about the community's future.

"We want to create jobs, grow tourism and investment within our region and give our young people opportunities to learn about science, technology and space whilst also maintaining their connection to country."

The head of the Australian Space Agency, Enrico Palermo, said Koonibba was "leading the world, not just Australia" in being the only place in the world that regularly receives capsules from space.

Its most recent mission was the successful re-entry earlier this month of the W-8 capsule from Varda Space Industries for commercial and US defence industries.

That W-8 capsule lifted off aboard Elon Musk's SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as part of the Transporter-18 rideshare mission.

Southern Launch provides mission services for orbital launch, sub-orbital missions including hypersonic flight, orbital re-entries, and range services for the global space industry.

The company is headquartered in Adelaide and manages two spaceports, the Koonibba Test Range and the Eyre Peninsula Whalers Way Orbital Launch Complex, the latter of which is still under development.*While Kokatha is the spelling often associated with the Traditional Owners of a large area in the west of South Australia, Googatha is sometimes the preferred spelling.