"Clouds also provide clues to the wayfinder - their shape, colour, character, and place in the sky. Brown Clouds bring strong winds; high clouds no wind but lots of rain. Their movements reveal the strength and direction of the winds, the stability of the sky, the volatility of storm fronts. There is an entire nomenclature to describe the distinct patterns clouds form as they gather over islands or weep across the open ocean. Light alone can be read, the rainbow colours at the edge of stars, the way they twinkle and dim with an impending storm, the tone of the sky over an island, always darker than that over open sea.Red skies at sunrise and sunset indicate humidity in the air. A halo around the moon foreshadows rain, clouds laden with moisture. The number of stars within the halo anticipates the intensity of the storm; if there are fewer than ten, expect trouble, high winds, and torrential rain. If a double halo surrounds the moon the weather will move in on the wings of a gale. 
"Other signs are found in wildlife and seamarks, as opposed to landmarks. A tan shark moving lazily in the sea. A lone bird separated from its flock. Dolphins and porpoises swimming toward sheltered waters herald a storm, while the flight of a frigate bird heading out to sea anticipates calm. Pelagic birds like the albatross lead nowhere, but others such as petrels and terms travel fixed distances from their nests, returning every night to land, rising out of the waves at sunset, their flight paths home as precise as compass bearings. A sighting of a white term indicates that land is within 200 kilometres; the brown tern reaches out as far as 65 kilometres, the boobies rarely more than 40. Phosphorescence and the debris of plants in the sea, the salinity and taste and temperature of the water, the manner in which a swordfish swims, all these become revelatory in the senses of the navigator.
"... the crew could name and follow some 220 stars in the night sky. She knew and could track all the constellations, Scorpio and the Southern Cross, Orion, the Pleiades and the North Star, Polaris. But for her the most important stars were those low in the sky, the ones that had just risen or were out to set. Nainoa explained: As the Earth rotates, every star comes up over the the eastern horizon, describes an arc though the sky, and then sets on a westerly bearing. These tow points on the horizon, where a specific star rises in the east and sets in the west, remain the same throughout the year, though the time at which a star emerges changes by four minutes every night. Thus, as long as one is able to commit to memory all the stars and their unique positions, the time at which each is to appear on a particular night, and their bearings as they break the horizon or slip beneath it, one can envision a 360-degree compass, which the Hawaiians divide conceptually into the thirty-tow star houses, each a segment on the horizon named for a celestial body. Any on e star is only dependable for a time, for as it arcs through the sky its bearings change. But by then there will be another star breaking the horizon. again on a bearing known to the navigator. Over the course of a night at sea- roughly twelve hours in the tropics - then such guiding stars are enough to maintain a course. To steer, the crew at the helm, instructed by the navigator, takes advantage of the canoe itself, positioning the vessel so that a particular star or celestial body remains framed, for example. within the angel subtended between the tip of the mast and stays that support it.. Any consistend point of reference will do.
" ... The navigator by day conceptually divides the horizon ahead and behind, each into sixteen parts, taking as cardinal points the rising an setting of the sun. Thus by day he or she replicates the star compass of the night. The metaphor is that the Hokule'a never voves. It simply waits, the axis mundi of the world, as the islands rise out of the sea to greet her.
"Beyond sun and stars ins the ocean itself. When clouds or mist obliterate the horizon, the navigator must orient the vessel by the feel of the water, distinguishing waves created by local weather systems, for example , from the swells generated by pressure systems far beyond the horizon. And these swells, in turn, must be differentiated from the deep ocean currents that run through the Pacific, and which can be followed with the same ease with which a terrestrial explorer would follow a river to its mouth. Expert navigators like Mau, sitting alone in the darkness of the hull of a canoe, can sense and distinguish as many as five distinct swells moving through the vessel at any given time. Local wave action is chaotic and disruptive. But the distant swells are consistent, deep and resonant pulses that move across the ocean from one star house to another, 180 degrees away, and thus can be used as yet another means of orienting the vessel in time and space. Should a canoe shift course in the middle of the night, the navigator will know, simply from the change of the pitch and roll of the waves. Even more remarkable is the navigator's ability to pull islands out of the sea. The truly great navigators such as Mau can identify the presence of distant atolls of islands beyond the visible horizon simply by watching the reverberation of waves across the hull of the canoe, knowing full well that every island group in the Pacific has its own refractive pattern that can be read with the same ease with which a forensic scientist would read a fingerprint.
" But it is quite another to make such calculations continually, day and night, while also taking the measure of stars breaking the horizon, winds shifting both in speed an direction, swells moving through the canoe, clouds and waves. The science and art of navigation is holistic. The navigator must process an endless flow of data, intuitions and insights derived from observation and the dynamic rhythms and interactions of wind, waves, clouds, stars, sun, moon, the flight of birds, a bed of kelp, the glow of phosphorescence on a shallow reef - in short, the constantly changing world of weather and the sea"
(Davis, 2009 55-60)
(Davis, 2009 55-60)
NOTES:
+ investigate North Stradbroke Island - indigenous history in terms of moving through/across water, water craft, hunting (dugong, stingray etc from boats) midden residue, serpentine meandering of water across the landscape - colour caused when sunlight hits the water at an angle
+ closest burial trees with Auntie Sally
+ indigenous beliefs relevant to 'below water surface'
+ investigate Solomon Island Tree (roots)/Boat metaphor
+ photograph glass decanters underwater (fill with water sediment) - petri dishes - evaporate, rephotograph - relics of western shipwrecks - suggest layered history
+ bones - photograph in Coombabah Lake - relics and residue - source more bones
+ embed lace in mud
+ return to fabric in the water (1980 images) above/in/below, Coochiemudlo dress images
+ Monet style 'strips' of mangrove (under the water line)
+ night shots Lorekeet Island
+ group images 1. mangroves - Romantic sublime, 2. night fish - inhabiting the liminal, 3. historical/factual re Broadwater habitation - 'use' of Broadwater, 4. metaphorical/psychological 5. Peel Island colonial relics vs natural
+ what is the oldest remaining water source/course in Australia? - Lake Mungo - does it rain?
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