Night with flying fox, 29 April 2020

A waxing crescent moon, and the evening star nearby. Almost invisibly a flying fox swoops over, like a small wind passing. In the absence of distraction the old shapes and presences of the Dharrawal land reappear, their great antiquity overlaid, but still there after two hundred and fifty years of white people. For old Europeans the moon was a female goddess, Artemis, but for northern Tiwi and Yolngu people whom I've known the moon is a man, and the sun is a woman.  The moon is responsible for bringing death to the world, he grows very sick until he is no more than a sliver of bone, and vanishes into the sea. But then, he comes up alive again and grows fat.   In the old Greek stories stars and flowers are related, you can paint a canopy in your tomb with either stars or blossoms. For the Yolngu the symbols of the evening star are the lotus and the waterlily.

Diana Wood Conroy. 'Night with flying fox, watercolour on Arches paper, 15 x 21 cm, 29 April 2020