What are songlines?
Songlines are paths across the land, sea and sky that record the journeys of ancestral beings in Aboriginal cultures. Songs, stories and dances along these routes carry knowledge about country, law and survival.
Songlines link places such as waterholes, hills and rock formations, each tied to events in an ancestral story. Singing the songs in the right order allowed people to navigate huge distances, sometimes across the continent.
They also hold practical knowledge, including where to find water and food, how to behave on country, and how groups are related. Different sections of a songline may belong to different language groups, which share responsibility for them.
Songlines today
The Seven Sisters songline, which travels across the Western and Central deserts, was the subject of a major exhibition at the National Museum of Australia in 2017.
Some songlines are linked to the stars, with constellations such as the Pleiades and the Emu in the Sky mirroring routes and stories on the ground. Knowledge of the night sky helped people track the seasons.
Many parts of songlines are sacred and can only be shared with initiated people, so only some stories are told publicly. Today, Aboriginal communities use songlines in land claims, art and education, and they remain central to identity and connection to country across Australia.
Did You Know?
English writer Bruce Chatwin's 1987 book The Songlines brought the idea to a wide international audience.