IN BRIEF
CSIRO’S ICONIC PARKES RADIO TELESCOPE GIVEN INDIGENOUS NAME BY DR STACY MADER (CSIRO) To mark Australia’s NAIDOC (National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee) week, where the culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples are celebrated, CSIRO’s famous Parkes radio telescope was given a traditional name by local Wiradjuri Elders. The 64-metre telescope, an SKA pathfinder, is located on Wiradjuri country in New South Wales, about 380km west of Sydney. During a naming ceremony it received the name Murriyang, which represents the ‘Skyworld’ where a prominent creator spirit of the Wiradjuri Dreaming, Biyaami (Baiame), lives. Two smaller telescopes at the Parkes Observatory also received Wiradjuri names.
Wiradjuri Elder Dr Stan Grant AM revealed the names. “This is a very proud day for our people and something that has been coming for a long time,” said Dr Grant. “The naming of the telescope is one of the biggest things to happen to our people,” referring to when as a young boy, it was illegal for the Wiradjuri to speak their language in public. Over two years, CSIRO’s local Parkes staff worked in collaboration with Wiradjuri Elders, the NSW Aboriginal Education Consultative Group and the North West Wiradjuri Language and Culture NEST on the telescope naming project. “Science is the search for truth, often we think we are the first to discover it, but much of the knowledge we seek was discovered long before us,” said CSIRO Chief Executive Dr Larry Marshall. “We’re honoured that the Wiradjuri Elders have given traditional names to our telescopes at Parkes, to connect them with the oldest scientific tradition in the world.” The Parkes telescopes join CSIRO’s Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) in Western Australia in being given traditional names. Each of ASKAP’s 36 dishes at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory has a name selected by the local Wajarri Yamatji community. Read more here. Telescopes at CSIRO’s Parkes Observatory received Wiradjuri names at a ceremony on 8 November 2020. Credit: C. Watson/CSIRO.
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