Eclipse History in Australia and Aotearoa
The 2028 eclipse is the latest in a long line. These articles cover the eclipses that came before it, from one nobody saw to one that tested Einstein, and how Aboriginal and Māori traditions explained them.
Total eclipses are rare at any one place, so most towns in the 2028 path have no living memory of one. Sydney last saw totality in 1857; Dunedin in 1163, before anyone lived in Aotearoa. Australia as a whole sees one every few years somewhere, usually in remote country: the most recent were over Cairns in 2012 and Exmouth in 2023.
The articles below keep two kinds of evidence apart: what an eclipse calculation says must have happened, and what people at the time actually wrote down. For Dunedin in 1163 there is only the first; for Wallal in 1922 there are photographic plates, newspaper reports and expedition diaries.
Articles
- Eclipses in Aboriginal and Māori astronomy: How eclipses were watched, explained and remembered in Aboriginal and Māori traditions, and the limits of a written record mostly set down by outsiders.
- Sydney's 1857 total eclipse: What surviving observers in 1857 recorded about the city's last totality, kept separate from what modern calculations say.
- The 1922 Wallal eclipse that tested Einstein: How an international team hauled 35 tonnes of equipment through the surf on Eighty Mile Beach to measure starlight bending around the Sun.
- Dunedin's 1163 total eclipse: The last totality over Otago fell on an empty land: Polynesian voyagers arrived about a century later.
- Australia's total eclipses: 2012, 2023 and 2028: What the Cairns and Exmouth eclipses taught about weather, crowds and small-town planning.
Timeline
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 27 December 1163 | Totality over Dunedin, before people reached Aotearoa. |
| 26 March 1857 | Sydney's last totality before 2028, a short eclipse near the path's edge. |
| 21 September 1922 | Totality at Wallal, Western Australia, used to test Einstein's theory of gravity. |
| 14 November 2012 | A dawn eclipse over Cairns and far north Queensland. |
| 20 April 2023 | A hybrid eclipse, total for about a minute at Exmouth. |
| 22 July 2028 | Totality from the Kimberley to Sydney and Otago. |
| 25 November 2030 | The next Australian totality, at sunset over South Australia and New South Wales. |
How often does one place see totality?
Averaged over the whole Earth, a given spot sees a total eclipse about once every 375 years, but the gaps are very uneven. Sydney waited 171 years from 1857 to 2028 and then waits until 2858. Dunedin waited 865 years. Some places see two within a few decades: the 2028 and 2030 paths both cross parts of north-western New South Wales. The reason is the Saros cycle: each eclipse in a series falls about 120 degrees of longitude west of the one before and drifts north or south, so paths from different series cross only by chance.
Why history matters for 2028
Past eclipses are the best guide to what will go wrong. In 1922 the Wallal team chose its site for clear skies over convenience and was rewarded. In 2012 a cloud drifted over some Cairns observers while others nearby saw totality. In 2023 a town of 2,800 people planned for tens of thousands of visitors. Each of those lessons is built into the town guides for 2028: weather fallbacks, measured horizons and early bookings.
For the eclipses still to come, see the 2030 eclipse, and for how often any one place sees totality, how eclipses work.