Margaret Walker - MY PREHISTORY

The evening we saw the star we were farewelling dinner guests. We had walked them to the top of the driveway shrouded by turpentines and camelias and had just reached the street when Richard pointed out a white starlike object sitting low in the western sky.    Compared with Europe, Australia has very clear skies and when, a night or two later I emerged from the supermarket where the steps descend to the outdoor carpark, I stopped. There it was again, in the same position as we had earlier seen it, a star so large and so radiantly bright that it was impossible, once seen, to yank out the car keys, toss the shopping in the boot and drive thoughtlessly away. This beautiful celestial object was not, in fact, a star but the conjunction of two planets, Jupiter and Saturn that occurs about once every twenty years, in this case 2020. The one I saw was purported to be the best in 800 years (1) and it has been conjectured that such a conjunction produced the Star of Bethlehem that would date Je