An IAU interpretation would recognise Crux ( the Southern Cross ) above the emu's head and Scorpius on the left.

Its name is Latin for cross, and it is dominated by a cross-shaped asterism that is commonly known as the Southern Cross.

The two stars of Alpha and Beta Centauri are often referred to as the " Southern Pointers " or just " The Pointers ", allowing people to easily find the asterism of the Southern Cross or the constellation of Crux.

It is the dimmest of the Southern Cross stars.

The 15th century Venetian navigator Alvise Cadamosto made note of what was probably the Southern Cross on exiting the Gambia River in 1455, calling it the carro dell ' ostro (" southern chariot ").

The most prominent feature of Crux is the distinctive asterism known as the Southern Cross.

In Australia, the Southern Cross played a crucial role as symbol of the Eureka Stockade.

In the Eureka Oath from Peter Lalor's famous speech in 1854 under the Eureka Flag he proclaimed " We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties.

" Of the Australian national flag, the Australian poet Banjo Paterson wrote in 1893: The English flag may flutter and wave, where the world wide oceans toss, but the flag the Australian dies to save, is the flag of the Southern Cross.

The Southern Cross was written into the lyrics of " Advance Australia Fair " in 1901: " Beneath our radiant Southern Cross "; the song was adopted as the Australian National Anthem in 1984.

The victory song of the Australian national cricket team is entitled " Under the Southern Cross I Stand ".

The Southern Cross was included in the lyrics of the Brazilian National Anthem ( 1909 ): " A imagem do Cruzeiro resplandece " (" the image of the Cross shines ").

In O Sweet Saint Martin's Land, the lyrics for the Southern Cross are Thy Southern Cross the night.

The Māori name for the Southern Cross is Te Punga (" the anchor ").

In Mapudungun, the language of Patagonian Mapuches, the name of the Southern Cross is Melipal, which means " four stars ".

The peoples of the Solomon Islands saw several figures in the Southern Cross.

In the Victory At Sea suite, Richard Rodgers wrote " Beneath The Southern Cross " to depict the battleships in convoy and the loneliness of the sailors in the Southern Pacific during World War II.

* 1916 – Ernest Shackleton and five men of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition launch a lifeboat from uninhabited Elephant Island in the Southern Ocean to organise a rescue for the ice-trapped ship.

* Southern Ocean Expedition, an expedition to Antarctica

Southern Paiutes inhabited the region at the time of the first European explorers, the 1776 Dominguez-Escalante Expedition.

Holbrook served with General Theodore Schwan's Southern Expedition from January 3 to February 18, 1900, and was at the Battles of Muntinlupa and Binan, Carmona and Silan, Tiaong, Candaleria and Tayabas.

* In October and November 1835, he was part of the Great Southern Expedition, which explored the country between Perth and Albany by two different routes, with a view to deciding on a route for a road between the two towns ;

Interbreeding with the Indopacific subspecies of the Southern Rockhopper Penguin ( E. chrysocome filholi ) has been reported at Heard and Marion Islands, with three hybrids recorded there by a 1987 – 88 Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition.

** The 3rd Soviet Antarctic Expedition discovers the subglacial Gamburtsev Mountain Range in Antarctica ; also becoming the first to reach the Southern Pole of Inaccessibility ( December 14 ).

In 1898 – 1900 Borchgrevink led the British-financed Southern Cross Expedition, which in 1899 became the first to overwinter on the Antarctic mainland and the first to visit the Great Ice Barrier since the expedition of Sir James Ross nearly sixty years previously.

After the Southern Cross Expedition, Borchgrevink was one of three scientists sent to the Caribbean in 1902 by the National Geographic Society, to report on the aftermath of the Mount Pelée disaster.

The Society admitted in its citation that justice had not previously been done to his work with the Southern Cross Expedition.

In spite of the Southern Cross Expedition's achievements there was still resentment in geographical circles — harboured especially by Sir Clements Markham — that Borchgrevink's acceptance of Newnes's gift had deprived the National Antarctic Expedition of money.

He was a member of the " Expedition of 1830 ," conducted by two brigs, Annawan and Seraph, that sailed to the Southern Hemisphere.

So named by the Southern Party of the New Zealand Geological Survey Antarctic Expedition ( NZGSAE ) ( 1961 – 62 ) because it was at this landfall that the party arrived after their first crossing of Mill Glacier in November 1961.

* Caves and Karst of the Muller Range-report of the 1978 Speleological Expedition to the Atea Kananda, Southern Highlands, Papua New Guinea, Ed Julia James and H Jane Dyson, 1980

Subsequent to the war, Wilkins served in 1921-1922 as an ornithologist aboard the Quest on the Shackleton-Rowett Expedition to the Southern Ocean and adjacent islands.

The Battle of the Tongue River, sometimes referred to as the Connor Battle, was the major engagement of the Powder River Expedition of 1865, directed against the Southern Cheyenne, Arapaho and Lakota Sioux.

* British Antarctic Expedition 1898 – 1900, also known as the Southern Cross Expedition

It reads " To the Glory of God and in memory of Edgar Evans 1st Class Petty Officer, R. N., and a native of this Parish, who perished on the 17 February 1912, when returning from the South Pole with the Southern Party of the British Antarctic Expedition under the command of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, C. V. O., R. N.

Although myths and speculation about a Terra Australis (" Southern Land ") date back to antiquity, the first confirmed sighting of the continent of Antarctica is commonly accepted to have occurred in 1820 by the Russian expedition of Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev on Vostok and Mirny.

After Rupert had won some recognition in Southern Germany, Rupert made an expedition to the Italian kingdom, where he hoped to receive the Imperial crown and to crush the rule of Gian Galeazzo Visconti over the thriving Duchy of Milan.

The route led first to the South Atlantic, then through the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean to the island of Polynesia and finally around Cape Horn back to England, where the expedition arrived on July 30, 1775.

In July 1842, Sir Thomas Phillips, the former mayor of Newport, chose Dadd to accompany him as his draftsman on an expedition through Europe to Greece, Turkey, Southern Syria and finally Egypt.

In 1508, Spain launched an expedition under the command of Pedro Navarro to fight against the pirates who populated it, and who were constantly attacking and looting the coast of Southern Spain.

Although he complimented McClellan and expressed his " great confidence in your intelligence, zeal, science, and energy ", he replied by letter that the 80, 000 men would be better used on a river-based expedition to control the Mississippi River and split the Confederacy, accompanied by a strong Union blockade of Southern ports.

Suitable locations for the observatories were selected in both hemispheres and representations were made to despatch an expedition to the Southern Ocean to carry out a magnetic survey of the Antarctic.

Eshete encountered Haile Mariam while he was on a hunting expedition in the administrative district of Gimira and Maji ( in Southern Ethiopia ), then under the governorship of Dejazmach Taye Gulilat.

During this expedition, Balleny, sailing in company with Thomas Freeman and the Sabrina, sailed into the Southern Ocean along a corridor of longitude centering on the line of 175 ° E., south of New Zealand.

The Duan Albanach says that he reigned " without dissension ", but there is a report of an expedition by Conall and Colmán Bec mac Diarmato of the Southern Uí Néill to Iardoaman in the Annals of Ulster for 568.

In 1926 he undertook an expedition to Java in order to chart the Southern Constellations.

While rounding Cape Horn, the expedition established that Staten Island was not part of the unknown Southern land.

Upon this background, he was given command of the government exploring expedition "... for the purpose of exploring and surveying the Southern Ocean,.

Southern Tibet, the scientific publication on the third expedition, totalled twelve volumes, three of which were atlases.

The expedition was intended to explore the Southern Ocean and to find land in the proximity of the South Pole.

He then joined Álvaro de Mendaña expedition through the Southern Pacific Ocean to find the Terra Australis Incognita, which, should Mendaña followed Sarmiento's indications, had reached New Zealand or / and Australia ; but they discovered the Solomon Islands instead, in 1568.

He joined Carstens Borchgrevink's Southern Cross expedition ( 1898 – 1900 ) which wintered at Cape Adare, Antarctica, joining the expedition in New Zealand after the previous physicist candidate had been rejected on medical grounds.

It appeared, then, that justice had not been done at the time to the pioneer work of the Southern Cross expedition, which had been carried out under the British flag and at the expense of a British benefactor.

A modern photograph of the Southern Cross expedition huts at Cape Adare.

The collection includes a large number of outstanding single items, such as the 14th century Chertsey Cartulary, the journal of James Cook on the HM Bark Endeavour, inscribed on the Memory of the World Register in 2001, the diaries of Robert O ' Hara Burke and William John Wills from the Burke and Wills expedition, and Charles Kingsford Smith's and Charles Ulm's log of the Southern Cross.