Barnumbirr (also Banumbirr) is the Yolngu name for the planet Venus seen as the Morning Star, and the creator-spirit she embodies. Rising before dawn over Bralgu, the island of the dead, she guided the Djang'kawu ancestors across the Arafura Sea to the mainland near Yalangbara; she then flew across the land from east to west, naming and creating the animals, plants and features of the country and laying down a songline. She is said to trail a faint rope of light behind her that keeps her from ever moving far from the sun. In the Morning Star (Banumbirr) mortuary ceremony the Yolngu use a richly decorated, feathered Morning Star Pole to send the spirits of the dead and messages along this string to the ancestors on Baralku.