When the sun finally dipped behind the western hills, the students of Yarrandale Secondary College switched off their torches and waited. They had travelled three hours by bus to reach Warrabin Ridge, a remote outcrop chosen for one simple reason: there were no towns nearby, and therefore almost no artificial light. Their teacher, Ms Okafor, called this rare quality "dark sky", and she had promised them a view that no city could ever offer. At first the darkness felt complete, almost solid. But as their eyes adjusted, something remarkable happened. One by one, then by the hundreds, then by the uncountable thousands, the stars emerged. A pale, milky band stretched from one horizon to the other, like spilled flour scattered across black velvet. "That," said Ms Okafor quietly, "is the Milky Way. You are looking edge-on into our own galaxy." The students had recognised constellations from books, but seeing them overhead was entirely different. Ms Okafor pointed out the Southern Cross, a small but distinct pattern that has guided travellers across the southern hemisphere for centuries. She explained how early navigators, long before satellites, used such patterns to find their way across vast oceans and deserts. To the students, the idea that ancient people had read the sky like a map seemed almost like a kind of magic. Maya, who usually preferred her phone to anything else, found herself unable to look away. She had grown up in a suburb where the glow of streetlights and houses washed out all but the brightest stars. Here, the sheer abundance overwhelmed her. "I didn't know there were this many," she whispered. Ms Okafor smiled. "There always were. We simply stopped being able to see them." This loss has a name: light pollution. Ms Okafor explained that the artificial brightening of the night sky now affects most of the world's population. It is not merely an inconvenience for stargazers. Many creatures rely on natural darkness. Migrating birds can become disoriented by city lights, and newly hatched sea turtles, which instinctively crawl towards the brightest horizon, may wander inland instead of towards the sea. Even our own bodies, she noted, are tuned to the ancient rhythm of light and dark. Yet the situation is far from hopeless. Unlike many environmental problems, light pollution can be reduced quickly and cheaply. Shielding outdoor lights so they shine downwards, using warmer colours, and switching off unnecessary lamps can restore much of the night sky within a single evening. Some Australian communities have even earned recognition as official "dark sky places", protecting their darkness as a genuine natural treasure. As the bus rumbled home near midnight, the students were unusually quiet. Maya stared out the window, watching the stars gradually fade as the lights of the first town appeared. She thought about how easily she had once ignored the sky above her, assuming there was nothing there worth noticing. Now she knew better. The universe had been waiting overhead all along, patient and immense, asking only that someone remember to look up and, just as importantly, to turn the lights down low enough to let it shine through.