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Navigate by the Southern CrossIn the southern hemisphere the location of south can be determined from the Southern Cross constellation. This constellation can be distinquished from other cross shaped groups by it's size - it's smaller - and it's two pointer stars. The brightest star is at the foot of the true cross. 
Probably the sky map picture on this page doesn’t exactly match what you see. - To find the right sky map on your location, see the information at the page
Finding the Northern Star
.To locate south: 1. Locate the two bright pointer stars and the Cross constellation. 2. Project an imaginary line through the long axis of the cross. Beginning with the star that marks the top of the cross.
3. Draw a perpendicular bisector between the two pointer stars, that is, a line starting at the mid-point between the two stars and coming out at right angles. This line should cross the imaginary line through the long axis of the cross. The intersection of these two lines is close to the South Pole. 4. Place a marking arrow on the ground to enable you to remember the position by day. Comment from a reader: 
There are actually 5 stars in the southern cross itself visible with the naked eye, the four stars that make up the cross and a smaller, inbetween the bottom star and the right star - (see the Australian flag, it has the southern cross on it).I said visible with the naked eye above, because apparently recently quite a few more stars were found in this constellation that are not visible to the naked eye (one star is actually two, etc.), but no matter as we are interested in what we can see. Kane Mortlock Australia Return from "Finding the Southern Cross"
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