There are 2 common ways to find south, this is one of them.
Try this... Go out at night to a spot where you can see the Southern Cross, It's a kite shape, about as big as your fist at the end of your out stretched arm. If you draw a line in the sky through from the front of the "kite" shape, then starting at its "tail" star, extend an imaginary line three and a half times the crosses length starting at that "tail" star...this is the South pole extended out into space...

Make a note of what angle it is in the sky. Hold a sheet of paper level to the horizon and draw a line to match that angle if you want...
Wait an hour or two, then return to the same spot and look at the cross now..... has it moved? Which way did it go?

Yep the Southern Cross is "Circumpolar"... That means it rotates about the South Pole, as if the pole where really long and stuck out into space.
Soooooo if we can find this point in space ( the point that the stars rotate around ) we can drop our eyes to the horizon and be looking south...

If we stood at the south pole and looked up we could see the southern cross, move around us, Clockwise, during the night! The South Pole can be drawn up into the sky, like the Earths "Axle"... this is called the "South Celestial Pole" and it's the point in the sky that all the stars seem to rotate around every night....
The North pole has one as well, it's the "Polar Opposite" of our pole so it's called the North Celestial Pole and of course the stars go the other way! Anti-Clockwise.

Okay so how do you find North now?

Look behind you!

This way back to the educational links.