Dec 23 2008
Is the Creator of the Marree Man found?
You find the town of Marree in South Australia, lazing at the junction of two legendary outback Tracks, the Birdsville and the Oodnadatta.
The Birdsville Track was the main stock route between Marree and Birdsville in Queensland during the 1880s, a long and extremely harsh journey of about five weeks.
Cattle didn’t often survive the trip, and drovers faced severe danger along the way. Camel trains took this route, the hardy desert animals in their caravans bringing staples and exotic goods across the largely inaccessible regions. Later on the camels were released into the wild when road transport took over.
Nowadays, the track is passable to conventional vehicles for most of the year. The Oodnadatta Track is an accessible and engaging 850 kilometre drive through the vast desert plains. The generally well-maintained road is accessible in most modern vehicles, any modern 4WD makes the journey effortless and trouble free. But Marree itself is a small, unassuming little town of maybe 100 or so, with two general stores and two caravan parks.
Marree was formerly the change point at which the fast diesel trains from Adelaide or Port Augusta stopped, and the old narrow-gauge Ghan line to Alice Springs commenced. From here you can visit Lake Eyre, have your photo taken leaning on the 6000km long dog fence, or take a flight to remote Muloorina Station.
There isn’t much else to do, now that the trains don’t stop, except to marvel at the Marree Man.
Gouged out of the red soil
Sometime in June 1998, a figure appeared in the desert near Finnis Springs, just out of Marree on the Oodnadatta Track. Gouged out of red soil on a remote plateau it’s about 4km long and its scale is so vast it has to be appreciated from the air. The figure is of an Aboriginal man holding a throwing stick (used to disperse small flocks of birds). The largest drawing of a human being on earth, it’s five times the size of the lines in Nazca, Peru, and 24 times the size of the English Chalk Hill carvings.
Imaginative Theories
Marree Man is just outside the 200,000 square kilometre Woomera Prohibited Area - the largest secret site in the western world, scene of nuclear and rocket tests, and still a secret base for hundreds of US military personnel. Plenty of people came up with tales of aliens and parallels with Roswell. Others say the locals are responsible, those who stand to gain most in tourism. The most popular theory was a vandalistic act from American service personnel stationed at the nearby American satellite spy base.
But apparently the late Bardius Golberg is the creator of the Marree Man. The eccentric sculptor is responsible for a famous dot painting out at Ipolera, in the Northern Territory and a 40 foot green cross in the Alice.
Golberg is dead, police investigations were dropped and no one particularly cares. It’s all a little boring really, if it’s not a landing ground for interstellar spaceships there are better things to look at.
Is the Marree artistic whodunnit solved?
Marree Man on Google Earth - google sightseeing
The Marree Man is still clearly visible from the air.
Like to shout me a cold beer?
