Marree

A small community at the junction of the infamous Oodnadatta Track and the Birdsville Track. It is the centre for an area which, though arid saltbush country, has produced good wool. Marree mainly serves tourists and station owners. At the heart of the town is a defunct railway station with two derelict Ghan trains waiting patiently. These bullish old locos are the colour of dried blood and have an inverted chevron on the nose. One has a sign: "FOR SALE".

Where is it?: Outback South Australia. 645 km north of Adelaide; 106 km north of Leigh Creek.




Like much of inland Australia, Marree has a very hot and dry climate in a desert environment. Temperatures above 40 ��C have been recorded in every month between October and April and rainfall is extremely erratic, falling mostly in brief heavy downpours experienced 1-5 times per year, or when cold fronts in winter manage to penetrate far north enough into the Tirari Desert.

Natural features: Lake Eyre National Park; Elliot Price Conservation Park (Lake Eyre); Frome Creek; Strzelecki Desert; Lakes Palankarinna, Pitikanta and Ngapakaldi (100 km north)

Heritage features: Tom Kruse's famous Royal Mail Truck (Museum Park); Central Australian Railways' Ghan locomotives and railway artifacts; Callana Aboriginal rock engravings site (17 km south-west); Wanglanna station ruins

Lake Eyre

Lake Eyre

Famous for being the saltiest lake in Australia, Lake Eyre only fills up once or twice every century. The lake itself, at 15 metres below sea level, is Australia's lowest point. It is also the fifth largest (9,690 square kilometres) terminal lake in the world although it usually contains little or no water. The highest recorded level in Lake Eyre was in 1974 but it would take the average flow of Australia's largest river, the Murray to maintain that level. The Danube River would fill Lake Eyre to the 1974 level in forty-five days; the Mississippi in twenty-two days, and the Amazon in three days.

Summer shade temperatures on Lake Eyre regularly reach the fifty degrees Celsius range while a reading of 61 degrees has been reported. The Lake is situated in the most arid part of Australia with a mean annual rainfall of less than 125 mm and an annual evaporation rate of 2.5 metres.

The Lake Eyre Basin covers one sixth of the Australian continent and holds some of the rarest, least exploited ecosystems on the planet. The Basin is the world's largest internal drainage system. It covers approximately 1.2 million square kilometres of arid and semi arid Central Australia. This is about one-sixth of the continent or the same size as the Murray Darling system or about twice the size of the US state of Texas. It is considered to be one of the world's last unregulated, wild river systems. Unlike other river systems, flows in the Basin are highly variable and unpredictable.

All the rivers and creeks are ephemeral with short periods of flow following rain and extended periods of no flow. The volume of flow decreases downstream reflecting increasing aridity towards Lake Eyre and the huge dispersal system of braided channels, floodplains, waterholes and wetlands on the way. The many large permanent waterholes in the system provide vital habitat for wildlife and are important to towns, communities and pastoral holdings.

The Basin is part of Australia's arid zone and the ecosystems it supports are varied and often unique. Land use within the Basin is equally varied, and includes (but is not limited to) pastoralism, mining, tourism, oil and gas exploration and production, conservation and Aboriginal activities. The area is culturally significant and contains a wealth of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal history.

The surface of the lake has an eerie appearance. Because the lake is so clam, it is reflecting am image of the sky and clouds, but this image is coloured by the pink tinge of the algae that lives in the briny waters. The lake contains a series of island and bays. The islands in the lake can contain nesting colonies for birds when the lake holds water as the birds feed on the crustaceans and small fish which inhabit the lake.

British adventurer and speed record chaser Donald Campbell attempted the World Land Speed Record in his car, The Bluebird, on this lake back in the 1960s when the lake was dry. On 17th July 1964, Campbell set a record of 403.10 mph (648.73 km/h) for a four-wheeled vehicle. Campbell was disappointed with the record as the vehicle had been designed for much higher speeds. CN7 covered the final third of the measured mile at an average of 429 mph (690 km/h), peaking as it left the measured distance at over 440 mph (710 km/h).


The Marree Man

In the 1970s, the old Ghan line was moved 200 kilometres west. Railwaymen and their families moved out, and people with things to do other than marshal locos or muster cattle moved in. One of them was Bardius Goldberg, an itinerant artist. In the mid-90s, it is widely believed he used a tractor and plough to carve a four-kilometre figure on top of a remote plateau. Working alone and at a modest elevation, Goldberg's ploughing went unnoticed as he formed a beautifully proportioned figure of an Aboriginal man. His work was happened upon by a pilot in 1998, some years after its creation and there was much speculation as to who was behind it. Aliens and US intelligence were among those named.

"Marree Man was said to be the world's largest piece of art," says publican Phil Turner. "It's certainly the world's largest geoglyph. It was made back before everyone had GPSs so people were amazed it could be done so precisely. I suppose that's where all the talk of aliens came from." Calls were made to turn it into a state icon but the unimpressed local population preferred to let it fade naturally back into the landscape.


Not far from the Marree Man canvas is the Mutoid Waste Company's post-apocalyptic sculpture park. "Park" is perhaps over-egging what's basically a few aces of scrub, but it's famous for "Plane Henge", two Cessnas standing Christ-like on their tails touching wingtip to wingtip. They are best viewed and photographed from the Oodnadatta Track. The display panel says: "Conceived and raised by Mutoid Waste Company to mark the passage of the Earth Dream Journey 28 May 2000". The fuselages are painted with quasi-indigenous earth spirits and look quite serene against the acid blue of the sky. Galahs have nested in the nose of one of the aircraft.

Mechanic Robin "Mutoid" Cooke has added a new sculpture to his park each year, transforming materials that would not rot away and today. Thse include giants fashioned from steel rails, engine blocks, a steel tree of knowledge and a xylophone fashioned from hub caps that invites travellers to make desert music.


Origin of name: of Aboriginal origin, meaning 'place of possums'. A water soak near the town was called Hergott Springs by explorer John McDouall Stuart, when he passed through here on his first expedition in 1859. The name honoured the Bavarian artist and naturalist in his party, Joseph Albert Franz David Herrgott. Somewhere along the way a letter 'r' was dropped from the name. Though the town was officially named Marree, the residents referred to it as Hergott and it was not until 1918 that the Hergott Springs sign at the railway station was replaced with Marree in the wake of anti-German sentiments stirred up by World War I.

Brief history: The first European to explore the area was Edward John Eyre, who passed through in 1840. In 1859, explorer John McDouall Stuart visited the area, and his German botanist Herrgott discovered the springs which Stuart named after him. Initially the area was known as Herrgott (or Hergott) Springs but when the town was surveyed in 1883 4 km South of the springs in preparation for the coming of the railway it was given the name Marree. The settlement grew in the late 19th century as a depot for Afghan camel drivers who brought supplies to the many stations and outback communities on the Oodnadatta and Birdsville Tracks. It came into existence as the main depot for working parties on the Overland telegraph line from Adelaide to Darwin between 1871 and 1883.

The Central Australia Railway reached the town in 1883, and the town became a major railhead for the cattle industry. The railway then continued north from the town to Alice Springs (completed in 1929). This was the route of the passenger train known as The Ghan. In 1957, the line south of Marree was rebuilt as standard gauge on a flatter alignment to support moving coal from Leigh Creek to Port Augusta. This made Marree a break-of-gauge on the Ghan as the remainder was still narrow gauge. In 1980 the narrow gauge line from Marree to Alice Springs closed when a new standard gauge line opened from Tarcoola to Alice Springs along a less flood-prone route. In 1986 the standard gauge line from Leigh Creek coalfields to Marree was closed and the town lost its railway connection completely. Today, Marree has around 60 permenant residents.

The town was the home of the legendary Tom Kruse, one of the men who drove the mail trucks from Marree to Birdsville in Queensland, a distance of some 700 kilometres. This route crosses some of the most challenging sandy and stony desert country in Australia, and it was a remarkable feat for fully loaded trucks to make the run at all.

Marree was home to Australia's first mosque, which was made of mud brick and built by the Afghan cameleers employed at Marree's inception. At one time the town was divided in two, with Europeans on one side and Afghans and Aborigines on the other.

Content © 2016 Australia For Everyone | Email us