Saturday 27 January 2007

Off to the Back of Beyond


I recently rented a twin engined, 10 seater, Piper light aircraft to fly a group of friends to William Creek (Population, 4), in northern South Australia. On the way up, we flew over the "Marree Man", which is my photo, today.
The Marree Man, is a geoglyph discovered by air in 1988 and depicts an indigenous Australian man, of the Pitjantjatjata tribe, hunting animals with a throwing stick.
Lying 60 km west of Marree, the figure is 4.2 km high with a circumference of 15–28 km. It is the largest known geoglyph in the world and is estimated to have taken between four and eight weeks to create, but despite this, its origins are extremely mysterious, with not a single witness to any part of the massive operation.
The lines of the figure were 20–30 cm in depth at the time of discovery and up to 35 metres in width. It was made with a 2.5 metre wide, eight-tine plough which was attached to a tractor, with the lines needing as many as 14 passes. The tractor would have had to have travelled an estimated 400 km and used up more than 300 litres of fuel.
Check out (and thanks to) Wikipedia: "Marree Man".
The Google Earth Co-ords. are 29 32 11.05 south and 137 28 03,64 east

7 comments:

M.Benaut said...

APOLOGY
Please read

"a man of the PITJANTJATJARA TRIBE"

Ame said...

Niao wohies Mite! And I think I like PitjantjatjaTa better! LOL!

And did you fly that machine yourSELF??!! WOWEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

=)))

PS: Sorry, got all excited there...NEAT SHOT...looks like it was taken back in the '50s or sumpthin! ;)

M.Benaut said...

Crikey charlie, it's nearly 3am Ame and you lot have got me sooo Xited,,, Love ya ozzie accent tho. The easiest way to talk like an Australian is to hold y' nose and talk without breathing. This is what I told my French teacher from Quebec and LO, she sounds just like me. HOWZAT. I took the shot in 2002, and we were all a bit shot at the time, so Steve did all the flapping and pulling the knobs. Because of the reflection of the window glass, I had to muck around a bit with iPhoto, so I hope folks will click and enlarge it on the screen. Try the Wikipedia thing and see the real satellite images. No, I don't have a pilot's licence, but!

Michael Salone said...

That is soooooo cool! Wonder how they ever did that. I did click and enlarge the photo, which makes it even more remarkable!

dive said...

300 litres of fuel, but how many litres of beer, MB?
Michael's right. That is exceedingly cool!

Nikon said...

Hi,
Just wanted to thank you for dropping by my blog - I didn't get to Como, but I did get to Lecco.
I left a message earlier - I hope it doesn't double post.

Cheltenhamdailyphoto said...

God i need a holiday...