Coober Pedy Trip
July 07
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Turning base and short final for Birdsville strip.
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Hans crossing the Simpson Desert
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Following the 'French Line', across the Simpson Desert. It's an old seismic line laid down by a French oil exploration company in 1963. Used these days by 4WDs as a gruelling adventure trip crossing 1200 sand dunes.
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Bill following the French Line. That's a good 'high-clearance' off-road vehicle!
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Opal diggings at Coober Pedy. Looks like the work of big gophers!
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Coober Pedy in pastels.
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Coober Peddy suburbia. Those houses are all dug back underground into that low hill. It makes for cool living in a very hot climate. The name Coober Pedy supposedly means "white man in a hole", in an Aboriginal language - very appropriate....
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Lake Eyre, a large salt 'lake', below sea level, seldom any water.
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'Marree Man', a large artwork (4.2km, 2.6mi long) with a mysterious history, 'drawn' with a tractor and plow by unkown persons in 1998. See http://www.ga.gov.au/acres/gallery/marree.jsp.
Now an article in the Weekend Australian, July 12-13 2008, by Mark Whittaker, may have the answer! In that article Whittaker discovers contacts in Alice Springs and South Australia who knew a wild artist by the name of Bardius Goldberg, who had drawn an identical figure in the sand many years ago,and expressed a wish to create a drawing that could be seen from space. The article goes on with lots of fine detail about funding received, and even free diesel and the loan of a GPS provided. It turns out that Goldberg had also bought a property on Kangaroo Island with the intention of planting eucalyptus trees in the shape of a giant kangaroo. Sure sounds like a similar idea..... Unfortunately, in 2002 Goldberg got into a pub fight that dislodged a tooth, and he died of septicaemia as a result..... There's enough detail in that article to convince me that Bardius was the one who made his mark on the Earth, well done!
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Parked outside the Drover's Rest Caravan Park and Camp Ground, Marree, South Australia.
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Lessons in synclines and anticlines, Flinder Ranges, South Australia.
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Flinders Ranges after recent rain.
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More Flinder Ranges
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Mt. Hopeless airstrip.
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On final for my home field at Kilcoy, SE Queensland. Just before the storm......