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Tag: South Australia

“Outback Art” #2 (#21 in SA/NT “outback” single image teaser series)

 

 

“Plane Henge” is the signature “permanent exhibit” in what at least one writer has described as “the world’s largest art gallery”.

Mutonia Sculpture Park sits beside the Oodnadatta Track, less than one hour’s drive west from Marree.

If you were overhead, in a functional aircraft, Lake Eyre South would also be within your field of view.

The “park” includes the ruins of the Alberrie Creek Siding, on what once was “The Ghan” railway line.

Arguably, Mutonia strains to near or beyond breaking point any reasonable definition of “art gallery” or “park”.

Inarguably, its sheer unlikeliness leaves a lasting impression on most visitors.

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“The Breakaways” (#14 in SA/NT “outback” single image teaser series)

 

Generally known simply as “The Breakaways”, Kanku-Breakaways Conservation Park is an “unearthly” and beautiful place.

Nearly 900 kilometres north of Adelaide, it is also very “remote”.

From Coober Pedy, however, it is less than a 30 minute drive.

You probably have not visited this part of the South Australian outback.

Nonetheless, it may look “strangely familiar”…

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Coober Pedy, boasting (#13 in SA/NT “outback” single image teaser series)

 

Its boastful sign notwithstanding, Coober Pedy is definitely not a city.

846 ks north of Adelaide, Coober Pedy has fewer than 2,000 “permanent” residents, and the local housing market is decidedly “depressed”.

The town’s self-declared status as “opal capital of the world” is, however, defensible.

Reportedly, its name derives from kupa piti – a phrase coined by the local Aboriginal people whose ancestors arrived in South Australia’s outback more than a few thousand years before kupa piti described any of it.

Kupa piti translates as “whitefellas’ hole”.

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Parachilna Gorge (#9 in SA/NT “outback” single image teaser series)

 

 

The immediately-preceding post’s aptly-named Prairie Hotel sits on an almost horizontal plain.

Look out the pub’s back door, however, and you will see – running all along the horizon – the “spine” of the northern Flinders Ranges.

They were “built” circa 800 million years before the pub was.

Hop into a vehicle, drive east for ten minutes, and you will enter one of the loveliest of the Flinders Ranges’ many dramatic gorges.

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“Outback Art” #1 (#8 in SA/NT “outback” single image teaser series)

 

 

The pictured art object sits outside the front door of The Prairie Hotel, which is surely Australia’s most wonderfully-unlikely – and downright wonderful – outback pub

Be sure to read the “artist’s statement”.

The hotel pretty much is the hamlet of Parachilna, which a colourful signboard proclaims THE EDIACARA CAPITAL OF THE WORLD, where fossils rock!

That declaration is no idle boast.

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“The Painted Desert” (#7 in SA/NT “outback” single image teaser series)

 

 

The Arckaringa Hills – widely known as “the painted desert” – are conveniently near to the roadhouse in this series’ previous episode….and likewise far distant from any city.

They are very good badlands.

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Cadney Roadhouse (#6 in SA/NT “outback” single image teaser series)

 

The Cadney Homestead Roadhouse is a bona fide “remote” location.

It sits on the Stuart Highway in South Australia’s far north, nearly 1,000 kilometres north of Adelaide, a little more than 150 ks north of Coober Pedy, and 534 ks south of Alice Springs.

The Painted Desert is conveniently nearby.

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Big softie, empty tank (#4 in SA/NT “outback” single image teaser series + musical bonus)

 

 

The Curdimurka rail siding – near Lake Eyre South in the SA outback – saw its first train in 1888.

The last one went through in 1980, nearly three decades after the pictured water tank and gigantic water softener lost their raison d’être, when diesel electrics replaced steam locomotives in 1951.

This “big softie” was erected in 1943-44, so its working life was very brief.

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Ochre cliffs, near Lyndhurst (#2 in SA/NT “outback” single image teaser series)

 

Some of Australia’s mines are many thousands of years older than most Australians realise…and enormously more colourful.

A spectacular and easily-accessed example sits in desert, circa 600 kilometres north of Adelaide, just outside a quasi-“ghost” town.

A formerly-important “railway town”, Lyndhurst saw its last train in 1980, but is still the crossroads for the Oodnadatta and Strzelecki Tracks

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