Publican fights to save huge outback desert etching of the Marree Man

Updated

An outback publican says there may be just months left to preserve the Marree Man, an image bulldozed into the desert sands of South Australia 15 years ago.

Marree publican Phil Turner has met various government department officials to discuss ways to restore the desert artwork which many think is of an Indigenous man hunting with a throwing stick.

Mr Turner said there was plenty of support for the idea of preserving the image for its tourism benefits, but some form of funding needed to be agreed on.

"It's probably about half-a-million dollars, which I think is chicken feed compared to the expected returns over perhaps a three- to five-year period of anywhere from $20-22 million a year," he said.

Mr Turner said the image was no longer apparent from the air, but enough trace remained to restore it.

"It's really no different to someone restoring a masterpiece, a Rembrandt or something like that that's been lost and covered in dust," he said.

"Maybe it's not quite all there, but you can see enough to be able to get the colours right and join all the links and the lines."

The outback area's traditional owners, the Arabunna people, support repairing the image in the sand.

No-one is certain who created it, but many have their theories.

Some say there were clues left that Americans were behind the work, while others credit an Australian artist Bardius Goldberg, who died in 2002.

Topics: art-history, community-and-society, human-interest, offbeat, travel-and-tourism, marree-5733, port-augusta-5700, sa, port-lincoln-5606, port-pirie-5540, adelaide-5000, australia

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