Marree Man Update [3 msgs]
From: campbell@ufomind.com (Glenn Campbell, Las Vegas)
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1998 09:35:04 -0800
|
A news article and 2 replies from our readers.
Responding to: http://www.ufomind.com/misc/1998/aug/d07-001.shtml
And: http://www.ufomind.com/misc/1998/aug/d10-001.shtml
----- 3 forwarded messages follow. Reformatted by moderator -----
From: authority@webtv.net (Doc Barry)
Subject: Mystery Australian Desert Drawing Update
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1998 14:01:43 -0400 (EDT)
Thanks to Clifford M. Dubery <duberycm@ocean.com.au> for sending this
update on "Marree Man",
To view a photo taken from the air of the 2 and one-half mile long
drawing go to:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/5518/abman400.html
==== WHODUNIT? ====
The Mystery of Marree man.
by Roy Eccleston.
The Weekend Australian 5 September 1998
ARTIST Christopher Headley should not have been too surprised when the
local policeman from Marree, 600km north of Adelaide, rang to quiz him
about the discovery of a 4km-tall depiction of an Aboriginal hunter
ploughed into a local plateau.
Not to put too fine a point on it, the constable wanted to know if
Headley was the culprit ... er, artist responsible.
Not me, the quietly spoken Headley, 47, told the officer, who was acting
on information received. Information such as a letter the artist had
sent to officials at Woomera, also in the State's north, proposing a
large drawing on the ground there. Small wonder, then, that Headley
became a suspect. After all, how many people go around making enormous
pictures in the landscape? Well, none that Headley can think of in this
country --and he should know because he's researching the subject as
part of a PhD through Monash University.
So far, Headley has drawn camels-on-wheels on to a saltpan near
Mildura,.a Meccano boy cyclist on to a former industrial site in Port
Adelaide and three dolphins on another disused site beside the Port
River. All can be properly viewed only from the air -- so he pays an
aerial photographer to record them.
But, says the ceramicist who was turned on to giant art after viewing
the ancient Nazca lines in Peru, Marree Man wasn't his style.
"It looks like a one-off thing, a hit-and-run job," he says. "To me art
is about making serious comment... a statement about the human
condition."
And he doesn't understand what the image represents, apart from possibly
an old photograph.
Besides, says the man who keeps a 14kg ball of string in his studio to
mark out his works, it wasn't his scale. "I've been describing my work
as large drawings," he says of his creations, none of which have
measured more than 300m across. "Now I've got to call them medium size."
The Marree Man is certainly big, 28km in circumference and ploughed into
the plateau with the aid, surveyors suggest, of a satellite-linked
global positioning system.
Equally big has been the stink that followed his appearance in July.
Anatomically accurate maybe, Marree Man was anything but politically
correct.
"Crass graffiti," cried the critics of the depiction of a hunter about
to throw a stick-like object held, curiously enough, in his left hand.
"Environmental vandalism." "Culturally insensitive."
Maybe it's all those things, but it's something else as well: a big
puzzle.
Why would anyone bother? Among the most famous of enigmatic landmarks
are the Nazca lines in Peru, thought to have been created on a rainless
plain sometime between the first and eighth centuries AD. Covering about
500sqkm, the enigmatic lines and designs were produced by removing red
gravel to reveal yellow-white stones underneath.
There are swirls, zigzags, straight lines going nowhere and huge
representations of animals and plants including a 120m-long bird and a
50m spider.
Some claim this all is aligned somehow with the movement of the heavens.
More famously, Erich Von Daniken's late-1960s book Chariots of the Gods?
likened the Nazca lines to landing markings at an airport.
Even older are the chalk drawings in England -- the White Horse at
Uffing-ton, the Long Man at Wilmington and the sensational Cerne Giant
who, at 55m tall, is a midget next to Marree Man. At least, the Cerne
Giant, in Dorset, is supposed to be ancient -- although underlining the
ability of these works to inspire debate, some claim he's a baby at just
300 years old.
In fact, an entire book was written just last year on the argument, with
author Rodney Castleden concluding the giant was a pre-Roman warrior
drawn into the chalk hillside between 500BC and 100BC. Wielding a wicked
club, the giant is most famous for his 7m erect penis, which Castleden
reckons equates to a sizeable 23cm on a normal man.
As no one knows why the giant was put there in the first place, it
hasn't been clear why he needed such a large appendage. That hasn't
stopped childless couples trying their luck on that 7m patch of grus.
One local artist was so moved by the giant's excitement he thought he
needed a partner, and proposed an outline of Marilyn Monroe, skirt
blowing around her hips, on a hill opposite. That was rejected by local
authorities.
Castleden argues everyone's got it wrong, the giant's not over-endowed
or randy. His erection, he says, is the equivalent of a single-fingered
salute to his enemies. And the generous length? The giant was merely
given an extension 100 years back when Victorians cutting back the grass
that grows over the chalk mistakenly mistook his belly button for the
tip of his penis.
Marree Man may not last as long as these examples but, in the short
term, he's providing just as much intrigue.
Whodunit? Everyone's got a theory and, as Hercule Poirot might see it,
quite a few might also have a motive. There are the locals, of course,
who stand to gain most in tourism. For example, this newspaper reported
last month that the local hotel had been put up for sale and the airline
operating joy flights had ordered a new plane.
But the town of 80 says it knew nothing of the work -- until the pub
received an anonymous fax in early July announcing a giant image on
Crown land on a plateau at Finnis Springs. When a small posse, including
the local constable, arrived at the site, they apparently found a
satellite photograph of the man, a US flag and a note … mentioning the
Branch Davidian cult.
It wasn't long before the mystery was picked up by the media, and the
finger-pointing started. Western Mining Corporation, with its Roxby
Downs mine a few hundred kilometres away, got a call from Reg Dodd, one
of the Aboriginal leaders from the Maxtee area, asking whether its
workers were responsible.
WMC's Richard Yeeles says he looked at whether employees or contractors
could have done it, "and there is no possibility anyone associated with
WMC did this".
Then there were reports of Australian army vehicles moving through the
area. It turned out 17 Construction Group had been working with
Aborigines on pro-j jects in the west of the State, but "it wasn't us",
says the army. "I spoke to the commanding officer of Land Command in
Sydney," says Defence PR's spokesman in Canberra. "The thing was, the
closest they ever went [to the site] was at least 200km."
The attention on the military is understandable. Aerial photography
would have been needed to pick out a suitable site, as well as some
surveying expertise to plot an outline over such a large distance. It
would be relatively easy to transfer a photograph on to a computer, blow
it up to a size that fitted the plateau, and then map in co-ordinates of
latitude and 1ongtitude.
Using a hand-held global positioning system, each co-ordinate could then
be marked on the site with a stake every hundred metres or so, says
Adelaide surveyor Shayne Hennig. "From a surveying point of view, it's
not very difficult," he says. "You have to lean towards the army, they
would have all that kind of stuff."
Other clues come from the language of the anonymous press releases,
which have a military and foreign tone. The first one, calling the
outline "Stuart's Giant" after the explorer John McDouall Stuart,
proclaimed it the world's largest work of art, 50 times bigger than any
other human form.
Using miles, yards and inches, the writer wrote of "your State of SA",
the "Queensland Barrier Reef" and talked of Aborigines "from the local
reservations". In another release, the writer referred to the time
Stuart crossed the plateau at "0:7:30 hours". Another referred to the
previous largest work of art being the Great Serpent in Ohio, a
snakelike mound made by Indians and not widely known about outside art
circles or the US. The police don't think it's the Americans, though.
Detective Sergeant Des Bray from Port Augusta CIB says: "I don't think
there's any doubt at all, the Americans have got nothing to do with it.
Why would they?"
So, perhaps all the imperial measures and stuff about reservations was a
red herring. After all, which Americans would be able to do it? And
where would they 'get the idea?
Headley has his own theory on that. He sent two letters to Woomera
earlier year, one to the Australian area administrator and another to
Colonel Tom Meade, head of the US Air Force contingent at the joint
defence facility at Nurrungar, due to pull out at the end of next year.
The Woomera idea, he says, was inscribe a toy spaceman in his ship
launched from an anvil. Maybe, he suggested to Meade, the work could be
as a commemoration of the American time in Australia and could even made
permanent.
But, although the area manager suggested Headley visit the area, the
letter to Meade went unanswered (although several unsuccessful attempts
were made to tell HeadIy "no thanks" by phone).
Headley says he told the Marree Police of the letter to the Americans.
"Perhaps it triggered someone's lmagination," he thinks. "You know:
'This is a good idea and we can do it ourselves.'"
It does seem a bit of a coincidence. One of the few people anywhere
creating giant art suggests the idea to the US military and soon after a
giant drawing appears as a "gift" to South Australian tourism, announced
by faxed material full of Americanisms. Hmmm.
So did the letter get into someone else's hands at Nurrungar and give
them an idea?
"I can answer that," says the Joint-commander of the base, Wing
Commander Jim Walker of the RAAF. "Anything's possible."
But, he adds, it's highly unlikely. He and Meade have made some
inquiries about whether their men could have been involved. They don't
think they were. In any case, the police haven't approached the base on
the matter.
"I haven't conducted a formal investigation," says Walker, adding that
there is no grading equipment at the base. "Our people think it's a bit
of a joke, just like the rest of Australia."
Not everybody. The local Aborigines may be split into two groups
contesting local land ownership, including the Marree Man site, but they
have both condemned it. The South Australian Government also has warned
people to stay away from the plateau and says it won't allow the outline
to become more permanent by digging to a layer of chalky material
underneath. (Instead, the image is likely to be outlined with plant
life, thanks to the use of a plough to mark it.)
Certainly Dr Philip Jones is not laughing. The head of anthropology at
the South Australian Museum says the outline is vandalism, without
doubt, and he strongly suspects the hand of foreigners.
"If these characters [who did it] are Americans and they've taken it
upon themselves to improve the Australian landscape in that way, I think
it does amount to vandalism," he says. "And people rightly ought to be
concerned about it, particularly when it involves an appropriation of
Aboriginal imagery."
Like HeadIy, Jones believes the perpetrators have used an old photograph
and reversed it to make it fit on to the plateau. Hence the man is
throwing something with his left hand, but what is it?
According to a "clarification" faxed to media from those who did it, the
giant is a hunter with not a club, as some have reported, but a
throwing-stick, a weapon "carried at all times" and used to bring down
birds.
Jones says this is more evidence that those responsible didn't really
understand Aboriginal culture. The stick is, he says, a boomerang, as is
made clear from the stance. But because of the angle, the boomerang's
curve is hidden and so it has been mistaken for a stick. If it really
were a throwing-stick as in a spear-thrower, a woomera (a clue, Monsieur
Poirot?) it would have been held at a different angle and have a spear
attached.
"Getting around with a throwing stick and pretending you can be a hunter
is a bit like going around with the stock of a gun without a barrel,"
scoffs Jones.
As well, the giant is depicted nude while he almost certainly would have
had a loin cloth draped over him for the purpose of the 19th-century
photograph. "To" my mind, that feature [the genitals] has not only been
drawn in but probably exaggerated as well."
All of which might seem like, harmless fun. Not to Jones. "I do think
it's harmful. It creates a precedent to interfere with what's a pretty
fragile environment." As well, it's another example of White People
looking at the land and thinking it's empty and belongs to no one, when
it has deep meaning to the Aborigines.
Even the name given by those responsible- Stuart's Giant -- was a case
of not being able to find meaning in the landscape beyond that of a
European explorer who happened to cross it.
"It's a bit pathetic the way that people have fallen over themselves to
see this as a tourist attraction, when really the country is far more
interesting without it," says Jones.
Marree Man has his supporters, though, and they're not just the postcard
and T-shirt makers, or tourist operators such as Oscar's Outback Tours,
which has anointed the drawing an artistic "masterpiece" and the "eighth
wonder of the world". Kym Bonython, prominent Adelaide art promoter and
gallery owner for three decades, reckons it's marvellous, and it's art.
"It will become like Ayers Rock. It's well done, not disrespectful in
any way to Aboriginal people and a remarkably well-made piece of art."
Others beg to differ. To be sure, there was an art movement in the late
1960s and early 70s called earth works, or land art, in which artists
forsook the galleries and "precious objects" and used the land as their
raw material. This was often only seen by the public in photographs.
One of the best known examples is Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty in the
Great Salt Lake in Utah, where tonnes of rock and earth formed a
swirling shape on (now under) the water. Dutchman Dennis Oppenheim once
cut a great cross in a field of wheat he'd grown and called that
art. Christo, the great wrapper of landscape and landmarks, including
Sydney's Little Bay in 1969, is from this school.
But one of Australia's foremost practitioners, Ken Unsworth, sees little
if any merit in Marree Man. After hearing a description of it, he says
it appears to be a great insensitivity to the site and the Aborigines.
"It still surprises me today that anybody, let alone artists, would
still be guilty of crass ignorance or disregard for Aboriginal
sensitivities," he says.
The Art Gallery of NSW is showing a retrospective of Unsworth later this
year. Its contemporary art curator, Victoria Lynn, won't rule out Marree
Man as art because she says that much depends on the context. Yes, it
might be offensive, brutal, unwanted, but that doesn't mean it's not
art, "if it's done by an artist in a particular context", she says.
"I think the context is very important and as we don't know who did it
and what the intentions are, it's very difficult to know whether one can
understand it as art or vandalism."
Whatever it is, it remains a mystery. The police are no longer
investigating and no one looks like owning up. That makes everyone's
theories equally valid.
Those responsible had the last word in another press release late last
month. Urging the Olsen Government to allow Aboriginal groups to charge
an access fee to the site, they vowed to remain anonymous but clearly
believed they had created something artistic. "Finally, our view is
summarised as follows," ended the untraceable fax. "In Stuart's Giant,
half the art is mystery and so, enduring, let it be."
"UFO Interest" news updated TWICE daily
"What's Up Doc?"
www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/5518/
=======================================================================
From: Dennis Lapcewich <Dennis.Lapcewich@unisa.edu.au>
Subject: Update to Australia's Maree Man
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1998 00:08:08 -0400 (EDT)
The Weekend Australian this past weekend ran a cover story in its Review
section investigating the "Maree Man" and provided updated information.
The current theory, according to the article, is the image was created by
American service personnel from the nearby American satellite spy base,
scheduled to close down at the end of the century. The motive is still not
clear, whether it is a "polite" thank you or an flying finger salute to
their Australian landlords.
The Australian Defence Forces (ADF) have apparently completed their
investigation and deny any involvement. ADF reports the closest their
personnel were to the image during its creation was 200 kms. The South
Australian Police closed any investigation very early as they found no
evidence that a crime was committed, however, access to the site by
onlookers is still prohibited by the SA Government. Joy flights are still
allowed over the site since the state government has no jurisdiction and
the commonwealth government has more important things to concern itself.
Suspicion still falls to the local white inhabitants, as GPS knowledge and
technology is used by them, especially for prospecting. There is still
great anger and ill feelings from the black (Aboriginal) communities.
There is also no inclination to deepen the markings and remove the topsoil
and expose the white chalk underneath, thus providing a clearer image.
Instead, with the abatement of the El Nino effect and recent heavy rains,
the brown earth markings may turn green with vegetation.
A recent unsigned fax sent to local authorities by the creators reveals no
further information or clues will be forthcoming. Apparently the creators
have no desire to tip their hand, but continue on with the mystery.
A letter to the editor to Tuesday's "The Australian" newspaper attributes
the image likeness to Poseidon from an old text book. I don't have the
letter attribution at hand for anyone to verify, but if there is a need, I
will find it.
Finally, the most imaginative interpretation making the rounds in Australia
is the image is that of Pat Rafter as he defends his US Open title this
month. If the image has any truth to it, I'm sure the ladies will flock to
the US Open, and not to watch tennis!
Regards,
Your Yankee Correspondent in the LDU (Land Down Under)
DL
=========================================================================
From: "Ian Parker" <ianparker@mailcity.com>
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1998 00:13:46 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Marree Man
Re: http://www.ufomind.com/misc/1998/aug/d10-001.shtml
Despite what Dennis Lapcewich has to say, there's definitely something
mighty weird going on with the Marree Man. Of course it's only just outside
the 200,000 sq km Woomera Prohibited Area - the largest secret site in the
western world, scene of nuclear and rocket tests, and still a secret base
for hundreds of US military personnel. And now the government has extended
the forbidden zone to cover the whole plateau where the carving is, even
though the ground is supposed to be Crown (Public) Land with free public
access. This is absolutely unprecedented. And why would they do it if, as
has been reported, the figure is so good for tourism? It makes no sense.
Also, at almost exactly the same time as the government announced the
extension of the no-go zone, the police suddenly announced they were
ceasing investigations, after earlier announcing they were "closing in on
the creators" and that they were "following strong clues" (eg.
ufomind.com/ufo/updates/1998/jul/m20-011.shtml). What did they find up on
the plateau? Why did they suddenly call it off?
One thing's for sure anyway, the Marree Man's not going away in a hurry,
contrary to some reports. Apparently he's survived recent heavy rain, in an
area of normally very low rainfall, with flying colours. He's marked in the
surface something like the Nazca lines and he's likely to be around at
least for decades. Ordinary vehicle tracks hang around that long out there.
But why aren't we supposed to see it or visit it? There is still talk of
even banning flights over the area (ABC Radio 25/8/98) as well as the ban
on ground access. The Government's whole effort seems to be to play it
down, not publicize it, not take advantage of the tourist interest. Why
would they do that?
Ian Parker
----- End forwarded messages -----
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RELEVANCE OF THIS MESSAGE: Response to previous
Index: Marree Man (#9)
Created: Sep 9, 1998
