THE OODNADATTA TRACK

This highly textured but simple painting is of a seemingly simple subject - the amazing Gibber Desert near Oodnadatta in Northern South Australia. Gibber deserts here are absolutely flat. Really flat. So flat and devoid of large features that you can see a perfectly flat horizon whichever way you look.

It's not flat though, because it is strewn with small stones that have been worn - to very similar sizes by the elements, and which amazingly just sit on top of the hard flat earth. It seems that there's not much variety in these stones, but to the close-up observer, there actually is.

This desert is particularly spectacular in the late afternoon towards sunset; the sun being low in the sky casts long shadows of the little stones. A stone only 5 centimeters in diameter, can cast a shadow 50 metres long! That's unusual because the earth is rarely flat enough for shadows to continue on so far completely uninterrupted. I have done other paintings showing the stripey effect of these dark shadows on the red earth.

This painting though, just shows the red earth Oodnadatta Track, recently graded. In case you're not familiar with it, Grading is a process where a tractor like machine with a wide heavy blade, scrapes across the land to smooth it out and remove rocks and debris, and usually to make it driveable. The red graded road contrasts nicely with the almost monotone sea of stones that surrounds it. And of course, it's all very, very flat :)