Australian Geographic
Adventurers, Explorers and Trail Blazers
Install App?
Australian Geographic
inside.australiangeographic.com.au
This is how the Install App dialog will look like once your App goes live.
Rock (left), here photographed
by Ray Martin (below) from a
helicopter, is part of an ancient
landscape that was once
an inland sea. It straddles
the QLD–NT border
south of Mount Isa.
Man
Rock
an aeroplane window led
respected journalist and
broadcaster Ray Martin
on an exciting
outback adventure.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY
RAY MARTIN
AND KEN DUNCAN
of a commercial flight at 37,000ft ,
en route from Sydney to Darwin.
An entirely natural phenomenon, the
super-sized figure with outstretched
arms and legs is encircled by a vast array
of rock walls, gullies and astonishing
coloured patterns.
I first took his portrait from 37,000ft, through the double-plastic portal of a jetliner. Like the bloke in the American Express ad, I never leave home without my camera.
Flying north these days, I recognise all the familiar aerial signposts: from the long lines of dunes that run south-east to north-west, parallel to the prevailing winds, like welts from the crack of a mighty whip; to the filigree
rivers of the vast Diamantina Channel Country that spill across the floodplain like a wild woman’s knotted, black tresses; then finally the thin slash of a red dirt runway beside the old Roxborough Downs cattle station homestead, which tells me we’re almost overhead.
Suddenly there he is, racing out of the Barkly Tableland towards the Georgina River, exploding out of Northern Territory sunsets into outback Queensland, not far from Boulia and its mysterious Min Min lights.
KEN DUNCAN. THIS PAGE: KEN DUNCAN
It doesn’t take much imagination to see him either. It’s not like lying on the grass looking up at the clouds trying to find the full symphony orchestra or quartet of dancing troubadours that a loved one promises she can see among the lenticular formations of fluffy stuff . Once you’ve spied the mighty Running Man you can’t miss him.
You do, however, need to be at least a few hundred feet above the ground in an airliner, light plane or helicopter to truly appreciate just how awesome he is. But then it’s no secret, of course, that so much of the Australian landscape – from Lake Eyre, and even Uluru, to the Kimberley coast – is best seen from on high.
Along with Running Man there are also two large figure-eight shapes to his left. Chinese tourists are one day likely to flock there to snap that famously lucky number on their smartphones. And, believe it or not, there’s a distinct ‘map of Australia looking up from Running Man’s left foot (minus Tasmania, I’m sorry to report). But that’s only the centrepiece of this giant canvas of patterns, pastels and geological contortions that stretches across the empty landscape
Not one of the Qantas or Virgin pilots who provided me with Running Man Rock’s rough coordinates had ever seen him before. They were as bedazzled as I had been, seeing him in action for the first time from 37,000ft.
Some of these professional flyers boasted to have chalked up endless hours in their early careers steering cargo and small commuter planes through this same colourful, jigsaw-puzzle outback country. But still, they’d never even glimpsed this mighty figure before it was pointed out to them. Mind you, he’s only been out there for a 100 million years or so. ►
THE FLOOD and black soil plains stretch out beyond the filmy horizon, well thatched by Flinders and Mitchell grasses and lightly timbered with mulga and gnarled gidgee trees, which, having one of the hardest woods in the world, make the best firewood.
This can be a raw and unforgiving landscape. Those hapless explorers Burke and Wills trudged all the way from Melbourne with their camels to end their days out here. A generation later, the country was opened up to white pastoralists – mostly shepherds – who had frequent bloody encounters with the Aboriginal people who understandably objected to having their traditional lands invaded and stolen from them. It became a ghostly battlefield that ended badly and tragically for the First Australians… as it always seems to do.
When the sheep herders were driven to disaster – beaten by drought and dingoes – the beef breeders came with their rustlers and hustlers. In fact, the first property that legendary Cattle King Sidney Kidman ever bought in Queensland, Carandotta, was exactly where Running Man Rock marks out its southern border fence. Now adding to this already iconic and colourful tapestry, there is a highly speculative but growing belief that south of here – on the edge of the Simpson Desert – lies the true location of Harold Lasseter’s lost gold reef, an El Dorado of unimaginable riches (see Fabled Fortune, AG 150).
You have to shake your head in wonderment. This vast, empty land has it all. The vistas and beauty are guaranteed to take your breath away. But the isolation, heat and thirst will kill you within hours if you don’t respect it. So will some of the unique fauna – beyond the roos, camels and brumbies.
“Look out for the cigarette snakes,” one local blackfella warned me on the verandah of the Urandangi pub, explaining that it’s a deadly, local sand snake just 1m long.
“Why do you call him the cigarette snake?” I asked.
“Because if he bites you,” came the answer with a well-practised grin, “you’ve only got time to light up one smoke before you cark it.”
I think he was talking about the inland taipan, also called the fierce snake – the world’s deadliest.
Some years ago I showed my Running Man Rock photographs, taken from 11km up in the sky, to Ken Duncan – Australia’s most highly acclaimed landscape photographer.
Always a willing volunteer for the next cockeyed adventure, he quickly put his hand up again, saying, “Count me in, whenever you decide to go!”
I had reminded Ken that it was as recently as 1983 that a German television crew was commissioned by the West Australian government to film a documentary about that state. When they had finished the assignment they told then premier, Ray O’Connor, about a unique rock formation they had ‘discovered’ in the state’s far north-east.
Their discovery eventually became known to the world as the Bungle Bungles, in Purnululu National Park in the east Kimberley, which has since become one of Australia’s most popular national parks. That was less than four decades ago.
Anyone who travels this wide brown land of ours knows that there must be many other remote but exquisite sites, just waiting to be discovered by modern adventurers. Outback tourism – including the growing army of Grey Nomads – is desperate to identify and mark them on the itinerant traveller’s map (once they’re allowed to hit the open road again).
So that was another incentive for Ken Duncan and me to try and find Running Man Rock and photograph him on location. We were both filled with trepidation, wondering whether he would be anywhere near as spectacular on the ground as he was from 37,000ft.
I mentioned this unique Australian rock display to a couple of regional Queensland mates, John Wagner from Toowoomba and Peter ‘Polly’ Lindores, who hails from just outside of Warwick. “Having a go” is in their DNA and both are out ►
KEN DUNCAN; RAY MARTIN; RAY MARTIN. THIS PAGE: RAY MARTIN
livestock out here, and the best campfire fuel anywhere. Our colourful expeditionary team put the wood to good use, with steaks and a sing-song.
Polly, who ran one of Australia’s most successful high-rise crane operations for a couple of decades, knows the inland better than most – especially from a Robertson R44 chopper, which he drives like an airborne Toyota HiLux.
Both men, despite their impossibly busy schedules, need no excuse to “go bush”. And they can now afford to do it in style. Although they don’t need to be asked twice to climb into the cab of a bashed-up semitrailer and crash the gears through an ocean of bulldust and dead-end bush tracks, which we did. They can also fix anything that’s caked in grease, makes a noise and has a starter motor. Or so it seems.
AFTER TALKING FOR a couple of years about a “fly-drive expedition” to find Running Man Rock, it finally happened late last year – just pre-COVID-19. And what an extraordinary, quasi-military operation it turned out to be, strategised by Belinda Williams, Polly’s highly talented partner and a painter.
Making up our full expeditionary force, supplying power and plonk (enough red wine and water to equip a cathedral altar for a year) plus cooking skills, Belinda also drove the convoy out the back of Boulia.
We were quite the human cocktail. There was a wildly successful new and used car dealer from Toowoomba; an unstoppable travel agent from the Gold Coast; a clever guitarist; fishing entrepreneur from Brisbane; an award-winning cinematographer from Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes program named Andy Taylor and my 30-year-old son, Luke.
After first flying into Mount Isa, four of us helicoptered through the afternoon shadows, down the long waterholes that make up the Georgina River. We joined the rest of the team and set up operations out of the abandoned stockmen’s quarters of nearby Linda Downs station. Anxious about what we might find, if anything, Ken and I set out next day to try and locate our elusive Running Man.
Initially, it wasn’t easy. But cleverly tracking along a fence line, which Polly, our unstoppable chopper pilot, had identified in my
original photographs, “Our Man” suddenly snapped into focus. He seemed to be asking, “What took you so long?”
Still, it was a truly spectacular sight in the midst of this starkly beautiful country in the afterglow of a setting sun.
Over the next few days we shot Running Man from every conceivable angle and altitude. We landed on his sandy head and amid the sea of wildflowers on his belly. We marvelled at the expanse of rock walls, thrown out in wave after wave, like terraced rice paddies, climbing 500m up the hillside. Perfectly proportioned, they looked as if an army of highly skilled stonemasons had built them.
Of course, it’s all the creation of just one artisan – Mother Nature herself – which leaves you simply gobsmacked.
I seriously believe that the uncompromising vistas and experience of Running Man Rock could kick-start a real tourist bonanza here in outback Queensland. In the post-COVID era, when Australians won’t be flying overseas en masse for a while, the timing of this new natural feature could be the perfect antidote.
Straddling the Queensland–NT border, Running Man Rock is certainly no more isolated or remote than Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre or the Bungle Bungles, which draw a constant stream of more-adventurous travellers.
Light-plane f lights or helicopter rides from nearby Tobermorey Station and Roadhouse on the Plenty Highway would make Running Man easily accessible for tourists. It’s an absolute no-brainer.
Just make sure you bring your camera.
and our intrepid pilot Pete ‘Polly’ Lindores
found the Robertson R44 chopper the best
way to explore the Running Man Rock site –
flying it like an aerial Toyota HiLux.
helicopter that we also saw a stylised map of Australia,
minus Tassie, at his left foot.
THE LAST GREAT WILDERNESS
Indigenous rangers, scientists, conservationists and pastoralists are working together to ensure the Kimberley remains one of the world’s great wildlife havens.
Ultimate survivor
The short-beaked echidna is found from deserts to mountain peaks; from Tasmania, across the Australian mainland to southern New Guinea. Its unique backwards-pointing feet give it an advantage when digging. Echidnas also use extended claws on the second toes of the hind feet to scratch and groom between the spines.
WALKING WITH FIRE
Linton Burgess performs a traditional dance during patrula, a return of important cultural fire practices to farmland on the midland plains of Tasmania for the first time in 200 years.
Travel with us
It’s one of Earth’s most complex natural systems, home to countless animals. And to the rest of the world it’s one of the most identifiably Australian places. We all know what it is – the Great Barrier Reef (GBR)– and that it’s under pressure. But how can we frame its intricate natural architecture in a new way that inspires people to love it enough to care about its future?
WINTER WONDERLAND
WE WAKE TO A fantasy land. In the pink hues of the early morning, snow gums glisten, frosted in snow; sunlight refracts off crystal-encrusted leaves; and kangaroos puff steamy breaths into the cold air.