CP/AU Cultural Landscape
Autor
Sascha Bauer
Fotos
Sascha Bauer

To assess Coober Pedy’s cultural landscape heritage, it’s inevitably to describe and interpret its marginal environmental setting following the social and economic conditions in a place remote from urban sensibilities. This sparsely populated land, amid blistering arid plains, can best be described with a hint of human behaviour and sentimentality.

 

Coming close to Coober Pedy a variety of earth-like piles and riddled holes stretch along the highway. At first these piles are infrequent occurrences in a vast, mainly flat and harsh tableland. But then these heaves devour your attention after an absent-minded drive through the middle of nowhere. You instantly get distracted by these alien-like things, still able to manage your driving ability but prospecting for a further piece of information. Meanwhile, counting the piles is more and more pointless after it seems as if there are millions.

 

As most shafts are worked privately by a handful of men, technological advantages were evolved gradually over time and made it necessary to control former disorganised mining. This human interaction with a unique landscape results in mounds of overburden everywhere and turned this part of the Australian outback into a cultural landscape.

 

This short essay describes the mechanical improvement and it´s heavy impact on the landscapes, thus turning it into a unique cultural landscape. Emblematic to the technical skill and inventiveness of local miners is the particular equipment, hand-built machinery and unique mining methods which respond to the landscape by earthwork and the passing of time. Also, this ´lifestyle of hope´ and courage created forging narratives and free spirits culturally distinct from other places, enforcing its authenticity and a deep attachment to this place.