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Palmer Sculptural / Environmental Landscape, South Australia
Palmer, rainshadow country in the Adelaide hills is a fragile landscape reminiscent of the Flinders Ranges. This is not the "pristine" country of the Fleurea Peninsula. It is tougher, but beautiful in a sense that much of Australia is; where life and death are close neighbours. Somehow this formula produces dramatic landscapes. To sit on the Southern rock escarpment and see the Murray in the distance and perhaps Lake Alexandria / The Coorong in the far distance is a moving experience. This is big sky country too, where you can see forever.
How wonderful! Who would want a fake Tuscan facade in the suburbs? This is also land on the edge, the last of the Adelaide hills before the country drops away to the Murray Flats. It is a landscape largely treeless at present, the Sheoks removed by the incoming European culture of the 19th Century to power the local gold and copper mines of the 19th and 20th Centuries, the paddle steamers on the Murray and home fires. Bare bone country where large standing stones throw out a challenge across the waters to Stonehenge. But these are stones of the landscape not placed / arranged by humans - an important difference.
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