Marree Man refuses to divulge his secret

Dick Smith is offering $5000 for information on the origin of the South Australian desert creation.

Marree Man as seen on April 12, 2017.

Exactly 20 years after the giant Marree Man desert design was first spotted in South Australia, adventurer and entrepreneur Dick Smith is offering a $5000 ­reward for any evidence on who conceived and executed the mysterious 4km-long artwork.

Carved into the desert in the remote north of South Australia, and first seen by a pilot on June 26, 1998, Marree Man is world-­famous. Mr Smith and his team have spent two years investigating the origins of the artwork, one of the largest of its kind in the world.

He expected to discover quickly who did it and why. The district, after all, is sparsely populated — only about 150 people live in the town of Marree — and he thought the locals must have some ideas about who would have and could have done it.

“But now, after over two years of very thorough research, I have no evidence whatsoever who did it,” Mr Smith said, adding his ­investigations would continue into the anonymous Marree Man creators, who have kept the secret for two decades.

Well-composed faxes with US spelling and references first alerted journalists and the town’s residents to the existence of Marree Man. One provocative clue, of a plaque bearing the images of the US flag and the Olympic rings, was found buried on the site of the enormous design, an isolated red-dirt plateau 65km northwest of Marree in the state’s upper north.

Another was found in Britain. Mr Smith said he was astonished that so much remained unknown about Marree Man. It seemed unlikely that all the creators had died, he said.

“They’re heroes. I think they’re fantastic,” he said.

“This has been kept a secret for 20 years. The faxes that mysteriously appeared, and the letters sent to one of the News Limited journalists in Adelaide, they’ve been written by an intellectual, a university type.

“It’s highly complex and one of the most mysterious things. It’s obviously been done by a group; it must have taken months of ­organisation. And then everything has been incredibly professionally executed.”

The US spelling in the faxes, he said, was probably a red herring, and he would keep digging in the hope of finally uncovering the origins of Marree Man.