Ediacara - Geologist and founder of Arkaroola Sanctuary, Reg Sprigg, discovered fossil imprints in rocks around the low hills of the western Flinders Ranges at the old Ediacara minefield. Fossilised remains of an entire community of soft-bodied creatures had never been found in such abundance anywhere in the world. A new period was named as the Ediacaran Period. The fossils preserved the first known multicellular animal life on Earth that predates the Cambrian.
On The Margins - move to the current time. Another desolate landscape made barren by humans who misunderstood this new territory that their explorers had made claim for their homeland. The houses of many generations of settlers, now in ruin as the land no longer has the fertility to grow their imported crops and sustain the human's interest. This ancient land will regenerate as it's been here for much longer than the settlers. The stars will still overlook this land as has its original inhabitants and Traditional Owners whose stories of this land go back almost 100,000 years compared to the settler's quite recent coming some 150 years ago.
Ikara - The Adnyamathanha people are the Traditional Owners of Ikara. The name Ikara is what they called Wilpena Pound in the Flinders Ranges before the white man came. The Adnyamathanha people have a continued strong, cultural and spiritual connection to this land and for them Wilpena Pound (Ikara) is a very sacred place and they ask that visitors respect their beliefs. The Adnyamathanha belief systems tell of the creation of their traditional lands, they tell of spiritual snakes making up the walls of the Pound.
A Catalogue of Nights - Earth has come and will go but the stars will remain although themselves are constantly changing. Here in the outback the skies are so clear that the stars and in particular the Milky Way hang in the sky to light the endless, surrounding lands. The Southern Cross is always in the southern sky and rotates around the southern celestial pole making it visible all year round.
All The Life We've Lived - There's a saying that goes "mourn the dead when you are old". But what if you can never get old or die ? Immortality has fascinated people forever it would seem - the afterlife is considered just another stage in for a person's soul - we die in this world and are transported to another world to live forever. How could / does the mind deal with this endlessness ?
I'd Hoped There'd Be Stars - The promise that I'd finally see the stars. Billions of years from now. But they are gone. The universe is so old now that most of the stars have died. Will the universe restart or reboot at some stage or is this end ? Scientists of the past talked about a point when the ever expanding universe will start to reverse and the next big bang will happen when the universe shrinks to a point. How many times has this happened ? Has this always happened since the beginning ? Was there ever a beginning ?