This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.
Approximate location · 30.315° S, 139.317° E
FIELD GUIDE
The story
Spriggina is South Australia's fossil emblem, it is about five hundred and fifty million years old, and there is a giant one laid out in a valley at Arkaroola.
The animal is from the Ediacaran – the strange assemblage of soft-bodied organisms found in the Flinders Ranges that represents some of the earliest complex life on earth, and which was recognised at Ediacara in South Australia before anywhere else. Spriggina floundersi is named for Reg Sprigg, the geologist who identified the fossils in 1946 and who later founded Arkaroola itself.
That closes a genuinely satisfying loop. The man who recognised the Ediacaran fauna established this wilderness sanctuary, and the sanctuary now carries a landscape-scale model of the fossil that bears his name.
The scale is unusual for this catalogue. It is a rock landscape model rather than a sculpture on a plinth – a form laid into the valley floor, closer to a geoglyph than a statue, and best appreciated from above or from a distance.
Arkaroola operates the eight-kilometre Mawson–Spriggina loop walk from the sanctuary village, which is how visitors reach it, and a 2021 licensed photograph directly documents the model in the valley.
The catalogue deliberately holds the object at locality precision because no exact independently verified position is available – an honest limitation for something in remote country.
It is among the oldest subjects anyone has built a Big Thing about.
Photograph
This is a photograph, shown separately from the illustration artwork.
Arkaroola currently operates the 8 km Mawson–Spriggina loop walk from the sanctuary village. A 2021 licensed photograph directly documents the giant Spriggina landscape model in the valley. The object itself is deliberately stored only at locality precision because an exact independently verified pin is not available.
ACCESS
The giant Spriggina landscape model lies in the sanctuary west of Arkaroola village and is encountered from the Mawson–Spriggina walking route. The stored object point is an approximate independently mapped model location. Navigate to Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary reception / visitor village and obtain current walking guidance; do not drive to the artwork or leave marked routes.
