The Nullarbor Nymph was a hoax perpetrated in Australia between 1971 and 1972 that involved supposed sightings of a half-naked woman living amongst kangaroos on the Nullarbor Plain.
The first report on 26 December 1971 was by professional kangaroo shooters from Eucla in Western Australia, near the border with South Australia. They claimed to have seen a blonde, white woman amongst some kangaroos, and backed their story with grainy amateur film showing a woman wearing kangaroo skins and holding a kangaroo by the tail. After further sightings were claimed, the story was reported around the world, and journalists descended upon the town of Eucla which had a population of 8 people at the time. [1]
The incident was eventually revealed as a hoax, initiated as a publicity stunt. The girl on the film turned out to be a 17-year-old model named Janice Beeby. She did appear in a photograph taken later, as an evidence of the Nullarbor Nymph, but the woman in the original photograph used by the media to disseminate the hoax was Geneice Brooker, the partner of Laurie Scott, one of the kangaroo-shooter hoaxers. Scott admitted to Murray Nicoll of The News that the hoax was created by a publicist Geoff Pearce, of Melbourne, [2] who happened to be in the Eucla Hotel and had contacts within the media. [3]
Nullarbor Nymph sculptures by Dora Dallwitz were shown in 1994 at an exhibition held for students graduating from their Master of Visual Arts degree in Sculpture, and in 2000 [4] and 2004 [5] at Top Floor Gallery in Adelaide. Her main sculpture After the Nullarbor Nymph, which was cast into bronze, was exhibited in front of the South Australian Museum [6] for three months, was selected in the 2004 Sculpture by the Sea [7] exhibition in Sydney, and is now on display in front of the Flinders Medical Centre [8] in Adelaide.
In 1994 an installation at the Australian National Gallery referred to the myth. [9] The issue is raised as an urban myth periodically. [10]
In 2012 a low-budget movie titled The Nullarbor Nymph was produced out of Ceduna, South Australia and written and directed by Mathew J. Wilkinson. The mockumentary depicts the Nymph as tormenting men who travel across the Nullarbor. The film premiered in Ceduna on 3 March 2012 and then across Australia in following months. The film received much hype thanks to radio announcer Merrick Watts of Triple M's Merrick and The Highway Patrol show which aired across Australia. A Sydney premiere was held on 22 May 2012 and the film received positive reviews given its $25,000 budget.
The Nullarbor Plain is part of the area of flat, almost treeless, arid or semi-arid country of southern Australia, located on the Great Australian Bight coast with the Great Victoria Desert to its north. It is the world's largest single exposure of limestone bedrock, and occupies an area of about 200,000 square kilometres (77,000 sq mi). At its widest point, it stretches about 1,100 kilometres (684 mi) from east to west across the border between South Australia and Western Australia.
The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory, it was established in 1967 by the Australian Government as a national public art museum. As of 2022 it is under the directorship of Nick Mitzevich.
Eyre Highway is a 1,664-kilometre (1,034 mi) highway linking Western Australia and South Australia via the Nullarbor Plain. Signed as National Highways 1 and A1, it forms part of Highway 1 and the Australian National Highway network linking Perth and Adelaide. It was named after explorer Edward John Eyre, who was the first European to cross the Nullarbor by land, in 1840–1841. Eyre Highway runs from Norseman in Western Australia, past Eucla, to the state border. Continuing to the South Australian town of Ceduna, it crosses the top of the Eyre Peninsula before reaching Port Augusta.
Ceduna is a town in South Australia located on the shores of Murat Bay on the coast, west of the Eyre Peninsula. It lies west of the junction of the Flinders and Eyre Highways around 786 km northwest of Adelaide. The nearby port of Thevenard lies 3 km to the west on Cape Thevenard. It is in the District Council of Ceduna, the federal electoral Division of Grey, and the state electoral district of Flinders.
Eucla is the easternmost locality in Western Australia, located in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia along the Eyre Highway, approximately 11 kilometres (7 mi) west of the South Australian border. At the 2016 Australian census, Eucla had a population of 53.
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