The Diogenes of the Outback
Story and photos: The Bear
Want to go for a decent run, but on sealed roads? How about visiting our very own philosopher, Talc Alf?
The original Diogenes lived in a barrel. When Alexander the Great asked him if there was anything he could do for him, he replied that Alexander could stand a little out of his sun. You get the idea that our own Diogenes, Talc Alf, would react much the same way. Alf doesn’t live in a barrel, but he does live in a Nissen hut, which is kind of half a barrel.
Talc Alf, whose official name is Cornelius Johan Alferink, was born in the Netherlands in 1945. In the 1960s he moved out to the edge of South Australia’s Sturt Stony Desert near Lyndhurst, where the Oodnadatta and Strzelecki tracks divide to head north and east respectively. He originally had a mail run, but he really wanted to work in the soft talc stone (hydrated magnesium silicate) found nearby at Mount Fitton. Since then, he has specialised in producing stylised carvings from the stone, although he also creates various other artworks.
Lyndhurst is 596km north of Adelaide and currently the end of the sealed road, although the Strzelecki Track is in the process of being sealed for the convenience of the Moomba gas field. Lyndhurst offers a pub, a general store, a community centre, and two fuel bowsers – both selling only diesel. The nearest petrol is 33km to the south at Leigh Creek. Keep that in mind when you visit.
The Lyndhurst pub is pleasant and offers not only cold beer but also quite good food. Its accommodation is a maze of comfortably set-up dongas with cover for your bike. It would be safe to say that without Alf, Lyndhurst would not be particularly high on any list of tourist destinations. The only other attraction is some five kilometres up the road at the Ochre Cliffs which are highly significant to the indigenous locals, but you know… they’re cliffs, even if they are ochre used by the local people for millennia.
Alf is not just an esoteric sculptor, although he is often referred to dismissively and unfairly as an ‘outback eccentric’, he is more like an Australian Diogenes who lives in a Nissen hut. This was originally used as accommodation during some nuclear testing just down the road. I wasn’t there at night so I can’t say if the huts still glows. He bought two of them for $8 each and they now sit next to his workshop a couple of kilometres out of Lyndhurst just off the Strzelecki Track.
Alf welcomes visitors. He has also redesigned the Australian flag, and he proudly showed me his design in which the red, black and yellow Aboriginal flag replaces the Union Jack, simply and effectively swapping the colonial reference for an indigenous one. He gave me a flag sticker as I was leaving and I am having trouble deciding on somewhere worthy of it.
Take the ride up to Lyndhurst and drop in on our own Diogenes. You can get art, philosophy and a neat sticker all in the same place.
Choose your weapon: I reckon the ideal bike for this run would be the Tracer 9GT +. It’s designed for this sort of stuff.