A farmer in South Australia has used his tractor to turn a paddock into a giant map of Australia.
Harrison Schuster’s map of Australia takes up about 60 hectares of the 120ha paddock.
Last year the Freeling farmer created a sunflower in a paddock that was visible on Google Earth.
Mr Schuster said this latest work, generated with the aid of his GPS, of art took some preparation.
“It was about two hours of work out in the field, but a few hours of prep work and experimentation at night,” he said.
“The tractor has a screen that shows you where you are in the paddock and it follows what I have put in by drawing it on the screen.
“Then I just raise and lower the implements as I go along.
“I start with the bare paddock and then the lines are just tilled ground … it’s just dug up dirt.”
‘Puts us on the map’
Mr Schuster hoped the map of Australia would be picked up by the Google Earth satellite.
“It would be great if we could get that immortalised for a year on the maps,” he said.
Freeling is 68 kilometres north-east of Adelaide and has a population of about 2,690.
“Some people see Freeling as a bit of a pass-through town between two highways, but it puts us on the map a bit and the comments we get on social media have been really good as well,” Mr Schuster said.
His brother, Corbin, took the picture from an aeroplane and Harrison was a surprised to see how well it turned out.
“You cannot tell from the road or in the paddock — the perspective doesn’t do it justice,” Harrison said.
“It just looks like a bit of a scramble, but it definitely peaks the curiosity.
“You can only really see the true scale once you’re up in the air.
“I was pleasantly surprised when I saw Corbin’s photo — it was like opening a present.”
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