Terra Australis, 'the Imaginary Continent', or 'the Unknown Land of the South' was hypothesised to exist by Ptolemy as a balance to the lands of the Northern Hemisphere of the planet. The Spanish similarly believed in the existence of what was to be revealed as the largest landmass in Oceania as 'La Australia del Espíritu Santo', the 'Southern Land of the Holy Spirit'. These conceptual projections were, in time, proved to be true in what would become eventually known as Australia, the largest country in the world without land borders. However what remains unexplained, and yet is hinted at in this imagined state of being was not only that it was conceived into existence, but that it was also believed to exist to host an 'other'. Much like the Spanish description that included the 'Holy Spirit', cartographers would have described the region with 'here be dragons' to designate that which had not yet been mapped or documented. In the heart of the Australian continent exists a manifestation of this 'other'. Covering one-sixth of the continent, a 1,140,000 square kilometre internal drainage system, an area larger than that of France and Spain combined, brings into existence Lake Eyre, the largest ephemeral lake in the world. At 15m below sea level, it is the lowest point in Australia, and on the rare occasion that it fills, it is the largest lake in the country. The dynamic landscape that at times becomes Lake Eyre remains for the most part unmapped, defying the possibility of calculation, measurement or imitation. This is an investigation of the sublime phenomenological landscape of the unknown, and perhaps the unknowable, and the potential of this condition to generate a new kind of material engagement and design thinking.
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