Marree is an outback settlement located in the north of South Australia ant 685 km north of the state capital, Adelaide. Marree lies at the junction of the Oodnadatta Track and the Birdsville Track.
The Marree area is the traditional home of the Dieri Aboriginal people. The first European explorer in the Marree area was Edward John Eyre, who passed through in 1840. He was followed by explorer John McDouall Stuart in 1859. A German botanist travelling with Stuart, Joseph Albert Herrgott, discovered seven artesian springs near Marree. Subsequently, the town was named Herrgott Springs (or Hergott Springs), but Anti-German sentiment resulting from World War I saw the town's name changed to Marree in 1918. The name Marree derives from an Aboriginal word, Mari, meaning place of many possums.
In 1860 the Marree area was surveyed by GW Goyder and the Hergott pastoral lease auctioned. The artesian springs were declared a government water reserve in the same year and have remained as such ever since. Pastoral development in the area was hampered by drought conditions, particularly a severe drought from 1863 to 1865. In typical outback fashion, however, the drought broke in January 1866 and Hergott Springs was soaked for forty hours with more than 250mm of rain. South Australian wheat, sheep and cattle producers pushed further north towards Marree during the 1870s believing that "rain would follow the plough", and in 1872 Marree became a maintenance camp for Overland Telegraph construction crews.
By the early 1880s a major settlement had developed at Marree (or Herrgott Springs as it was still known at the time), including a butcher shop, a general store and a hotel. In 1883, a police station manned by three mounted constables was opened along with a post office and another store.
Marree had a long association with Afghan cameleers and was home to Australia's first official mosque, made of mud brick. At one time the town was divided in two seperate settlements, one inhabited by the European population and the other by Afghan and Aboriginal populations. Sometimes referred to as "little Asia", by 1900 Marree had nearly three hundred date palms, some yielding up to 50 kg of dates. Many of these palms were later transplanted to provide shade in towns as far away as Barmera in the South Australian riverland. Camels were indispensible in the transport of all manner of goods in outback Australia up until the 1920s, in the building and maintenance of the Overland Telegraph, the railway to Alice Springs, and for local and inland police patrols until 1949.
When Marree became a railway terminal in 1884, it became the central hub of outback transport networks extending along the Birdsville and Oodnadatta Tracks. Afghan camel teams travelled as far as Broken Hill in New South Wales, Coolgardie in Western Australia, Alice Springs in Central Australia, and Innamincka in South Australia. Nowhere was too far or too isolated, and on return trips the camel teams often carried wool to be railed south to Adelaide.
When the Central Australia Railway reached Maree in 1883, the town became a major railhead servicing the cattle industry. From Marree, the railway then continued north west to Oodnadatta and eventually reached Alice Springs in Central Australia in 1929. The passenger train travelling this route from Adelaide to Alice Springs via Maree was known as The Ghan. In 1957, The railway south of Marree was rebuilt in 1957 as standard gauge line on a flatter alignment to support the transport of coal from Leigh Creek to Port Augusta. As a result, Marree became a break-of-gauge on the Ghan as the remainder of the line to the north-west remained narrow gauge until 1980, when the Adelaide to Alice Springs line was rebuilt much further west and Marree lost its railway altogether. The modern railway passenger service from Adelaide to Darwin is still known as The Ghan.
Marree was also home to the legendary Tom Kruse who drove mail trucks from Marree to Birdsville in Queensland, a distance of some 700 kilometres along the Birdsville Track which traverses some of the most difficult sandy and stony desert country in Australia.
In 1980 Marree gained international notoriety when a huge chalk figure, visible only from the air, was mysteriously etched into the landscape 60 km west of Marree and dubbed the Marree Man. Calls were made to turn it into a state icon but the unimpressed local population preferred to let it fade naturally back into the landscape.