Location notes:
Salt Creek Murders takes place in the Salt Creek settlement along the Coorong in South Australia. Set during the mid nineteenth century, the action takes place at a traveller's rest, along the isolated road between Adelaide and Melbourne.
The location is eerie and otherworldly. As the frontier of white settlement, it is seen as a place where the normal rules of civilisation need not apply. The salt plains have a strange intermittent pink glow, and the plant life is described as poisoned and grey. This gothic, uncanny setting is the backdrop for the violent and grisly events of the play.
Salt Creek Murders is based upon the murders committed by Malachi Martin between 1856 and 1862 near the Salt Creek Traveller's Rest along the Coorong. [see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malachi_Martin_(Australian_murderer)]
The Coorong in South Australia is a large and significant wetland area stretching more than 130 kilometres. It is made up of a string of saltwater lagoons which are protected from the Southern Ocean by the sand dunes of the Younghusband Peninsula.
The Coorong is of enormous cultural significance to the Ngarrindjeri people, and ancient mounds of discarded shells have been discovered along the Coorong dating back thousands of years.
http://www.environment.sa.gov.au/parks/Find_a_Park/Browse_by_region/Limestone_Coast/Coorong_National_Park
Quotes
MALACHI: So you like it here?
JANE: So far I like it.
MALACHI: What do you like?
JANE: ...I like walking across the salt-pans to the ocean beach.
MALACHI: It's very windy down at the ocean beach... You don't find it unpleasant?
JANE: No I like it.
MALACHI: This place you've come to, it's different to any place you've ever been. It's the frontier. A piece of paper with nothing written on it, not a word written on it.
He comes up very close to JANE.
And you can become something quite different than what you were before, if you have a mind to.
There is a gentle tapping on the door.
You can take what you want, take whatever you want, and feel no guilt, feel nothing... does that shock you?
(p. Scene 5, page 17)
NELLIE: I never liked this house. As soon as i saw it I hated it, but I wanted to please John so I smiled and ran down to the creek and took a huge gulp of water, and that was when he laughed and told me I should have paid attention to the name, that it was called Salt Creek for a reason, the water was foul, and I wondered for the twentieth time if I had done the right thing marrying a man who would wait until after I had half poisoned myself, without warning me first. There's something wrong in that. There something cruel in that...
(p. Scene 6, page 18)
NELLIE: ...and to bring me here..to this place.. the plants are all grey and black, like dead things growing... No wonder with all that salt feeding poison into the roots. Bleaching any colour from the land...except for the pig-face...creeping over everything...spreading like a bloodstain...and the strange pink glow of the salt just before it gets dark...
She shivers. JANE is caught up in the mood.
JANE: Yes. The salt. I was told to expect it, but I was still amazed... it's like snow...
(p. Scene 6, page 20)
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