The first year it was a giant map of Australia, the next a huge wallaby. This year it will be the biggest effort yet - a 1.2 kilometre long goanna.

Charles Sturt University lecturer Paul Frazier will take a team of a dozen environmental science students into a Paterson's curse infested paddock near the University's Wagga Wagga Campus this Wednesday, 18 October, to create another artistic masterpiece that can only be fully appreciated from the air.

The geoglyph - a picture cut into the earth big enough to be visible on satellite images - will be created on the northern outskirts of the city to give first and third year Bachelor of Science (Environmental Science) students a practical lesson in remote sensing and high-tech survey techniques.

Keeping with the uniquely Australian theme, Mr Frazier chose a goanna for this year's attempt because of its significance to the local Wiradjuri Aboriginal tribe as a totem animal.

With a tractor and slasher, the cutting of the goanna will take place at 10am, with the outline of the goanna making a stark contrast between the purple and green of the paddock for both aerial photography and satellite imagery.

Mr Frazier said the students love being involved in the project: "They'll be out there using the satellite navigation technology to mark out the goanna and using differential GPS (global positioning systems) from an all-terrain vehicle to take measurements."

CSU will fly its airborne scanner over the geoglyph in the next week or so, but the final test will be the picture taken 700 km over the earth in the next fortnight - AUSLIG (Australian Land Information Group) have again agreed to supply a free Landsat satellite image over the geoglyph.

Pictures of the goanna are now available from the Goana website at http://www.csu.edu.au/faculty/sst/geoglyph/G2000.HTM. Images of CSU's previous geoglyphs can also be seen at this site.