I’ve always thought Bolla Bollana waterhole on the Arkaroola Creek had a certain aura about it.

It is something that is very hard to illustrate.

I’ve taken and seen a lot of a few pictures of Bolla Bollana waterhole.

A couple of my efforts can be seen here and here but I don’t think I’ve ever got the essence of the place.

Perhaps with this one I’ve come fairly close.

The shot was taken on a quite overcast day.

I used a polarising filter to bring out the colours and to slow the shutter speed just enough to create a sheen on the water created by the gusting breeze.

f22, ISO 100, shutter speed 1.6 sec, focal length 135 mm, tripod

The hills and mountains of the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary, northern Flinders Ranges, South Australia.

Perhaps not easily identified as such but indicative of the weather around currently.

Canon 20D, 28-300 Canon L series lens, focal length 100 mm. f9 @ 1/80 sec ISO 400

Like a few of the photographs that get posted here, the colours (although subtle) have been dampened from the original but there doesn’t seem to be much I can do about this. The previous post suffers from the same problem.

The man….. calm, focused, in command but patient.

The horse….. beautiful, powerful, obedient, enjoying the work.

Both linked by the rope.

The trainer didn’t know he was being photographed so there was ample time to compose the picture.

Canon D20 camers. 28-300 L series lens. Shot at f10 @ 1/200th sec ISO 200, 200mm focal length.

It’s always good to see the last of winter for reasons too long to list here.

This photograph isn’t the Flinders ranges or the Outback but the Clare Valley, more famous for it’s wines than canola crops.

However it’s all about colour. Bright, prime colours. The track makes for an interesting composition too.

Canon 20D, 28-300 mm lens, f22 @ 1/15 sec ISO 100

The eastern side of Wilpena Pound in all its glory.

Rawnsley Bluff is partially hidden by the tree branch on the left, Bonney Point on the right.

Taken at dawn several months ago.

Still standing after 150 years, the outside view from the previous post of the Arkaba Woolshed.

The Elder Range is in the background. Mt Alec, the highest peak in the Flinders Ranges is on the right side.

Shot a few minutes before 6am with Canon 5D, Lens EF28-300 mm f22 @1/25 sec ISO 200

Another of my limited edition prints posted earlier, of the quaintly named Warburton Groove in Lake Eyre North.

It was taken in May when water was still flowing into Lake Eyre in vast amounts.

However the depth of the water is very shallow and hasn’t covered all the salt.

This has enhanced the mirror effect of the clouds.

Afternoon light through gums and acacias. Echo Camp Backtrack, Arkaroola.

There’s many more Lake Eyre and Coongie Lakes shots but I’m wondering if they are are becoming a little repetitious. Feedback through the comments section please.

This was taken in an afternoon shoot. It is similar to the one I selected for the limited edition print run posted a few days ago.

Adam, the pilot from WrightsAir and I spent more than an hour flying around Silcrete Island because of the amazing colours, the stillness of the water and the really evident currents of salt and fresh water.

This is a finger of land from the mainland not far from Silcrete, featured here and posted earlier this month.

Because of the afternoon light, the colours and sunlight made many different effects on the water and the land as we circled around.

Often the best time to shoot the full moon is the night before.

On the eve, the Moon rises a little before the sun goes down so there’s a time when all the late afternoon light is at its best and the moon is already above the horizon.

Knowing where the moon is going to rise is handy for making a good composition.

Canon 5D. Lens EF28-300mm f3.5-5.6L IS USM. Shot at f25 1/6 sec, ISO 200

Broken Banks
Warburton River, Lake Eyre, South Australia 2010

Belt Bay
Warburton Groove, Lake Eyre, South Australia 2010

Silcrete Island
Madigan Bay, Lake Eyre, South Australia 2010

Each image is printed on the best quality fine art pearl cotton paper using the Giclee printing process.

They are 48 centimetres wide and 30 centimetres high.

Each photograph is limited to 250 prints. The prints are numbered and signed.

They are $120 each which includes postage and insurance within Australia – postage is $10 extra for overseas.

To order a print, email me at Email here or phone 0429 703 693 (the mobile is not always in range – leave a message and I will return the call).

Climbing the social ladder…..in the world of little Corellas.

Referring back to a previous post might help to explain this photograph taken near Parachilna in the Flinders Ranges.

Canon EOS 20D. Lens f3.5-5.6 28-300mm L IS USM. f7.1 @ 1/400th sec ISO 100

The Nepowie Range – an unusual formation partly on the Gammon Ranges National Park, partly on Wooltana Station.

Part of the northern Flinders Ranges in the background.

A lucky shot after quite a few mornings of dull skies and long drives.

The light lasted about five minutes.

It is a pity there’s not the facility here to make these shots full screen.

It is much more spectacular as an A1 print.

The lizard did it. Maybe?

Sometimes the best views come from the most inaccessible places. The Warraweena Conservation Park in South Australia’s Flinders Ranges has such scenes but not all as hard as this to reach.

Shooting landscapes in summer has its rewards and the photography rule of shooting in the early morning or late afternoon isn’t always true.

This photograph was taken at about 4pm daylight saving time with the temperature around 40C.

Many thanks to those people – and there were a lot – who put in submissions to the relevant departments regarding mining on the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary.

I believe about 700 submissions in all were received and I think a majority of them were against any sort of mining in the area.

However it’s early days yet. It will be interesting to see what comes out of it all.

Strange twist though…the Environment Minister announced, as submissions on Arkaroola’s future were closing, a new protected area, with no mining , on the Nullabor Plain. Figure that out.

To things more sublime – I posted a shot of Arkaroola Waterhole back in June last year link.

This was taken the same morning but using a different lens. The wide angle panorama changed the colours a bit and washed out the sky although I’m still happy with the outcome. I’d be interested to hear what others think.

It doesn’t take much effort to type out a few words and email them to one or both of these two gentleman

[email protected] or [email protected]

to register your view regarding the prospect of uranium mining taking place in the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary.

The last day to is next Friday, January 29.

My submission went in yesterday – one of the reason why I’ve been a bit slack with postings here in recent times.

Here’s what I’ve said:

I am writing to you in regard to the proposed rezoning of the northern Flinders Ranges as outlined in the joint publication by your department under the title “Seeking a Balance.”

Before outlining the proposals I suggest, I think there are a number of issues which need to be addressed.
1. There are no detailed maps of the proposed changes. The management zone map appears to split East Mt. Painter Gorge laterally into a protected habitat on one side while the other side of the gorge is open to exploration and mining. This seems to have opened up the most likely access route into Mt Gee to a mining operation while paying lip service to authorised conservation methods.
2. There is no information from any source, including the “Seeking a Balance” document, which explains how uranium mining on Mt Gee might be carried out. It is therefore virtually impossible to determine what would be the real impact on the flora and fauna of the region without this detail.
3. The cultural values of significance to the Adnyamathanha people seem to have been completely ignored, particularly when there are some sites on Arkaroola which are relatively close to the proposed Mt Gee mining operation.
4. The document only looks at the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary and its immediate neighbours (i.e. a quarter of the area supposedly addressed in the document) and ignores other areas of importance in the northern Flinders Ranges.
5. The document makes no comparison between Arkaroola and the neighboring Vulkathunha Gammon Ranges National Park where no mining is allowed. Many of the same values that made the proclamation of the Vulkathunha Gammon Ranges National park can be found on Arkaroola.
6. Sillers Lookout, known by just about every South Australian because of its spectacular views, and a centre piece of Arkaroola, is in Access Zone 2a, which technically means that it could be mined if an economic orebody was found underneath. Why is this not labelled as Access Zone 1?

With its unique geology and landforms, lack of weeds, intact plant communities and position as the northernmost protected area in the Flinders Ranges, the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary is a critical part of the northern Flinders corridor.

The “Seeking a Balance” framework fails to deliver appropriate levels of protection for individual species and ignores the Department of Environment & Heritage’s own policies that advocate landscape conservation, regardless of tenure.
Some of the wildest, most elevated, least modified and most bio-diverse landscapes in the Flinders Ranges occur in and around the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary. Five properties all destocked and managed for conservation create a corridor that stretches from Lake Frome to Warraweena. The Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary, the Vulkathunha Gammon Ranges National Park, Nantawarinna indigenous protection area, Pinda Springs and Warraweena Private Conservation park provide refuge for rare and threatened species, some of which are found nowhere else in the world. These areas also provide a corridor that enables colonies of rock wallabies (and other species) to intermingle as required under Dept Environment & Heritage NatureLinks policy.

Today, Arkaroola has a greater concentration of rock wallaby colonies than any other property in the northern Flinders Ranges. However, under proposed new zoning there is no uniform protection for known rock wallaby habitats across Arkaroola. No connectivity has been provided between colonies along Arkaroola Creek where most of the sanctuary’s permanent waterways are found, and colonies to the north and south within the Sanctuary.

Another issue is the future of the spidery wattle, Acacia araneosa which is found along the border between Arkaroola and the Vulkathunha Gammon Ranges National Park. Its distribution covers less than 10 square kilometres and it is found there and nowhere else in the world. Spidery wattle is struggling to survive. With the proposed new management framework, most of the population occurs in Access Zone 3 where standard exploration and mining conditions apply.

It is therefore my strong view that the entire area of the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary should remain a Class A Environmental Zone and that the zoning should in fact be strengthened to protect the area from mining operations in the future. Or if the Proposal for Zoning is accepted, then all of the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary is made Zone 1: No mining access.

Little is known about the hydrology of the Flinders Ranges. The relationship of aquafiers, their movement at the surface as springs and seepages and their recharge rates are poorly understood.

In a submission to the Australian government in 2007, Marathon Resources advised that it would require 5.5 million litres per day for processing activities should a mining application be approved in the future. This extraction rate would continue for a protracted mine life of 13 years.

The company would seek water from a variety of sources on the plains and in the ranges. Any approval to extract this measure of water from the region would contravene the government’s own targets and prescriptions around the sustainable use of water resources. It would appear that this requirement for mining would have a critical effect on eco systems already under stress.

The “Keeping a Balance” document glosses over the tourism perspective, which I believe has a great significance in the region. Many individuals, businesses and tourism operators rely on the flow of people travelling to and from the Arkaroola region. No account of the many millions of dollars that is generated to the central and northern Flinders Ranges has been taken into consideration.
Tourism values appear to have been based on the Landscape Value Survey which concludes that the area has only moderate scenic value.
The methodology of the Landscape Value Survey is flawed and open to criticism on a number of levels, particularly when this is such a subjective subject. The number of visitors to the region over many, many years does not support the outcomes of the survey, although it does conclude that no mining should take place from a tourism point of view on the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary.

In regard to rehabilitation if mining were to go ahead in the sanctuary, it is my belief as much as eight decades would be needed to restore the land fully. That on top of the projected mining operation of 13 years.
This is based on the scars from exploration tracks already on the Arkaroola landscape that have been there since the mid 1900s. This is an arid land where vegetation does not bounce back quickly.

In conclusion, I believe there are so many issues involved in the debate about mining in the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary that the damage to the region could not be fully understood. It would therefore be highly dangerous to do anything but ban any form of mining in the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary.

Marathon Resources already has an appalling record during the exploration stage and have proven still to have no real understanding of the delicate nature of the area in which they propose to mine.

The decision to mine on Arkaroola would be based on the premise that the deposit there was so big that to ignore it would be folly. It is my understanding that the interest in mining there is based on in formation supplied by Marathon Resources.
There is also available now information which questions the viability of uranium mining at Mt Gee. This includes:

* The amount of ore that can actually be extracted strongly depends on the mining technique that is employed.

* Underground mining would significantly reduce the amount of extractable ore.

* The ore does not occur in regular, easily recognizable bodies.This makes it virtually impossible to predict where to excavate.

* The ore occurs in strongly altered, often extremely friable and highly heterogeneous breccia (rock consisting of angular pieces cemented together), which would pose significant difficulties to underground mining. The problem is aggravated by the presence of Mt. Gee-type veins and breccia, which consist of very hard quartz-haematite breccia with large voids.

* The ore underneath Mt. Gee occurs at a relative shallow depth, especially below the western slope of Mt. Gee, where the ore-bearing zone breaches the surface. Considering the nature of the ore and host rock, near-surface underground mining would be a serious engineering challenge.

* It seems unlikely that a major part of the uranium of the main deposit underneath Mt. Gee could be extracted by underground mining. This then means there is a real danger open cut mining would be the next step.

* It is therefore doubtful whether the challenges to underground mining would make mining of the smaller satellite deposits viable.

These facts must be taken into account in the final analysis.

Here’s a local South Australian icon that’s known to people call over the country and indeed the world.

I can only use my photography to make the point that it would be crazy to wreck this amazing country with mining.

The time available for making public submissions on the issue has been moved back to the end of January.

More importantly though Arkaroola has received advice the consultation process requires submissions to specifically address the management policies and zoning framework proposed in Government’s ‘Seeking a Balance’ document.

It’s outrageous if the Government should attempt to ignore submissions that simply say I don’t want to see any mining on the wilderness sanctuary.

If you want a better understanding of the situation click on UnkownsSA

If you want to make a submission, you can get some guidelines from Save Arkaroola

If you don’t think its a serious situation, Marathon Mines today notified of their intention to start low impact exploration on Arkaroola again in the near future.

The photo is Split Rock Lookout on the Ridgetop Track – massive granite outcrops in the most rugged of Arkaroola’s central and oldest country.

From here, if I’m right you would be able to see all the trucks, all the mining equipment, the air shafts, the dust and the rubble should it go ahead.

Despite the long term drought and the less than hospitable terrain, Yakkas and Spinifex make a beautiful combination.

Spinifex, or porcupine bush is something to avoid falling into. The sharp needle-like spears are particularly painful if they penetrate the skin. Tips broken off under the skin take quite a bit of dislodging.

However Spinifex is an important haven for small desert-living animals. The spears can contain an unexpected supply of water stored inside, considering the bushs’ outwardly parched appearance.

This is one variety confined to the stoney hills an valleys of the northern Flinders Ranges.

Other varieties are regarded as important stabilisers of dunes in sandy country.