Ever since my first Arkaroola bushwalk in 1976 the place has always seemed special, different and just a little bit, well, strange. The rocks and terrain were like nothing else in the Flinders. As the years have passed, this intuition seems to be borne out by all sorts of scientific news.
The latest bulletin is coming up this Thursday at Melbourne Uni’s Selwyn Symposium, when scientists will reveal the discovery of an ancient underwater reef high and dry near Arkaroola. Dating back 650 million years, this priceless relic contains new evidence of lifeforms that were bopping about in the oceans during the climatic bunfight known as the Neoproterozoic.
And this in the same week that Greens MP Mark Parnell and other parties, including perhaps the Libs, move once again to ban uranium exploration and mining in Arkaroola.
Here’s hoping the powers that be finally recognise Arkaroola is much too valuable as a scientific treasure and tourism icon to turn it into another hole in the ground. We've got plenty of mines in SA and more on the way. But there's only one Flinders Ranges - and there's nothing else on earth quite like Arkaroola.
(UPDATE 29 September: The Melbourne Uni team's reef discovery has created a wave of publicity for the area, with coverage from local media to the international press. What really seems to get the headline writers revved is the notion of the start date for animal evolution being pushed back by 80 million years.
This is even more astonishing, given that Arkaroola's tourism pioneer Reg Sprigg was the last person to redefine this frontier in a big way with his work on the Ediacaran fossils.
Arkaroola has been known for its geological wonders for a long time and while it is true that some mining and exploration has happened here in the past, the idea of a large-scale mine being thrust into the heart of this significant landscape is unthinkable. Any government that went down this path would create a national and international scandal.)
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