Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary

In for a dig

The stairwells are lined with rows of members' photographs: polar explorers Robert E. Peary, Roald Amundsen and Edmund Hillary; astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Sally Ride; oceanographers Sylvia Earle and Bob Ballard; primatologists Jane Goodall and George Schaller; even sci-fi legend Arthur C. Clarke and geneticist James Watson of double-helix fame. I reach the top of the last flight of stairs and enter a little room crammed with books and documents, not to mention librarian Dorthea Sartain, Lowell the resident cat, and a big guy named Jim Thompson.

Turns out Thompson, chairman of the club's Florida chapter, is a fan of South Australia's Flinders Ranges. In fact, he'll be there again in July, pottering about Arkaroola's alien landscape. More about that in a minute.

Meanwhile, go back a few years. That's when the entrepreneurial, as well as adventurous, Thompson leveraged his top-drawer network and unusual expertise (using thermal imaging to investigate caves and underground springs, and to assist disaster recovery) into an equally unusual science travel business called Out There Expeditions.

Do not think up-market tours of ruins or museums. We're talking "boots-on-the-ground" scientific "sabbaticals", as he puts it. The idea is to give the wealthy and curious an "elite adventure". As Thompson explains: "Guests learn and practise basic field research, collection and survey methods essential to any scientific expedition".

Thompson's travellers pay to be bossed about by scientists. It's a triple bottom line affair: volunteers fulfil Indiana Jones fantasies, scientists get free field assistants, and Thompson gets paid to go to exotic places and meet fascinating people, with money left over to fund his personal hot-air balloon.

So far, he has led nine scientific expedition sabbaticals in conjunction with the US space agency NASA. He also works with the Mars Society in California, its Australian branch and the Canadian Space Agency. Travellers work and the agencies get precious data.

Back home, I ask University of NSW paleontologist Mike Archer if this is a concept whose time has come. "If private individuals can afford it and have a basic education, bring them along to work with desperate but impoverished scientists. It's just what we need."

Desperate? Impoverished? Desperate, because scientists such as Archer -- who for decades has headed the excavation of Australia's most famous fossil site, Riversleigh in Queensland -- never have enough hands to do the field work. Impoverished, as science funding has eroded over the years. Researchers such as Archer struggle to bring their traditional source of unpaid labour, their graduate students, to the field with them.

jeffreykm - arkaroola 2011 - j east painter fa

Arkaroola 2011 - j east painter fa

shannan and rhea following the old access route along the east painter gorge to east painter camp - is this a potential mining industry haulage route?

mining company marathon resources is currently attempting to negotiate a return to active drilling in the arkaroola wilderness sanctuary, having had its exploration licence suspended in early 2008 after it was found to have been illegally dumping waste on-site

any proposal to mine is vehemently opposed by both the sanctuary's managers and the many admirers of this iconic wild region (and the overhwelming majority of south australians , according to recent polling)

the east painter gorge has been identified as both an exploration target in its own right, and as an access route to the identified uranium resource in the heart of the sanctuary

here we follow an old access trail - now regenerating and seriously eroded after recent flooding in the district - to the old 1940s mining camp some 6.5 kms up the gorge

for more, see my unknownsa journal blog

arkaroola wilderness sanctuary, far-northern flinders ranges, south australia

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