The film-team has just come back to Melbourne from a two week filming trip to South Australia (SA). Read about our stops and adventures on the way.

The film-team has just come back to Melbourne from a two week filming trip to South Australia (SA). Read about our stops and adventures on the way.

The SA-filming tour took us from Melbourne to Adelaide where we stayed for a few days to get ourselves organized before heading further north into the “wild” to visit a uranium mine and the effects it is causing for the people and the environment.

Special thanks to Jim for renting us his car and special thanks to his car who unexpectedly never gave up on us.

These were our stops on the SA-filming tour:

Adelaide: Many thanks to Ruth Russell who provided a great home base to our team whilst we were in Adelaide and who spread the word of our project to the Adelaide radio audience.

Check out Ruth’s ten arguments against nuclear power.

The Australian Conservation Foundation and Friends of the Earth in Adelaide helped us to get ourselves organized for the trip up north and provided us with back ground information. We also took up the chance to catch up with the government regulators for the uranium mines in Southern Australia at the Environment Protection Agency.

Port Pirie: Just 200 km north of Adelaide, there is a former milling site for uranium on the fringe of a small town called Port Pirie. This areal contains radioactive tailings, leftovers from the uranium milling activities conducted in the 1950s and 1960s. Until the late 1970s no one cared about the radioactive waste and the site was accessible to the public. It was only after enormous protests and pressure from environmental activists and the local community that the site was properly managed and cleaned up. Even though the site is fenced today there is still no public information about possible radioactive contaminations around the site.

Port Augusta: A small town along the Spencer Gulf. We met traditional owners Rebecca Bear-Wingfield and her mother Eileen from the Kokatha people. It is on their indigenous people’s land that BHP Billiton runs the Olympic Dam mine. They both have a history of struggle against the mine and told us about their experience with the uranium companies.

Roxby Downs/ Olympic Dam mine: The copper-uranium mine Olympic Dam operated by BHP Billiton lies on a huge areal 560 km north of Adelaide. Roxby Downs is the town that was built with the mere and only purpose to serve the mine. It is just down the road from the mine. We met a family and youth worker as well as the administrator of the town. As BHP Billiton was not willing to meet us we went on a public tourist tour around the mine to get our video footage we wanted. But what the tour guide did neither mention nor show to the visitors were the huge tailing dams that contain masses of radioactive waste. And they will be even bigger, after the planned mine expansion making Olympic Dam the largest uranium mine in the world. Here is what the critics say to these plans.

The Mound Springs at Marree: Definitely the highlight of our trip. A 200 km dirt track leads you from Roxby Downs to the small township of Marree. This might not sound like a long distance but with almost 50 degrees and no aircondition this can be quite an adventure. The road takes one through stereotypical red sanded Outback-landscape known from Lonely-Planet-pictures. By the time one gets to Marree the red sand has disappeared and brownish-pale colours dominate the flat and barren-looking landscape. With its approx. 60 residents and the old Ghan-railway running through town, Marree merely lives of tourism. Many only pass through on their way to other Outback destinations. We stayed for two nights and got taken on a tour by local indigenous owner Reg Dodd, an Arabana man. He showed us the countryside of his people and we discovered that the supposed “Middle of Nowhere” is actually quite alive. Reg showed us the “Mound Springs”, prestine water holes that are fed by the Great Artesian Bassin, Australia’s largest under water lake. The Mound Springs are endangered of drying out due to the extensive use of BHP´s water use for its mining activities. Special thanks to Prof. Gavin Mudd from the Monash university for his academic advice on the Mound Springs and of course to Reg Dodd for showing us around and telling us stories from his childhood of what the Mound Springs mean to his people and the environment.

The SA-filming tour took us from Melbourne to Adelaide where we stayed for a few days to get ourselves organized before heading further north into the “wild” to visit a uranium mine and the effects it is causing for the people and the environment.

Special thanks to Jim for renting us his car and special thanks to his car who unexpectedly never gave up on us.

These were our stops on the SA-filming tour:

Adelaide: Many thanks to Ruth Russell who provided a great home base to our team whilst we were in Adelaide and who spread the word of our project to the Adelaide radio audience.

Check out Ruth’s ten arguments against nuclear power.

The Australian Conservation Foundation and Friends of the Earth in Adelaide helped us to get ourselves organized for the trip up north and provided us with back ground information. We also took up the chance to catch up with the government regulators for the uranium mines in Southern Australia at the Environment Protection Agency.

Port Pirie: Just 200 km north of Adelaide, there is a former milling site for uranium on the fringe of a small town called Port Pirie. This areal contains radioactive tailings, leftovers from the uranium milling activities conducted in the 1950s and 1960s. Until the late 1970s no one cared about the radioactive waste and the site was accessible to the public. It was only after enormous protests and pressure from environmental activists and the local community that the site was properly managed and cleaned up. Even though the site is fenced today there is still no public information about possible radioactive contaminations around the site.

Port Augusta: A small town along the Spencer Gulf. We met traditional owners Rebecca Bear-Wingfield and her mother Eileen from the Kokatha people. It is on their indigenous people’s land that BHP Billiton runs the Olympic Dam mine. They both have a history of struggle against the mine and told us about their experience with the uranium companies.

Roxby Downs/ Olympic Dam mine: The copper-uranium mine Olympic Dam operated by BHP Billiton lies on a huge areal 560 km north of Adelaide. Roxby Downs is the town that was built with the mere and only purpose to serve the mine. It is just down the road from the mine. We met a family and youth worker as well as the administrator of the town. As BHP Billiton was not willing to meet us we went on a public tourist tour around the mine to get our video footage we wanted. But what the tour guide did neither mention nor show to the visitors were the huge tailing dams that contain masses of radioactive waste. And they will be even bigger, after the planned mine expansion making Olympic Dam the largest uranium mine in the world. Here is what the critics say to these plans.

The Mound Springs at Marree: Definitely the highlight of our trip. A 200 km dirt track leads you from Roxby Downs to the small township of Marree. This might not sound like a long distance but with almost 50 degrees and no aircondition this can be quite an adventure. The road takes one through stereotypical red sanded Outback-landscape known from Lonely-Planet-pictures. By the time one gets to Marree the red sand has disappeared and brownish-pale colours dominate the flat and barren-looking landscape. With its approx. 60 residents and the old Ghan-railway running through town, Marree merely lives of tourism. Many only pass through on their way to other Outback destinations. We stayed for two nights and got taken on a tour by local indigenous owner Reg Dodd, an Arabana man. He showed us the countryside of his people and we discovered that the supposed “Middle of Nowhere” is actually quite alive. Reg showed us the “Mound Springs”, prestine water holes that are fed by the Great Artesian Bassin, Australia’s largest under water lake. The Mound Springs are endangered of drying out due to the extensive use of BHP´s water use for its mining activities. Special thanks to Prof. Gavin Mudd from the Monash university for his academic advice on the Mound Springs and of course to Reg Dodd for showing us around and telling us stories from his childhood of what the Mound Springs mean to his people and the environment.