219 – Arkaroola Rocks

2014 Lake Breeze Bernoota Shiraz Cabernet … tasting notes.

It scampers across your #palate like a yellow-footed rock wallaby – The @LakeBreezeWines #Bernoota #Shiraz #Cabernet https://t.co/EfeonbfIa5

— The Adelaide Show (@TheAdelaideShow) November 4, 2017

The SA Tourism ad for the Flinders Ranges is provoking some interesting commentary. Firstly, the text has a simple, grammatical error. It reads: Get closer to nature among a 540 million year old landscape. You can’t really be among a landscape. You can be among the wildlife and the trees but not a landscape. A few Facebook users have called them out on this. A landscape is a mass noun. And then there is a debate about the age of the rocks around Arkaba Station where the images were shot. Some were arguing they are not 540 million years old, others that they are much, much older.

The ethics of using Op Shop suits for fancy dress.

Doug Sprigg is first. He currently runs the Arkaroola Resort and Wilderness Sanctuary.

We mention the Reg Sprigg biography. Here’s the link.

[We insert a little of Mark’s narration during the ridgetop tour]

Mark Sprigg is next to be interviewed.

[We insert a little audio from the ridgetop tour in which Professor Flint derives a history lesson from an emu]

Then we chat to Professor Flint.

Nigel Dobson-Keeffe challenges the panel to pick the fake story from three stories from South Australia’s past.

The Mail – July 1949
Our climate warming up, says expert
Indications were Australia’s climate was slowly becoming warmer, not colder, Sir Douglas Mawson, noted Antarctic explorer, said in Adelaide today. He was commenting on a London report, that, British climatologists claimed Britain was steadily changing into a temperate country, but were uncertain whether Australia was growing colder as Britain warmed up. The British climatologists said the unreliability of early Australian records made it impossible to prove the belief Australia would become a cold, wet country with snow sports all the year round. Sir Douglas Mawson said: All broader factors bearing on the subject suggest Australia will slowly become warmer and the arid regions even more arid. The world as a whole is now moving from a time of severe glaciation to a period of milder conditions. Polar ice is melting. Such changes are exceedingly slow and hardly register able in a single lifetime. Some climatologists, however, believe within 5,000 or 10,000 years this slow movement toward warmer conditions will have resulted in a permanent and very marked change of Australia’s climate.

Chronicle – July 1930
WHALE FISHERY LOCATED RESULTS OF EXPEDITION
In this article Sir Douglas Mawson summarises the principal objectives achieved in the recent voyage of the Discovery to the Antarctic. A. valuable whale fishery was located off Enderby Laud. Without
any further investigation it can now be definitely asserted that off the coast of Enderby Land there exists a very valuable whale fishery. It would appear that the Norwegian exploring vessel Norvegia
located this whaling ground simultaneously with ourselves. From that fishery, no doubt, millions of pounds worth of products will be recovered during the next few years. That discovery alone is worth
far more than all the cost of our exploring expedition.

The Mail December 1953
Myponga uranium tests begin soon
CONGRATULATIONS were certainly in order for Mr. W. F. Wenham (right), the man responsible for the uranium find at Myponga. Here he is being congratulated by a fellow-bowler. Mr. H. MacGeorge,
at the Willunga Bowling green this afternoon. Official tests will begin early in the New Year on the Myponga uranium strike in the hills 30 miles from Adelaide. Noted geologist Sir Douglas Mawson said today pitchblende was a complex uranium ore and that extraction might be difficult. The fact that it had been found near the surface in the Myponga area augured poorly for the possibilities of the field. As a rule pitchblende was typically found near the surface and was of low quality. The Myponga uranium find is expected to send up all uranium shares when the Stock Exchange opens on January 4.

And our song this week is Spriggina by Professor Flint, snuck in by Steve instead of being selected by our musical curator, Todd Fischer, because it is a song about the South Australian Fossil Emblem, Spriggina, named after the Sprigg family.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h9eRzUOLgw