Emails show Yeelirrie uranium mine approved a month before 2019 election after pressure from Cameco
By national science, technology and environment reporter Michael Slezak and the Specialist Reporting Team s Penny Timms
Posted
WedWednesday 13
updated
ThuThursday 14
JanJanuary 2021 at 1:19am
The Yeelirrie uranium project has a long and sordid history and a sod has not yet been turned.
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The dry red dirt around Yeelirrie station looks utterly inhospitable.
Sitting about 800 kilometres from Perth, in the far north of Western Australia s Goldfields region, the dry and remote land is dotted with spinifex, some small bushes and trees and not much else.
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As a subterranean ecologist, Stefan Eberhard has spent his working life transfixed by caves and the creatures that live inside them.
He began cave diving as as young man, and was part of a team which discovered a vast underwater cathedral inside Tasmanian s Junee cave system.
One of the greatest adventures of Stefan s working life has been inside the caves which lie under the Nullarbor Plains, called Dolines.
They are big enough to park three trains side by side, and the water is so clear it s invisible.
The race to explore the Nullarbor s dolines took off in earnest in the 1980s, when teams of Australian and French cave divers began using underwater scooters and hand-made rafts to plummet further and further into their depths.