If you've spent any time on the Stuart Highway north of Mataranka in the last couple of months, you've probably passed some distinctive looking road trains carting iron ore towards Darwin. For the past six weeks, they have been steadily coming out of Northern Territory Iron Ore 's mine which is part of something called the Roper Valley Iron Ore Project . What travellers on the Stuart Highway won't see is what those trucks are starting to do to country 150km east of the main highway. I travel along this road - the Roper Highway - usually twice a week. The reddening of the area near the mine is noticeable. A week ago, I stopped to look at just how much dust was coating the roadside vegetation and the pics I tweeted caught the attention of ABC's Country Hour and the Environment Centre NT. Took a closer look at what iron ore trucking is doing to this section of the Roper Highway. This is after trucks have only been running for six weeks. See sub-tweets for video @Envi...
Non-Indigenous (i.e. munanga) linguist doing a bunch of stuff in the Katherine Region with languages (and more) occasionally sharing his thoughts...