On this trip we perfected our vegetation survey methodology. All trip objectives were achieved - five vegetation surveys were conducted on separate one hectare quadrats in Mamungari, new site photos were taken at over 70 existing quadrat photopoints, bird and ant recordings were made, seed was collected for our friends at the Australian Arid Lands Botanic Garden, a stand of the rare Eucalyptus wyolensis was located and photographed, our interpretative trail information was brought up to date and links with the Ceduna rangers and the Maralinga Tjarutja community were consolidated.
We also took note of some recent mining exploration activity outside the park. Several new shotlines have been bulldozed or re-opened. Some run up to the park boundaries. As this activity is taking place outside Mamungari, the Friends of the GVD has adopted a watching brief only. We do not wish to comment on the appropriateness or otherwise of these tracks. We do believe that information on the locations of these tracks should be freely available, so we have developed a map showing this as accurately as we can. Click here to see the map - the thick black lines show what we believe to be newly bulldozed tracks. Please contact us if you can provide more detailed information or if you have any other comment on this map. We thank Hema Maps for permission to use their base map.
Robbie Sleep and Tammy Cox from the DEH Ceduna office were able to accompany us for a couple of days, providing excellent guidance and information.
Full details may be found in the 2008 Field Trip Report and the photos below are arranged to tell the story of the trip.
Click an image to enlarge it
