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The Environmental Legacy of Queenstown's Mining Era
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Queenstown’s surrounding mountains look almost lunar. Bare rock. Rust coloured slopes. Hardly any vegetation. The landscape wasn’t always like this. In the late 1800s, massive copper smelting operations filled the valley with sulphur fumes. Combined with aggressive logging for fuel, the pollution stripped vegetation from entire hillsides. Early photographs show forests that disappeared within a few decades. At the time, mining profits were considered more important than environmental damage. Today Queenstown is proud of its mining heritage. But the dramatic landscape visitors photograph today is actually the result of one of the most extreme industrial transformations in Australian history. Follow
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Photographic
art, news, personal or emotional
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Susan
Mark
