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.
But, just metres below the surface, there's an ancient network of drowned caves teeming with life.
Millions of years ago the rainforests that once inhabited this area disappeared.
And the creatures that lived in the leaf litter migrated below the surface, adapting and evolving to life in perpetual darkness.
They lost their eyes. They lost their colour. They grew strange, long limbs to help them navigate in the darkness.
In that ancient labyrinth below the outback cattle station, these strange little animals, called stygofauna, now thrive. And many don't exist anywhere else on Earth.
The region is also home to the Tjiwarl traditional owners, including Shirley Wonyabong, who likes to return to the area to camp.
She said the area, her country, made her feel calm.
"I just come out here to see where I grew up," she said, adding it was a place she could go and never feel frightened or worried.
But among the caves and ancient landscape something else is drawing international attention to the area, threatening to disturb that calm: Australia's largest untouched deposit of uranium.
A massive uranium mine planned for the location by Canadian corporate giant Cameco will carve a trench through the landscape 10 kilometres long, lowering water levels and disrupting the relatively untouched aquifers.
The ABC can reveal the mine was approved by the former federal environment minister Melissa Price without key protections strongly and repeatedly recommended by the Government's own experts.
It's an approval that occurred on the eve of the 2019 election, which most expected the Government to lose.
And it occurred following intervention by the foreign mining company and then-resources minister Matt Canavan, both of whom asked the process to be expedited.
It's an environmental approval process some now worry has signed the death warrant for unique animals federal environmental laws are supposed to protect.
A 'shabby process'
After the surprise pre-election approval of the mine in 2019, the Australian Conservation Foundation began a year-long investigation using Freedom of Information laws to find out what occurred behind closed doors.
It found hundreds of pages of emails, presentations and briefings that tell the story of the mine's approval.
"It has been a shabby process from the get-go," Dave Sweeney from the Australian Conservation Foundation said.
"What we've seen through Yeelirrie is backroom deals, 11th hour and rushed approvals, broken promises and bypassed protections."
The saga of the mine's approval has been ongoing for years. But it took a turn in 2017 when it won its first crucial approval from the then West Australian state government.
Cameco's application to the WA government was assessed by the state's Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), which recommended the government block the mine from going ahead because it risked sending those underground animals extinct.
But the Liberal-National government in power at the time went against the advice of its EPA and approved the mine.
The decision came just two weeks before it called the state election it would ultimately lose by the biggest margin in WA's history.
But federal environmental approval was still required if the mine was to proceed.
The newly discovered documents show the federal environment department proposed several conditions, including that Cameco had to demonstrate it would not cause the extinctions of the rare stygofauna.
In 2017, a presentation to federal environment department officials shows Cameco lobbied to get that condition changed, writing it was "not realistic and not likely to be achieved — ever!"
But experts from the environment department weren't swayed, with the condition forcefully recommended to the minister
Meanwhile, as the department and minister considered the mine's approval, the Canadian miner got anxious about the delays.
'We are rapidly running out of time'
In February 2019, Cameco Australia general manager Simon Williamson wrote to the heads of the environment department urging them to hurry up.
"I am becoming increasing [sic] concerned that we will not see a final decision on this project prior to an election," he wrote.
Once an election is called, the government enters "caretaker mode" and convention dictates decisions, like the Yeelirrie approval, can't be made until the new government is formed.
" … we are rapidly running out of time. I reckon you have about a week to engage the minister," Mr Williamson told the senior bureaucrats.
The company also urged the then-resources minister, Senator Canavan, to help hurry the process along.
Cameco met with the minister in WA's Goldfields region.
Senator Canavan then lobbied on the miner's behalf, first writing to Josh Frydenberg when he was environment minister in 2018, and then Ms Price, asking them to "expeditiously" assess the proposal.
Cameco confirmed to the ABC it was concerned about how long the approval was taking. It said that since June 2018, it followed up with the department "on a weekly basis".
It said none of that was out of the ordinary.
As speculation grew that Prime Minister Scott Morrison was about to call a federal election, there was a flurry of activity rushing to get the mine approved.
Emails between the department, Cameco, Senator Canavan's office and the then environment minister Ms Price became increasingly urgent.
At 9:31pm on 10 April, the night before Mr Morrison called the federal election, the complete "decision package" — more than 50 files and hundreds of pages — was emailed to Ms Price, in Geraldton, Western Australia.
Nearly a week after the election had been called — in the midst of the caretaker period — the signed approval was received by the environment department.
The approval was dated April 10, meaning Ms Price signed it late at night, within hours of being emailed the hundreds of pages on the last possible day.
However, when the environment minister granted final approval, the one key condition — the one requiring the miner to show it wouldn't cause any extinctions — was gone.
Yeelirrie a 'hotspot in a hotspot'
The man who discovered the animals at Yeelirrie, Stefan Eberhard, is worried about them disappearing, comparing it to other natural wonders people know more about.
"Why should we care if all the fish in the Great Barrier Reef go extinct? Won't the world be a poorer place?" Dr Eberhard said.
He discovered the creatures in 2009 and 2010 under contract by BHP before it sold the mine to Cameco.
BHP hired Dr Eberhard to do surveys required for environmental approval.
Dr Eberhard, now a subterranean ecologist and expert cave diver, said they were unique animals, independently evolving from ground-dwelling bugs over millions of years.
And, he said, they could teach us about the history of the Australian continent and about evolution itself.
He said although mining projects would often endanger strange underground animals — and that might be unavoidable and a trade-off society was willing to make — the situation at Yeelirrie was unique.
"It has this exceptional richness of subterranean fauna species, which is really exceptional in Western Australia. And Western Australia is a hotspot globally. So this is a hotspot in a hotspot," he said.
"This is just not another aquifer with some species that might go extinct."
The aquifer there is just 17 kilometres long but is home to about 100 species of subterranean animals.
"What's the point in having a process that is designed to conserve biodiversity if that process ultimately fails?" Dr Eberhard said.
Cameco's Australian chief, Mr Williamson, told the ABC the proposed condition requiring the miner to show it would not cause any extinctions was "not realistic" because of the difficulties monitoring them.
However, he said he was confident the works were designed to protect the environment and species.
"The state and federal approvals include several requirements for work to be undertaken which, when implemented, will provide protection for subterranean fauna," he said.
Cameco said it stood by its decision to pressure the government to approve the project before the election.
"Cameco was concerned that the election itself or any subsequent change in minister (regardless of the outcome of the election) might further delay the approval process which had already taken over two years after the state approval was granted."
Jobs vs extinction
The ABC sent a series of questions to Ms Price, who was dumped as environment minister following the 2019 election. She declined to be interviewed for this story and passed questions to Sussan Ley, the current environment minister.
Ms Ley said she would not revisit decisions made by the previous minister.
Senator Canavan, who resigned as resources minister in February, said there was nothing unusual about the approval or in his lobbying for the project.
He rejected the suggestion it was rushed through at the last minute.
"It took 10 years to go from referral to approval," he said. "That's not rushed on anyone's measure and anyone who tries to say it is so is arguing against reality.
"There was a significant assessment of this project. That is underlined also by the detailed conditions that were put in place, conditions I looked at very closely myself."
Senator Canavan said he did not believe environmental laws designed to protect species from extinction were intended to be used in instances like Yeelirrie.
"Most of those rare animals are stygofauna that are only visible under a microscope and have some certain genetic uniqueness based on the lack of travel that they do between different regions," Senator Canavan told the ABC.
"So we've got to be careful about how we apply these laws in these instances so they don't lead to absurd situations where people can't have jobs because of an artificial definition of different types of species."
Dr Eberhard says the science was very clear — these animals are unique and have evolved independently from other similar-looking species over millions of years.
"This is not arbitrary distinction between species. It's proven beyond doubt that this richness is real — it's not an arbitrary construction in the minds of scientists."
The Australian Conservation Foundation felt regardless of the science, the process was broken.
"It's a shabby process that has been driven by the promise — not the proof — of a dollar," Mr Sweeney said.
"It has ignored the proof of extinction. And that is the wrong balance."
'Our ancestors are watching'
Cameco said the mine would advance "at a pace aligned with market conditions" — or in other words, when the price of uranium goes up.
The current price of uranium is too low to make the mine economically viable.
The sector value has failed to recover from an oversupply issue it experienced in 2011 exacerbated by the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.
And with energy markets in a state of flux, predicting the future is difficult.
Back at the campsite is Vicky Abdulla, another Tjiwarl woman who, along with Ms Wonyabong, wants the mine to be stopped.
She said they would keep fighting to protect their country.
"Our ancestors are watching over all of us, keeping our country protected," she said, sitting under a shrubby tree near the proposed mine site.
"I've got the feeling they're all here. They'll be sitting down watching us, you know. I can feel them here, in our spirit.
"All we want is to look after our country, all I want is to protect our country."
Editor's note: This story has been updated to clarify the scientific evolution and uniqueness of the subterranean fauna.