Volcanoes used in Chimera, The Rhesus Factor and Stargate SG-1 City of the Gods

As part of a European Union project for Vanuatu, I created a subsidiary educational web site on Vanuatu's volcanoes. Those pages have been reproduced on this site, along with additional large scale images. Since the text was written in 1998, several of these volcanoes have erupted. If you are a student, you will need to consider that when writing your reports. Updated info on Vanuatu's volcanoes can be seen on WOVO's web site. Or John Seach's site. John is also from SE Queensland - just down the road from me. Check out his site. It's very cool, with daily (sometimes hourly) updates of what's happening with volcanoes around the planet.

I would strongly recommend not webnapping any of the photos on the volcano pages in this site, as they are under copyright and most have been sold to other publications including the BBC, National Geographic, and Volcanopost.com. Having said that, I'm happy for them to be used by students for projects, and also by teachers and educators. For larger 300dpi CMYK images for commercial use, please email me: sonny@sonnywhitelaw.com and place 'request photos' in the header.

Ambrym Volcano (Page 144 The Rhesus Factor) is one of the largest volcanoes on the planet. Some (too many...) years ago three of us were the first Europeans to walk across the island. Spooky, primeval. It has two very active lava lakes and the most awesome terrain imaginable. The SCUBA diving in the active underwater vents is truly alien stuff. My favourite place on Earth. I have also used descriptions of the morphology and vulcanology of Ambrym as background to the collapsed caldera in Stargate SG-1 City of the Gods. You can read an article about that, here.

I also used the basic geology of Ambrym in the bioterrorism thriller, Chimera. The islands described in that story are Mathew and Hunter. Yes, they do actually exist but are uninhabited.

Tanna Island has a cute, reliable, safe and easy to photography baby volcano called Yasur. Tourists who thought they were in a theme park have ended up dead - and it wasn't pretty. It's safe if you know what you're doing, but it's still a volcano. Australian Photography magazine published an article (January 2006) that I wrote, titled Photos From Hell, describing in detail how to photograph Yasur. The full sized cover shot for that issue can be seen on the Tanna images page, and a more detailed description of 'how to' capture that cover shot by clicking on the cover image at left (popup windows must be enabled on your browser).

The additional volcanoes in these pages are all part of the Vanuatu family of active mountains. Enjoy.