NEVER PEG A SMALL MINERS CLAIM IN QUEENSLAND

[AtomRat]

Sorry to hear such a story Lefty

Have you put any thought into arguing how you repair any damage therefore no environmental impact is really made. If there's a statement of repair and minimal damage still while the lease takes place etc .. all the best mate. I'm sure the council would have no issue flattening it for a road one day though a.. keep positive

 

[Bobh]

Hi Lefty, if you are looking at further action there are a couple of things to look at first.
Send a registered letter to Dept of Mines asking what avenues of appeals are open to you to pursue. They are required to advise all avenues open to you if Qld is like other states.

Use the FOI (Freedom of Information)process to get time frame of what they knew and when.
If you are looking at going to AAT (Administrative Appeals Tribunal) or legal pathway you will need to get as much info as possible and time lines. Any research you do will save you lawyers time.
The worst that can happen is that you will give the government staff some extra work to do chasing up all this info for you.
I don't know what your personal circumstances are but if you are unemployed, on a pension etc FOI may be no charge.
Good luck in what ever direction you decide to go.

 

[Lefty]

Ok, I managed to get hold of the Mining Registrar this morning. As suspected, it's to do with an ERE.

He tells me that the DMNR have not actually declined my application - they just can't approve it because another government department has implemented an ERE in Reward and my applications happen to be on top of it.

He was pretty good about it actually, despite that I had gone ballistic at him on Friday. He says that if we want to call it quits, he will refund all of our money, not just the bond but the advertising fees etc as well. So that's good.

But if we want to press on, we will have to shell out some large sum to challenge the outcome. It seems unlikely that any of those involved in declaring the ERE have ever actually set foot on the land in question and looked around with their own eyes - they look at a grainy, long-distance photograph taken from space and from that they believe they can state to a certainty that some of the blurry, gray-green blobs are an endangered ecosystem and declare an ERE, shafting anybody in their road.

The Mining Registrar is sending me out the satellite maps and information from which I will try and work out what they are talking about - the vegetation on my claim applications consists mainly of a few gum trees and a swathe of buffle grass, an exotic grass introduced to Australia by accident. It seems they believe it is incumbent on the person who has physically been in the spot to prove what is or isn't there by paying for a botanist to do a vegetation survey, while they can legally declare what is or isn't there without ever having set foot there.

I wonder if these clowns realize that their ERE is actually a shared mining/pastoral lease and that Kielambete station graze their cattle in there and have done so for a long time?

 

[Lefty]

Awaiting details of the ERE - and wondering just how many existing claims and leases might be inside it. If they tried to cancel hundreds of claims because an endangered bush might possibly be growing nearby, there would be another Eureka stockade.

 

[Phoenix76]

Feel for you Lefty. Mate and myself had been looking at some sort of mining lease for gold. The area is an old gold mining reserve, never been cleaned up or rehabilitated, but before we put any money down we did some homework. My mate had a contact at the mines dept and was able to get some good privileged info. After that we decided against it. As many have already said, the powers that be don't want the small miner. They will allow the Adani's of the world because they can con many thousands of dollars out of them over many years. And believe it, Queensland, under the present political persuasion, will side with the green movement and squeeze out the little bloke who doesn't have the resources to fight them. Me and old mate will just stick with a fossickers licence and see what we can find.

 

[Simmo]

I somewhat disagree Pheonix, (although I am waiting for a Land Court decision on a recent permit change....)
They want the money....
The fee's have gone through the roof!!
Frikkin FIRE LEVY..... give me a break!!!
Our leases land values went down, but rates went up.....
Go figure....
money ..money..money..

Lefty, I looked for what I thought would help, and come up with nowt...
Sorry bud.

 

[Lefty]

Ok, they sent me a satellite photo showing the "pink zone" where a small mining-claim is banned (but fossicking is still allowed - for now). It completely consumes my two applications. There are two established, working mining claims very close by - one bloke has lost about 90% of his claim, the other has lost about two-thirds. The bloke who has lost nearly all his claim has his shed on the ERE section so I assume he will be told to pull it down.

They've only showed my tiny section but according to info they sent me, mining is not allowed within 500 metres of an ERE boundary (they highlighted this bit). I guess this means that if an ERE has to have a no-mining buffer zone of 500m all around it, then any ERE must be an absolute minimum of 1 kilometre wide. I want to find out how far this rotten thing goes - it could affect hundreds of established claims in Reward DFL, including those belonging to often low-income earners who live on their claims. The mining legislation states that you may reside on your mining claim as long as you are actually working it - if you suddenly aren't allowed to mine it then you can't live on it and these unfortunate individuals stand to be booted out of their homes. That's the way it reads to me at least.

The there's the issue of rates payable to the Central Highlands Regional Council. I don't agree that rates should be payable in an area where the local council provides zero services (they all stop at the gate of the designated mining areas and the graded gravel roads become two wheel ruts through the bush). Nonetheless, we have to pay. But if I lost 90% of my claim, I would be refusing to pay rates on something that I suddenly could not use.

I had thought that those with environmentalist leaning typically also leaned toward notions of social justice - but that's not what I'm seeing here. I'm seeing a bunch of empowered capitol city-based greens who will happily squash little people, including some of society's more vulnerable to achieve their aims. A shrub is more important than the people whose home the place is to them it seems.

 

[Lefty]

I just received this response to my posts regarding this issue on another forum, from a claimholder on the field.....

I feel your pain mate! We just had a call telling us a claim we have had for a year is now not recognised due to the EPA. Funny how people can dig on the surface yet we can't underground. I need to find out more info. I suppose we are lucky our original claim is ok.

So they are going to just cancel existing claims because some rare bush might be growing as far as half a kilometre away from the boundary of the claim!!!!!

Do these inner city greenie deadheads even realize that for some people this is their livelihood and their home?

That there are thousands of small claimholders in the area and that they are the lifeblood of the area and of the towns of Rubyvale and sapphire?

That they supply the regional hub town of Emerald with a not-insignificant (for a small centre) amount of funding through rates?

Have these people even looked to see that sapphire mining is the reason that these regional communities exist and that it is principally done by small operators with very modest equipment moving a very modest amount of dirt - not by mammoth coal mining-type operations?

Do they even care? Or do they just consider small miners as some type of environmental pest to be stamped out?

 

[Lefty]

Ok, this bloke is not in reward and was given the same spiel about a rare bush - it sounds gemfields wide!

 

[ml6009]

Lefty go into mines online maps clearly shows the restricted areas