The Timbarra mine owners, Delta Gold, have announced that they are working on a closure plan which they intend to have in place by the year's end. Just a business decision, they say, and both the Mayor of Tenterfield and the NSW Minister for Mines and Fish agree and are disappointed. In just three years the promoters of the Timbarra Mine have gone from proclaiming it as offering long term sustainable employment to Tenterfield folk to apologising regretfully that it was never really a viable operation. But the fierce and determined witness of the activists who locked on at blockades, clamoured at the gates and bled the miners in the courts, had nothing to do with it. Or so we are assured.
Denial aint just a river in Egypt.
It runs deep in any ruling class that has lost contact with the land and the people. Much is at stake here. If the corruption of mining industry politics and the truth of miners' lies were fully known, the very foundation of investment in cyanide heap leach gold mining would fall apart. But the denial is theirs, not ours. Not everyday a gold mine is closed by environmental opposition.