Glenaladale was hit hard by bushfires in February 2014 which burnt more than 6000ha destroying homes, farming infrastructure, fences and pasture and causing significant stock losses. While people were still in shock, burying animals and trying to reconstruct their lives a representative from Kalbar Resources arrived on fire impacted properties and wanting to do exploration drilling. This representative claimed he did not know a fire had occurred – “he was standing on burnt ground”. No compassion or empathy was shown to the landowners.
This complete lack of sensitivity and understanding has been a hallmark of interactions since then, and was further evidenced with Kalbar claiming at a community meeting later that year at Mossiface that they would focus their mining at Glenaladale because there was only a ‘handful of sheep farmers, a few lettuce growers and a burnt out blue-gum plantation’ there.
The socio-economic and health studies being done for the EES show they have little interest in the well-being of our local community and in fact most deliberately avoid looking at what we as a community will have to endure but only look at impacts more than 5 kilometres away
At a meeting at Glenaladale in December 2014, one of Kalbar’s directors openly stated that if the community did not want a mine they would not proceed. An independent survey done since then has shown that over 82% of impacted landowners on the project footprint do not want mineral sands mining on their land and yet Kalbar persist.
How will this mine affect our community
Livelihoods
Dust
Noise
Mine-Free Glenaladale acknowledges the Gunaikurnai people as the Traditional Owners of the country on which we live and work. We pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in our region and to their elders past, present and future.
