504 Queensland Mines Ltd (QML) Don't be confused by the chart - the Nabarlek uranium (now fully mined) is effectively controlled by Pioneer Concrete. (That's why it's sitting in its best cement boots at the very top!) Queensland Mines, however, also owns uranium mining tenements in northern Queensland (Mount Isa) and has been a 40% partner with AAR, IOL (now CRA), and Urangesellschaft (Australia) Pty in uranium exploration at Westmoreland (1), where reserves were put at more than 10,000 tonnes in mid-1981 (2).
The Nabalek mine was officially opened in June 1979 at a banshee involving the unveiling of a plaque which was "chewed from the Arnhem escarpment and carried to the site by a huge grader". Illustrious persons then turned "the first sods", as the Age graphically put it. These were the chairman of the Northern Land Council, Gallarwuy Yunupingu, Mr Yamaguchi of the Shikoku Electric Power Company, and Mr K Goto of Kyushu Electric (3). According to the then Australian Deputy Prime Minister, the mine would be "the safest and environmentally the best that could be engineered" (3).
Within a few months, ore samples left by Queensland Mines in the area were found to be 85 times the radiation safety level - a fact which illustrated "the utter contempt with which the mining companies treat the land and the people who live on it", according to the Labor Party MP for Arnhemland, Bob Collins (4).
The Minister for Science and the Environment, Senator Webster, himself reported that radiation levels were "Five to ten times higher than predicted" (5) while miners - many not wearing masks - complained about the dust in their faces and lungs (6).
Controversy over the Nabarlek mine had, in fact, started far earlier. The Woodward Commission in 1974 called the offers made to Oenpelli Aborigines soon after the uranium was discovered, "contemptuous". Woodward also made the important comment: "it is to my mind unthinkable that a completely new scheme of Aboriginal land rights should begin with the imposition of an open-cut mine right alongside a sacred site" (7).
Moreover, when the company claimed they had finally gained Aboriginal "consent" to mine, the official Fox report (Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry) disallowed it (2).
The mine was however, not only crucial to Queensland Mines but also to the new Liberal (ie conservative) Australian government in its desire to open up uranium deposits in the North. Although many of the people in the Oenpelli Aboriginal community were opposed to the mine, one of the key elders - the fledgling Northern Land Council's then chairman, Galurrwuy Yunipingu - was pressured into giving consent (8).
But then, Queensland Mines - and the government - faced sudden Aboriginal opposition, leading to a sit-in on the road to Nabarlek and a court case.
For months the local Aboriginal people had been plagued by company trucks ripping up the road and endangering animals and children. Under section 41 of the Aboriginal Lands Act 1976, miners cannot enter Aboriginal land without a proclamation by the Governor-General, and through an oversight the proclamation had not been given.
But when the Aborigines took their case to court in February 1980, the Fraser government announced it would introduce legislation to retrospectively change the law. Now, instead of traditional Aboriginal land owners being able to challenge parts of agreements made by their (official) negotiating body (the Northern Land Council), they would have to abide by it, even without their consent (2).
Within a year, the Nabarlek deposit was at production stage (9), and the total reserves had been "upped" to 12,000 tonnes (10). Production from the stockpile was expected to be 1,000 tonnes a year (9). Of the total reserves, by July 1981 nearly 3,000 tonnes was contracted to Japan on a 1975-85 contract (the Kyushu and Shikoku Electric Power Companies); about 1400 tonnes to South Korea (contract details not determined) (11); and just over 800 tonnes contracted to the Finnish Toellisuuden Voima Oy Industrins Kraft, between 1981 and 1989 (12). Some uranium was also due to be returned to the Atomic Energy Commission stockpile, to cover uranium borrowed (13).
Out of all this, Queensland Mines made net profits of more than £3M in 1980 (as against a loss of A$62,000 the year before) (14). The Aborigines, through the Northern Land Council, received a mere 5.76% royalty (15).
Queensland Mines' interests in uranium at Westmoreland (northern Queensland) have also attracted the strong opposition of the Aboriginal custodians of the land: Mick Miller, Joyce Hall and Jacob Wolmby of the North Queensland Land Council (a completely Aboriginal body) demanded that Queensland's partners at Westmoreland - Urangesellschaft should get off their land when the NQLC visited Urangesellschaft's offices in West Germany in 1978 (16).
In August 1980, Darwin waterside workers, implementing the ACTU policy against uranium exports, voted for a ban on the exports of Nabarlek uranium. This ban was successful until 1981, when the first consignments of uranium (for Japan) were shipped out of Darwin on a barge from the Philippines (17). Eight "wharfies" were arrested as they picketed the barge (18). In late 1981, the ACTU lifted its ban, and Nabarlek uranium was expected to be exported in early 1982.
In early 1980, Nuclear Fuel speculated that part of the uncommitted Nabarlek production might go to Commonwealth Edison of the USA (19).
The company has two uranium prospects in the Mt Isa area of central Queensland: the first at Skal where inferred reserves are just over 3,000 tonnes of contained U3O8, the second at Valhalla where they are somewhat greater. It also owns the Anderson lode 15km north-east of Mt Isa where inferred uranium ore reserves are just over 1,000 tonnes (21).
Latest news on Westmoreland is that further prospecting has failed to significantly extend the known mineralisation, with the result that "only sufficient works" will be undertaken to enable the partners to maintain the lease (CSR holds 12.65%, IOL 9.75% and Urangesellschaft Aus 37.5%). Reserves of about 11,400 tons have been identified, but the project would require at least 15,000 before development was justified (22).
It is interesting to note that Kathleen Investments was originally incorporated in 1958 to take over the 35% share which Australasian Oil Exploration had in Mary Kathleen Uranium. The final disposal of Kathleen's shares in Mary Kathleen Uranium didn't occur until 1979 (23). Nearly ten years later, in 1967, Kathleen Investments floated Queensland Mines in order partly to consolidate its hold on uranium - and in particular the Westmoreland prospect, then regarded as the country's largest uranium lode. Queensland Mines then held 40% of the Westmoreland JV (along with Mines Administration, the operating company for AAR, which held 12.75%, IOL Petroleum, which held 9.75%, and Urangesellschaft, operator of the now dormant prospect, with 37.5%) (24). In 1974, Kathleen Investments was called "an affiliate of ICI London" (25).
In 1987, Narbalek produced 3 million pounds of U3O8, and the mill was due to close down by the middle of 1988, with delivery commitments over the following few years met by existing inventory. Although the company has not been able to develop further deposits in the area, thanks to opposition from the Northern Land Council (26), Pioneer Concrete announced in March 1988 that it had obtained permission for further exploration (27).
This was the first agreement signed between Northern Territory Aborigines and a mining company, after the passage of amendments to the Land rights Act in 1987 (28). Called a "triumph for good will and common sense in the negotiating process" by NLC chair, Yunupingu, the deal gave Queensland Mines exploration rights under "strict and sophisticated provisions for environmental protection" (29) over Exploration Area 2508.
However, plans to mine this new area - Nabarlek No 2 orebody - had stalled until 1991 (30,31), as the traditional owners failed to negotiate a mining permit. In the meantime, the company reported that it had concluded a "farm-in agreement" with a major uranium producer, to purchase the Nabarlek mill and pay for any future development (30). This "arm in arm" (32) agreement was later revealed to have been with Cogema, which already owns shares in ERA (Ranger) and Pancontinental Jabiluka).
Whether the second Nabarlek deposit can be deemed part of the original orebody, and thus fall within the "three mines" policy of the Federal government, is - as the Friends of the Earth magazine put it in 1991 - "disputable" (33).
SOURCE: "The Gulliver File - Mines, people and land: a global battleground" by Roger Moody.
Published in 1992 by Minewatch, 218 Liverpool Road, London Nl ILE, UK, and WISE-Glen Aplin, Po Box 87, Glen Aplin Q 4381, Australia.
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