The holder of the first mining lease to be cancelled in NSW feels he is being used as an example to other leaseholders, and strongly refutes the claims made by the NSW Department of Planning and Environment used as the basis for the historic move.
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Dr Hans-Dieter Hensel has held the lease since 1994, but has been forging an international reputation in geoscience for more than four decades. In fact he said he secured the quarry site – 14 kilometres southwest of Tenterfield off Mole River Rd – as a facility to allow him to ‘get his hands dirty’ and maintain his knowledge of the practical aspect of his business. He provides scientific and technical expertise to the construction, mining and geotechnical industries, and considers himself arguably the world’s most qualified quarry master.
The Tenterfield quarry output was marketed as New England Beige, and Dr Hensel said it’s a unique product that proved popular thanks to its neutral, sandstone-like colour. He said New England Beige has found its way into some major pieces of architecture, including the first Government House in Sydney, the Bonner Building, Mineral House and Aquus Building in Brisbane, the Melbourne Cricket Ground and a number of high-end residences.
Around 80 blocks (each 6-14 tonnes) of New England Beige have been quarried from the site over the years, by Dr Hensel himself. The quarry has remained idle for the past 10-11 years, however, since Chinese imports led to the price for the local product falling out of the market. The result was a selling price that is 40 per cent the cost of production.
“You can’t continue to lose money,” he said, “and I’m being punished for that.”
He was also charged with a purported failure to fulfil annual financial commitments on the lease. He claims that this is blatantly untrue, the department asserting that he could not use his usual daily salary to fulfil the commitment. He said the department also claimed that he hadn’t notified them of the actual days of his attendance at his own quarry.
“Is this Australia?” he asked.
He contends there are no full-time granite quarries operating in Australia these days, and that there are half-a-dozen other quarries in the state that have been dormant for more than 20 years. He questions whether the annual expenditure requirements have been paid by the big companies.
In addition to failure to use the resource, Dr Hensel was charged with failing to provide a plan of operations for the past several years. Dr Hensel said this was due to a hostile relationship with the landowner where he was wary of bringing potential clients to the site, or of being able to access the material himself.
“Interest in quarrying waned, as did any promotion of the product,” he said. “It was not possible to provide a plan that would have been meaningful and correct. When the situation became less hazardous, a plan of operations was submitted.”
He also argues he did submit annual reports.
“Though brief, there is no set format in providing an annual report stating “no extraction activity’,” he said.
The final charge was failure to fully pay a security deposit, relating to the rehabilitation of the site. Dr Hensel said when his existing mineral claim was converted by the department to a mining lease in 2013 there was a 2000 per cent increase in the security deposit.
“This alone makes a boutique granite quarry operation nonviable commercially,” he said.
“The footprint of my quarry is so small – effectively 10x5 metres – that a $10,000 security deposit is unsustainable. Is this the aim of the NSW government?”
Dr Hensel said he has been informed by the regulator that the $10,000 is required to progressively rehabilitate the vertical faces of two granite boulders.
“Why would you want to rehabilitate a vertical face when this could be the next slab to be produced?” he said, “and what would be the method of rehabilitation? The department has not been able to provide a methodology.”
“Any dimension quarry should be viewed as an artisanal achievement and one that should be handed down in the family. It should be there forever, as it is in every other part of the world.”
Having recently completed a four-year geology degree Dr Hensel said his eldest son was gearing up to take over the quarry, especially now that a change of landholder may have resolved access issues, but the NSW government’s actions have killed off those plans.
He considered taking the matter to the Land and Environment Court, but on legal advice has concluded it would be better to walk away because of the costs involved. For the above “offences’ he still faces court proceedings on a $1250 fine and late costs of $65.
He also has a quarry in North Queensland, where he said there have been no such dramas.
“There’s a strong undercurrent of corruption,” Dr Hensel said, but that investigations by himself and the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) failed to find anything concrete. He is pressing for Minister for Mines Don Harwin and local federal member Barnaby Joyce to further investigate the matter.
“I describe it as a set of bulldogs trying to bring down a tall poppy.”
He feels he acts as an ambassador for Australia at his presentations to international symposiums and is regularly asked about investing in Australian industry, but feels at a loss as to how to respond.
“What on earth can I say to them?” he said
