More than 100 people attended the invitation-only event at the Walcha Sports Club to meet executives from both MirusWind and Energy Estate.

MirusWind was founded in 2003, and according to the Walcha Energy Project website, has extensive experience developing large-scale renewable energy and infrastructure projects.

Founder Mark Waring has been in negotiation with local landholders regarding a wind farm for more than a decade.

“I have information evenings for the landholders maybe once a year, and I’ve been doing that for quite a long time while the project has been gradually evolving - this was another one of those,”  Mr Waring said.

“They are not public meetings. We invite people who have signed leases and license holders, and in this particular case I invited members from Walcha Council as well.”

Mr Waring said he usually gets 50 to 70 people to the meeting  and this was the biggest gathering to date.

“There was a real buzz in the room because we were talking about the recent announcement and what is actually happening,” he said.

“In the dim dark past, it was about policy and why things are not happening. This meeting was really about introducing to the meeting my new partners Energy Estate.”

Initially, a wind farm proposal, the MirusWind Walcha project has now evolved into a massive pumped hydro, wind and solar operation under the new name The Walcha Energy Project.

Mr Waring’s new partner Energy Estate is an advisory firm and promotes itself as a business accelerator, focused on driving the transformation of the global energy sector.

Energy Estate principal Vincent Dwyer was on hand to explain that the enormous size of the overall project means it will be broken down into sequential smaller projects. This will also aid the securement of capital investment partners for each phase.

The first projects scheduled to be developed, involving more than 50 landholders, are Salisbury Solar and Winterbourne Wind. Construction is expected to begin in 2020 and Mr Waring said the majority of landholders already have leases or license agreements .

“It doesn't need everybody because it is such a large space – there is a lot of flexibility about where things might go – if one or two landholders prefer not to then that is fine we just move on.”

Mr Dwyer said they would continue to work with the community and landowners as they progressively bring in development capital.

“That will be an ongoing process really for the life of the project,” he said. 

“Certainly in this development phase we have all the core landholders engaged, and we will keep working with them in the coming six months to put even more substance around the project.”