Two weeks after Central Otago District Council said it was working with Santana Minerals to resolve the problem, the fence near Tarras barring access to the council-owned historic Shepherds Creek road on Ardgour Station was still there.
Archaeologist and ecologist Matt Sole stepped over it, GPS in one hand and survey stick in the other, ready to log archaeological sites while tramping the route towards the Dunstan Mountains ridge line, deviating south over land protected by a Department of Conservation covenant and returning via the council-owned Thomson Gorge Rd.
The journey traverses a landscape packed with 19th-century gold-rush relics and biodiversity clinging on despite farming. Santana wants fast-track permission to replace the Shepherds Creek area with waste piles and a processing plant, and replace the Thomson Gorge area with four open-cast pits reaching gold ore bodies known as SRX, Rise and Shine and Come in Time.
After the fence, the first point of interest was a giant Santana digger, parked like a sentry. Further up, a padlocked gate looked new and a Santana sign proclaimed it should be kept locked always. Mr Sole climbed over.
A Santana contractor leaned out his truck window, asked if Mr Sole was a protester and said he would report his presence to Santana management. Mr Sole said he was a member of the public with permission to walk the road, confirmed by Outdoor Access Commission.
‘‘If we were protesters, we would have placards.’’
This week, the district council’s acting group manager, Quinton Penniall, said his team had not walked the road but he was ‘‘satisfied’’ Santana was not to blame for structures blocking the road. They were ‘‘historic ... pre-dating Santana’’ and a locked gate was being addressed ‘‘with the landowner’’.
Santana is the imminent landowner - having bought Ardgour Station subject to Overseas Investment Office permission.
More importantly, council staff and Santana have been holding talks since April on the critical issue of whether to let Santana take over the land occupied by the two roads and 20m either side of them.
Ownership or permission from landowners is required by the Crown Minerals Act (CMA) before a mine can open and that includes Santana getting permission from the council to use its road strips. Parts of Bendigo station, that the mine would also sit on, are for sale and Santana doubtless wants that, too.
Community group Sustainable Tarras, which opposes the mine, objects to any decision being made by the council about Santana taking its public roads before the fast-track process happens, successfully or unsuccessfully.
‘‘It makes little sense for CODC to consider any agreement until the effects of the mine are shared and understood, and only then with full public consultation,’’ Sustainable Tarras deputy chairman Rob van der Mark said.
Vigilance warning
Beyond the locked gate there are Santana access tracks and exploratory bore holes but also ancient kowhai trees in hidden valleys, tiny native ferns, scented tree daisies and geckos sunning themselves on rocks. There are old mining water races, the ruins of stone huts lived in by 19th-century mining families for around 35 years, and abandoned items that archaeologists call ‘‘artefact scatter’’.
It has been argued by Santana supporters that the area has always been mined, so why not continue? Mr Sole spotted a half-buried 19th-century gold-mining shovel, worn down at the sharp end, and a small area where the surface had been scraped lightly by old-time miners and nature had reclaimed.
For comparison purposes, the biggest pit Santana proposes is 200m deep and 1km long.
In the Doc conservation covenant, that aims to protect much of the area Santana wants, a 1993 report by archaeologist Jill Hamel is mentioned, called The Rich Fields of Bendigo.
The ODT dug out the report, which stresses the importance of seeing the area’s many archaeological sites as ‘‘systems within a landscape, rather than separate entities’’.
In the report, Dr Hamel called for ‘‘vigilence’’ in upholding the landscape’s protection within the Resource Management Act, which fast-track law is now over-riding.
Multiple protections
The 1890s Shepherds Creek road is a monument in itself, with stacked schist culverts, original boundary pegs and a parallel ancient pack track, but it is struggling to stay preserved due to modern use. A culvert previously protected by a barrier erected by archaeologists now lies buried by road rubble.
Mr Sole took photos and reported the damage to Doc, but protection of these archaeological sites is supported by more than one avid archaeologist taking note.
Two more reports reveal that a significant part of the landscape Santana intends to mine has protection from Heritage New Zealand, the government-funded Crown entity that has both protection and enforcement powers under the Pouhere Taonga Act 2014.
The Bendigo Quartz Reefs Historic Area, listed and defined in a Heritage NZ 2015 report, includes the Bendigo historic and scenic reserves plus a third, large finger of land not shown in Doc tramping leaflets. The historic area stretches towards the Dunstan Mountains ridge line, broadly following the southerly flank of Thomson Gorge and areas Santana wants to mine.
The Heritage NZ report says the area has ‘‘scores’’ of interconnected archaeological sites from 1860s alluvial mining onwards and a ‘‘ghost town’’ atmosphere.
The other report that mentions the historic area is by consultancy firm Heritage Properties and was commissioned by Santana recently to consider the archaeological sites specifically above the SRX ore.
Santana has not published the report on its website. Santana’s ‘‘public engagement map’’, showing where it intends to place its mine, does not show the historic area.
An overlay of Santana’s map, and a map of the historic area, indicates that Santana plans to dig one of its four pits, named SRX, significantly inside the historic area.
Two more pits - Rise and Shine and Come in Time - appear perilously close to the historic area and close to the historic Come in Time stamper battery in the Bendigo Historic Reserve. The battery, renovated in 2007, is only a five-minute walk from Thomson Gorge Rd.
Santana’s map also does not indicate that a larger part of the land Santana intends mine falls within the Doc conservation covenant and is designated an Outstanding Natural Landscape by the council.
In short, there is protection from three government agencies in the areas Santana intends to mine.
Planned destruction
Mr Sole said Santana’s plan would cause catastrophic, and partly undocumented, loss of landscape, archaeology and ecology.
‘‘Archaeological surveys have been done for the purpose of avoidance of archaeological sites during drilling whereas now there is a planned destruction of whole areas,’’ he said.
‘‘Taking a photo of something that should be avoided is not the same as the higher level of recording required to consider loss ... That would take serious archaeological work.’’
Dunedin lawyer and walking guide author Antony Hamel, son of Dr Hamel, thinks that even if some sites are saved, such as the Come in Time battery, its proximity to modern gold mining ‘‘would be horrific’’.
‘‘You would be walking beside a mine on a scale that is nothing to do with the pick and shovel mining of the past and I wouldn’t go there.’’
Handing back membership
Last month, a regional heritage charity said it was ‘‘encouraged’’ that Santana Minerals was planning to undertake ‘‘stabilisation work’’ at the Come in Time battery and ‘‘provide alternative, improved, public access’’ to it.
The proposed access would be via a 8km round-trip walking trail, rather than a five-minute walk.
Otago Goldfields Heritage Trust president Warwick Hawker, a former economic development manager at the council, said his organisation does ‘‘not oppose’’ Santana’s plan, but also supports ‘‘ensuring continued public access’’ to the Rise and Shine, Come in Time and SRX deposits.
‘‘These sites represent important elements of Central Otago’s goldfields history that should remain accessible to the public.’’
When questioned about calling for public access to areas Santana intends to dig through, Mr Hawker expressed support of modern gold mining for economic development reasons and said modern gold mines might even become heritage sites of the future.
‘‘I take a view that development has impacts. You can’t preserve everything.’’
He said his views were shared by his committee and would be aired at the trust’s AGM weekend this month, which Santana is speaking at.
The trust has Santana funding, including $60,000 for a gold-panning event, and the trust’s website describes Oceana Gold’s Macraes mine as a ‘‘crown jewel’’ of Otago mining.
Mr Sole was previously awarded life membership of the trust - and is now handing it back.
‘‘It is very sad. The trust is a lost cause. Any decision by it to support or oppose the mine could only be based on a robust archaeological assessment of what would be lost and that hasn’t been done.
‘‘If the mine goes ahead it will destroy the ambience of a living museum. There may be some features left but they will be in a desecrated landscape.’’
The ODT asked Santana to confirm its plans for mining on the historic sites, comment on the historical value of the land in its opinion, and comment on its negotiations with the council about the roads. Santana did not respond.
