Australia: Military, Minerals And Mining

Northern Territory is central to The Plan

Jacky Green, Heart of Country, 2013. Collection Australian National Uni.

Nov 26, 2021

The removal of Binjari and Rockhole residents continues to defy any logical explanation offered by the medical tyranny. With no deaths, cases are low-probability infection, high likelihood false positives, blamed on an unproven virus.

The vaccination drive and land clearance remain obvious reasons for deploying the army to conduct house raids and cart off locals to the Centres for National Resilience. We are witnessing the Niemöller effect, telegraphing a message to the rest of the population. Martin Niemöller wrote the confessional poem: "First they came for…”

There have been no reported cases of alleged Covid in Northern Territory during the past 24 hours. The Health Minister Natasha Fyles said NT's cluster stood at 52 cases. Due the the logic of close contacts that has resulted in the identification of 490 close contacts, of which 470 are in isolation and 455 have returned negative COVID test results, according to ABC's garbled report.

Northern Territory has leapt up the vaccination charts, placing it ahead of most of the rest of Australia. Whether the people are being sterilized, hygienicized or purified before more British and U.S. military troops arrive in NT remains moot.

The AUKUS deal was touted in September as “the most significant shift in Australia's defence direction in decades, the centrepiece of the trilateral security partnership." It could trigger a "major enhancement" in the 2,500 U.S. marines who use the area. [1]

The expansion had already been announced of the United States Force Posture Initiatives (USFPI), to include new rotations of land, sea and air cooperation (at the 2021 Australia-US Ministerial Consultations).

AUKUS takes this considerably further with multi-nation military exercises and a collective deterrence strategy, "extending from countering China’s grey-zone coercion to preparing for high-intensity conflict." [2]

Northern Territory is much bigger than you’d think from the nickname "the top end" used by Australian commentators. It comprises the geographic heart of the country, furthest from any shore. That is where the US satellite surveillance base Pine Gap is located, outside Alice Springs. Originally disguised as a station for space research it is a CIA-run signals intelligence centre using US satellites in geosynchronous orbit over the equator. Classified and a strategic jewel in the crown, it is also used to coordinate air strikes. [3]

If you're my age one of the books on the school reading list was A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute but despite the town's Anglo-Celtic character, the Northern Territory has the largest proportion of aboriginal residents by population at 32 per cent compared with an average of 4 per cent. [4]

Joint military training takes place during the dry season, May to Oct, closer to the U.S. Marines' Robertson Barracks in Darwin, at modest sites on the edge of Litchfield and Kakadu national parks.

The lease by China's Longbridge since 2015 of the port of Darwin might also impinge on national security since defence analysts have flagged it as a practical obstacle to the offloading of sensitive equipment. The Territory also lacks storage for tanks and armoured vehicles. While Australia has no shortage of space, military exercises and training might require considerably more than currently assigned.

Traveling for three hours from Darwin through Kakadu National Park along National Highway 1, the Daly River basin, where Katherine sits, offers open space where military might want to strike camp or build storage facilities to house US army assets, including vehicles.

Miners strike gold

Sixty kilometers north of Katherine is Mount Todd, described by Vista Gold, of Denver, Colorado, as the largest undeveloped gold project in Australia. The definitive feasibility study is 80 per cent complete, according to Vista's September third quarter filing, though development has been delayed by the government's COVID-related travel restrictions.

Exploration and drilling will continue through 2022 and so far it’s been positive: 18 drill holes have struck gold or gold-bearing structures.

According to the planning submission, affected residents include Katherine, Pine Creek, Werenbun, Rockhole, Binjari, Gorge Camp, Kalano, and Eva Valley. It will however offer some of the 450 jobs (at peak) to residents. [5]

The minerals business is naturally secretive. If you find deposits you don't go shooting your mouth off but plunge into deep politics to secure the licence first.

The skills of Fortescue Metals in Western Australia made the headlines in 2016 when it successfully beat rivals at least 30 times in one year, to secure mining rights in the Pilbara, using access to data before it became public.

Mineral rich

Rockhole was identified in 2008 as "part of one of the most prospective regions in Northern Territory," an area which contains uranium, gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, tin, tungsten, bismuth, cadmium, platinum and palladium. [6]

Katherine and its surrounds were the location, until the 1950s of the Maranboy tin mine. Today limestone is a key resource. Katherine, Binjari and Rockhole sit on the eastern side of the Daly River basin on a limestone outcrop shared with the Mataranka limestone mine. [7]

Limestone is essential for quicklime smelting of metals like copper, zinc, iron and steel, for water filtration and scrubbing gas emissions as well as building materials and cement. The area also contains flourite, another aid to smelting.

The Australian government has just completed a four-year, $100 mn project, Exploring for the Future to develop new resources. This revealed undisclosed resources worth up to $12 billion AUD, 600 km southeast of Katherine. The announcement is cagey but suggests a similarity to Glencore's Ernest Henry mine near Mount Isa — one of the largest copper-gold mines in Australia. [8]

While copper, iron, nickel and titanium are found in other territories, Northern is prominent in the following, by per centage of identified reserves nationally: [9]

• Manganese 57 - used as an alloy with stainless steel, for rubber, glass, ceramics and fertilizer

• Zinc 24 - galvanizing, batteries

• Lead 20 - electronics, radiation shields, ammunition

• Silver 9 - nuclear and electronics, LED and RFID chips, bio-electronics

• Uranium 8 - nuclear

• Diamond 7 - jewellery and industrial

• Gold 6 - jewellery and electronics

• Bauxite 1 - used to create aluminium

• Iron 1 - used to make alloyed steels

The plan

Whose is the plan? Your guess is as good as anyone’s. The Indian Ocean and the Indonesian archipelago form one of the world’s key strategic areas. If you take a completely different region, The Sahel, in Africa, you find that the same countries, especially the UK, the U.S. and China, have their ambitions set on control of its minerals. It’s the same story in Australia.

Precocious military plans such as AUKUS do not mean they aim to cut China out of the pie. That would be barely feasible, given China’s financial presence in the country. Rather it suggests a desire to play kingmaker, to wield the deciding influence on who gets access to minerals.

China is, after all, manufacturer to the Smart Cities. The clipped military talk of strategic objectives serves to obscure the close collaboration between vested interests.

Mining giants like Glencore and Billiton are owned by the usual suspects. Names like BlackRock and Qatar Holding are the world’s ultimate middlemen, standing guard over the world’s minerals and access to its commodities.

As with Afghanistan, you may see the national flags being lowered but the The Investors will likely remain, their hands scratching at soil the colour of dried blood, their fingernails flecked with purple-green fluorite, gold and many powdered treasures.

[1] Jano Gibson, Sep 2021 — ABC: Analysts say AUKUS defence deal spells military boost for NT but Darwin Port lease complicates plans

[2] Jane Hardy, Oct 2021, U.S. Studies Centre — Integrated deterrence in the Indo-Pacific: Advancing the Australia-United States alliance

[3] Google Maps — Northern Territory and Pine Gap

[4] Creative Spirits — Aboriginal population in Australia

[5] Vista Gold — The Mount Todd Mining Management Plan 2022–2026 PublicVersion ‐ Redacted

[6] H.M Ranesh, 2008, Ore Geology Reviews — Mapping Proterozoic unconformity-related uranium deposits in the Rockhole area, Northern Territory, Australia using landsat ETM+

[7] Ahmad, Munson, 2012 — Geology and mineral resources of the Northern Territory

[8] Chris McLennan, Katherine Times, Aug 2020 — Research identifies possible mineral finds near Tennant Creek

[9] Gov Australia — Australia’s Identified Mineral Resources