PETER Andrews has returned to Tarwyn Park to squat in protest until its significance is recognised by a multinational coal mining company and the Federal and NSW governments.
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“They’ll have to carry me out,” he said on Monday after walking more than 20 horses – some related to Melbourne Cup champion Rain Lover who is buried on the property – six kilometres on Saturday to lay claim to its lush Bylong Valley pastures.
“I’m back in Tarwyn Park,” Mr Andrews said, only days after son Stuart left the property following the sale to Korean energy giant Kepco in 2014 as it seeks approval for a new coal mine, and the failure to renew a lease Stuart Andrews had hoped would run for eight years.
“I brought the horses back and I brought myself back as a squatter,” Peter Andrews said.
“Stuart’s still officially got it until the end of the month. What happens after July 31 I don’t know, but I’m pushing as many buttons as I can in terms of getting scientific recognition of something that’s incredibly important.”
The “button pushing” will include attempts to raise the fate of Tarwyn Park directly with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who owns a property in the Scone area.
Mr Andrews, 76, said he planned to put his horses in the Tarwyn Park stables that are the subject of a heritage application before Mid Western Regional Council.
His protest is against the Korean state-owned Kepco Bylong coal mine proposal that includes Tarwyn Park, and the failure to provide an offset for the property where he developed his natural sequence farming methods.
The sale to Kepco in 2014, after Stuart Andrews fought coal mining on Tarwyn Park for three years, did not recognise the significance of his land management system, Peter Andrews said.
He wants Kepco and the Federal and NSW governments to agree on an alternative location where his methods can be developed and independently analysed.
“I want to see that the science I’ve conducted here has a proper offset at another location,” Mr Andrews said.
“I had a multi-billion national asset sitting here. They should have spoken with me if they planned to disrupt and mine it.”
Returning to Tarwyn Park with his horses on Saturday, after walking them more than six kilometres along Lee Creek Road from another property, produced “every emotion you could think of”, he said.
His commitment to his land management methods – described as an obsession by many who know him – left the farm with little income in 1999 and resulted in the sale of the property to Stuart Andrews.
Peter Andrews’ 40-year struggle to have his land management methods accepted, and the impact that struggle has had on his family, have been the subject of two Australian Story segments.
It was “terrifying, horrifying and disgraceful” to return to Tarwyn Park and think of it being lost to a coal mine, without a plan to replicate it in another location, see it independently assessed and adopted for land use in Australia, Mr Andrews said.
He has been living in one of the property’s cottages.
Mr Andrews said he had attempted to speak with Kepco but had so far not made contact. He hoped to negotiate with the company. He was angry that Anglo American was able to sell the mining rights to the Bylong site to Kepco in 2010 for more than $400 million.
He was happy to be described as a protester.
“It is a protest. It’s a protest I’ve had with all the regulatory authorities since the 1970s about how we were wrecking this country by continuing to manage the land in the way we had been.”
Retailer Gerry Harvey, who has had success with Peter Andrews’ ‘‘natural sequence’’ methods on two Hunter properties and has regular contact with both men, said Tarwyn Park’s sale for a mine was ‘‘a pity because it’s always a pity if you sell up good floodplain land and it’s mined’’.
‘‘Once it’s gone, it’s gone,’’ he said.
