ABORIGINAL elders are meeting with the federal environment minister to show the destruction a controversial northern NSW mine is doing to sacred areas.
For more than a month environmentalists, farmers and local Aboriginal people have protested against Whitehaven's $767 million Maules Creek mine near Boggabri, concerned about the damage it will cause to a surrounding forest and its sacred Aboriginal cultural and burial sites.
Several activists have been charged after locking themselves to gates and bulldozers. But after days of increased action in January, authorities closed the forest, for fear of fire, effectively blocking protesters from entering.
Gomeroi elders asked environment minister Greg Hunt to temporarily halt works last year and after waiting 116 days for a response, they say he has now asked for more information.
He is due to meet Gomeroi elder representative Dolly Talbott on Tuesday afternoon.
"That's 116 days of bulldozers and earthworks and now more than 10 days of blasting," Ms Talbott said in a statement.
"We fear by the time the minister is satisfied that the areas are at risk of destruction and are important to us that it will all be too late."
The minister, she says, wants to know the exact areas considered sacred and in need of protection.
But Whitehaven is preventing access to the forest, even for traditional ceremonies.
Whitehaven, which in January described the protests as "a nuisance" said it would not be deterred "from getting on with building Maules Creek."
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