Even when you are pretty much aware of the rules that apply, there can be some hidden pitfalls in pegging a lease. I was sitting at the table tinkering with the computer when a friend knocked on the door. This was on the morning of 3rd February this year. He had spotted a vacant patch of crown land and wanted to peg it but need the appropriate paperwork. I printed it off and sent him on his way but he got me interested so I took a look at the patch and sure enough it was vacant crown land.
While I was perusing the leases around here another popped up. It had been a Prospecting lease and had been surrendered. I quickly did my research, it had several old mines and a couple of fault lines passing through the 148 Ha.
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I wanted to quickly check its history so I accessed the DMIRS website and Mineral Titles Online. There I entered the dead tenement number and went to Dealings. That gave me the reason for the forfeiture a month earlier. I quickly typed out the coordinates and all necessary information on the correct form, grabbed a bundle of pegs and hit the ground a few minutes later.
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There were footprints on the spot but no pegs as yet so I went ahead and hammed mine in and fastened my paperwork to the datum peg at precisely 11am on 3rd February 2023.
I shot straight home and entered my details into the DMIRS website, paid about $975 and applied for the tenement. My application was quickly accepted and within an hour I was the proud owner of a Pending prospecting lease. It was showing in my name on Tengraph, the DMIRS website.
That's always only the start of a long drawn out process but Mrs M and I have successfully pegged a few leases before so we know the procedures to follow. I had a POW application for another lease and more paperwork on this one so on the morning of the 6th we took a trip to the Mines Department in the neighboring town and got everything processed over the counter with the aid of the mining registrar. With all that in order we felt quite confident we were on the way to acquiring a new Prospecting lease, our biggest so far.
Unfortunately that was not the case. The following day I was visited by a friend who claimed he had prior pegging rights to this lease and two more that my friends had pegged. He had applied for the forfeiture of these three leases, as seen above, on the 3rd of January. It also states there that he has 14 days prior rights to peg. Now by my calculation his 14 days after the outright surrender and registration had well and truly run out by the 3rd of February when I pegged.
I made the phone call to DMIRS in Perth and was informed that if he hadn't pegged by that time then he'd missed the boat. I was quietly confident that all would work out but I slipped across to one of the friends who'd pegged another of the three leases and discussed it with him. He said that he'd been informed of the 14 days required after the forfeiture by the mining registrar when he registered his application. She didn't mention anything about it to me but then the 14 days had well and truly passed.
A couple of days back I was served with a objection to my pegging by a third party. He has claimed that I pegged the lease early, before the 14 day allowance for the original instigator of the forfeiture. Once again I phoned DMIRS in Perth, they couldn't make sense of it so transferred me to the mining registrar where I'd presented the paperwork in the first place. She'd now changed her tune stating that they had been slow processing the paperwork and the 14 day period only started once they had delivered a letter to the plaintiff who'd started the whole process. I told her about the date listed for the forfeiture and I wanted to see some sort of proof that the published date did not apply. She said that she couldn't give me anything but she would call Perth and get back to me. She didn't.
I spent too much time this morning working my way through the Mining Act and Mining Regulations and sure enough buried there in a small paragraph is the statement below.
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So one week into my application I have a file a half inch thick, an objection, a couple of people have pegged over my ground and I'm out of pocket a bundle of money half of which I'll get back. The end result is that the whole thing has turned to
so I may as well walk away and put it down to a bad experience.
This is all before we got to fight with Native Title, the department of environment and anybody else who wanted to have a crack