Sacred waters at stake as McPhillamys protection returns to Watt

For the Aboriginal applicants seeking to protect the Belubula River headwaters, the water is not simply a resource beside a proposed goldmine. It is a Sacred Songline, bound to Wiradjuri cultural responsibilities and continuity. They fear irreversible harm at a place where Regis Resources proposed a dam to hold mining waste. Now they are asking the federal government to act urgently, after an earlier protection declaration fell in court. ¹

Two applications for emergency Aboriginal heritage protection are under assessment over the McPhillamys Gold Project near Blayney, in central west New South Wales. The federal environment department has confirmed that no decision has been made. The requests put protection of the headwaters back before Environment Minister Murray Watt; they do not amount to a new protection order or an announced project suspension. ¹

One application comes from a dozen concerned members of the Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council, acting independently of the council. ABC News reported on October 30, 2026, that they submitted their request to Watt that week. A different party lodged the second application, whose detailed grounds and authorship have not been disclosed in the reporting. Exact filing dates and precise application boundaries have not been established. ¹

The members describe the headwaters as facing an “imminent threat of desecration”. Their application calls the river sacred, “the giver of life and the lifeblood of our people”. These are the applicants’ statements of cultural significance and danger—not findings Watt has already made. Nor does the available reporting establish that construction is under way or provide an imminent works timetable. ¹

The members are seeking a declaration under Section 9 of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984. An Aboriginal person or group, or someone acting on their behalf, can apply orally or in writing to protect a specified area from injury or desecration. The minister must be satisfied that it is a significant Aboriginal area and faces a serious and immediate threat of injury or desecration. Even when those conditions are met, the power to make a declaration is discretionary. ⁶

That distinction matters here. The applicants have asked for emergency intervention; the government has confirmed an assessment. Neither statement establishes that the minister has accepted the claimed threat or imposed a new restriction. The urgency of the request and the evidence needed to justify a declaration are related, but they are not interchangeable.

Regis points to approvals already obtained through the New South Wales State Significant Development pathway and the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. In its response to ABC, the company said both processes considered Aboriginal cultural heritage. It said it “supports the protection of Aboriginal cultural heritage, through a planning process that provides certainty for all parties”. That response supplied no current works timetable. ¹

The company’s emphasis is on the certainty of existing approvals. The applicants are invoking a distinct heritage-protection power. The question now is not merely whether the project has approvals, but whether the evidence warrants emergency protection for an area within it.

The independent application also exposes a disagreement over consultation and cultural authority. The land council’s institutional position is not the position of every member. In 2019, it objected to the project’s environmental impact statement, warning of detrimental and irreversible effects on Aboriginal cultural heritage. In 2023, it changed its position from objection to neutral. It has also publicly questioned cultural claims about the area, including a Dreaming story. ¹

The new applicants say Wiradjuri and other First Nations people with cultural connections and responsibilities to the country were not given a meaningful opportunity to be heard. “We were not consulted or asked for our views when the change in stance by the executive of the Orange Aboriginal Land Council was announced previously,” their application says. That is their account of the consultation, not an established finding against the council. ¹

Chief executive Annette Steele expects the department to seek the council’s response. She told ABC that senior Wiradjuri elders with cultural authority for the area would guide it. Membership is open to Aboriginal people within the council’s boundaries, including those who are not traditional owners; for that reason, she said, cultural heritage matters are typically decided by people with cultural authority rather than the membership as a whole. She also stressed that land councils are democratic organisations and members can raise concerns at meetings or with the board. ¹

Neither the members’ filing nor the leadership’s response can fairly be flattened into a single, unanimous Aboriginal position. The dispute concerns both protection of country and whose knowledge and responsibilities should guide that protection.

The earlier protection application was made by Wiradyuri elder Aunty Nyree Reynolds, supported by the Wiradyuri Traditional Owners Central West Aboriginal Corporation. In August 2024, then-environment minister Tanya Plibersek made a Section 10 declaration protecting the Belubula headwaters and springs at the proposed tailings-dam location. She found that the dam would cause irreversible and permanent loss to Aboriginal heritage, and that the headwaters were sacred to the Wiradjuri people and their Blue Banded Bee Dreaming Tradition, which describes the springs’ formation. ¹

The declaration put the project on hold. Regis said it made the planned open-cut operation “not viable”—a statement about the earlier declaration’s effect, not a fresh account of construction status. On October 14, 2026, the company successfully challenged the declaration in the Federal Court. ¹

Justice James Stellios found the decision-making process fundamentally flawed because officials had failed to treat the revelation of the Blue Banded Bee Dreaming story as a new application. His ruling did not decide the merits of the cultural claim, the area’s significance or whether it faced injury or desecration. Regis had argued that the Dreaming story did not exist, but the judge made no finding that the tradition was invented. ¹

A departmental brief supporting the earlier decision had acknowledged that protection ran against the land council’s submissions and advice, while concluding that consensus among all Wiradjuri people was unnecessary. That record helps explain the disagreement, but it cannot substitute for the assessment now required: the declaration it supported has been invalidated. ¹

The court removed the earlier declaration on procedural grounds; it did not settle what the headwaters mean or whether they should be protected. For the applicants, that leaves the central fear intact: that a place they regard as essential to cultural life could suffer harm that no later decision can undo. Watt must now assess that claimed danger under the emergency protection test. ¹