New Moonta Mines closure after claims of car tailing and death ‘threat’
The National Trust has closed the Moonta Mines Museum and Sweet Shop again, claiming staff have received threats as tensions rise in the coastal copper town.
National Trust staff in Moonta have been tailed by cars as they walk home from work and yelled at in supermarkets, National Trust SA CEO Nicolette Di Lernia has claimed.
She said the incidents – which included one death threat – led to the National Trust closing the visitor experiences at the regional tourism destination two weeks after it was reopened.
The visitor experiences at the mine – including a museum, a train, a miner’s cottage, and the sweet shop – were controversially closed by the National Trust on February 23 to make “operational changes” that disbanded the Moonta Branch Executive Committee and impacted 110 volunteers. The decision sparked tensions and legal threats from volunteers at their local heritage site.
The tourism drawcard was reopened for weekends only since the Easter long weekend, before the National Trust announced on Facebook on Friday evening that it would close due to the threats.
Di Lernia told InDaily that there were tensions before the initial closure, which have been heightened since.
“There are personal attacks on Facebook directed at some of these people who’ve remained involved and so we have made the decision now that we are going to be closed until we can resolve this because it is not okay to put members of the local community in that kind of position,” Di Lernia said.
“It’s really unpleasant. We have people who are off on stress leave. One has severe depression. It has had a huge impact on that community.”
The volunteer group that was disbanded has claimed it will pursue the matter in the Supreme Court, and is fundraising to support their legal fees. InDaily understands the group intend to file this week.
Di Lernia said she was aware the volunteers intended to go to court, but the National Trust had not been served. She said the National Trust was open to mediation with the group, but “it is hard to mediate with someone who won’t meet with you”.
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Copper Coast Residents and Ratepayers Association President Neil Windsor – who was not a Moonta Mines volunteer, but had assisted the group with campaigning for reinstatement since February – said he was unaware of the threats the National Trust staff claimed they were facing and was not involved in any confrontations between the volunteers or the National Trust.
“I can understand why people would get upset. I personally think I’m a little bit bigger than that. I don’t want to put myself in a compromising situation, so I wouldn’t threaten anybody in any way, shape or form,” he said.
Windsor said his community group became involved in the stoush because “we recognised the damage that’s been done to the town”.
“We’ve recognised this right from the word go, because this whole town revolves pretty well around tourism. It’s such a big, big part of Moonta and I just don’t believe that the [National Trust] people from Adelaide ever considered the strength and unity of the people in this town,” he said.
Di Lernia said the community tensions leading to another closure was “incredibly disappointing” especially since the April school holidays should be “a really vibrant time” for local tourism.
“Having said that, the National Trust commissioned a tourism study at Moonta in 2018. At that stage, Moonta had 1.7 million visitors over a 12-month period, and 14,000 of them went to the Moonta Mine site. Now that’s not a small number, but it is not by any means the only draw card in Moonta,” she said.
“We’re not going to reopen until this current dispute is resolved.
“What we are going to do is work in the background to assess how we’re displaying the collection material, how we curate the museum, making sure that we have all our background stuff done and in place, and then when we are at a point where we can reopen, we can come back bigger and better than ever.”
The walking trails and mine site itself are still accessible to the public, but the sweet shop, museum and miner’s cottage are currently closed.
The Cornish mining sites at Moonta and nearby Burra were added to Australia’s UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List in 2024. The tourism drawcard has already received national heritage recognition.
Copper Coast Mayor Roslyn Talbot said it was too early to tell if there would be an economic impact from the closure, but that the council had not noticed “a significant downturn” in visitation.
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