Voices from the Gaslands: Neil's story

Traditional custodian Neil Stanley can only shake his head in disbelief at the damage done to an ancient ceremonial site by QGC at Kogan, near Dalby.

The gas company bulldozed part of the cultural heritage icon in order to clear space for a gas well in late 2009.

The site is a Bora Ring, used for initiation ceremonies and secret men’s business.

Archeologists had identified it as being thousands of years old and for Neil it was a sacred place of huge cultural and spiritual worth.

For more than a hundred years the site had been treasured by the landholders who worked the adjacent land and special care had been taken to keep cattle from trampling the ancient stone arrangements.

The Bora Ring was known and recorded as being a place of importance and a site of significance but that was not enough to stop QGC from getting access to the site and putting a gas well in its centre.

For Neil the damage done is enormous and the pain is intense.

He was a frequent visitor to the Bora Ring and together with local landholders and other community members had been caring for the site.

Neil had planned to purchase a property adjoining the site but before he could QGC’s bulldozers moved in.

He wants justice for the site and an end to the destruction of cultural heritage by mining companies seeking short- term profits at the expense of places of spiritual and historic significance.

Neil describes the destruction as being like sinking a gas well in the middle of the Vatican.

He is calling for legislative change to stop the loss of cultural heritage sites and for legal action to be taken against those responsible for the damage.