Chapter 153
"Okay, so we brought Charlotte too," Tess announced.
"Of course, welcome Charlotte," said Jaz. She was playing host, but had no idea what the news was herself.
"So what is the news you found out from the drone flight?" Stevie asked.
"We think we know why the creek went dry so fast," explained Regan.
"When I was flying the drone over Kinsella's, we saw a large water tank truck driving in the middle of the property," explained Russell.
"So rather than doing the inspections of the buildings like we planned, we followed it." explained Grace.
"We thought it was very odd for a big truck like that to be on a property that has been abandoned for years. Ironman was able to get it close enough to pull the license plate off the truck while following it. I ran the plate through the AFP database and it came back as registered to a Subaru in Port August. So dead end, but a red flag," added Dylan
"So we followed the truck until all of sudden, we lost it in tree cover, but Ironman was able to get us under the tree cover and we followed the road to a little turn off and eventually, we found what Regan believes to be an illegal mine," Grace explained.
"Based on what I saw from the drone footage, and my professional experience, it's likely a small scale mining operation, hopefully still in the prospecting stage. The problem is that this area has a very high water table, basically an underground river flowing through those hills. Mining to any depth would require a great deal of water to be pumped out. That's the water that would normally be flowing into the Ramsey River and then the creek on all of our properties. That's why this drought hit everyone harder than past droughts," explained Regan.
"So miners at Kinsella's are stealing our water supply? Well, how do we get them? Dylan you're a cop, what do we do?" asked Tess.
"So I've called this in, but we have some problems here. We only have drone footage and a dummy plate. I need some hard evidence to go forward, but as it's private property. I need guidance from my superiors if we can go in to collect it. Drone footage and Regan's word on what it is may not be enough towards probable cause, and I don't want to go in there to collect evidence and then have the whole thing thrown out in court for illegal entry of property," explained Dylan.
"Wait, Dylan, I can help with that. Something just wasn't sitting right with me about the cliffs and the terrain of what we saw. I didn't remember Kinsella's having cliffs like that, because they don't. I just ran the gps coordinates against the state's records for property lines. We crossed out of Kinsella's, and into the national park. We were about one killometer from the border of the property. That area is public land. We could go there, unfortunately, it's only really accessible from Kinsella's as far as I can see." announced Kate.
"So it's national public lands, which makes this a clear-cut federal environmental crime, so my team would have jurisdiction, and I could go collect evidence to build the case then," said Dylan.
"Yeah, but looking at the satellite imaging and the terrain maps, this is pretty rough terrain with rocky hills and cliffs. You definitely can't take a ute or even a dirtbike, I don't know if a horse could even do this. Even if you follow the property line with Kinsellas, and just walk parallel to it, it's at least a four or five day hike through extremely rocky terrain. I can do a bit more research, but it looks pretty rough," said Kate.
"Okay, so what do we tell the Farmers Council then. We need to leave for that meeting in about thirty minutes. We called that meeting specifically to talk about the water issues," asked Jodi.
"I don't think you should say anything about this." said Dylan "we don't know who is doing it and if it's someone in this community, they could pack up, run and disappear and then we'd never get them."
"So we have to have a meeting about what's possibly causing all the water issues, when we now know the cause of the water issue, but can't tell anyone else that we know the cause?" asked Tess.
"Yes." said Dylan. "At least until I can gather more information and evidence."
"Charlotte, you are going to witness the most useless and boring Farmers Council meeting ever," said Jodi. "I'm sorry for this."
With Tess, Jodi, Charlotte, Regan, Grace, Jaz, and Stevie at the meeting, Dylan, Ben, Russell and Kate remained at Wilgul and worked on the plan.
"So if we go down to that auxiliary park entrance we found before, we could then just follow Kinsella's property line out to about here." Kate was pointing on a map she had pulled up on the screen. "This beginning part isn't too bad, we could definitely take horses at least this far, but after that, it's hard to know without really seeing it. I would be wary of leaving the horses tied up alone if the rest of the journey had to be made on foot. It's not safe for them to be left, there are dingos and wild dogs in the national park as well as brumbies to worry about."
"Could we get the drone in there to see what the terrain would be like?" asked Dylan.
"I could try, but it's a forested area, it's not going to be an easy flight, and I'm worried I could lose the drone completely. It was built for flying around cattle stations and looking at buildings, not going through forests and around cliffs," explained Russell.