‘Last frontier’ outback mining town faces axe over crime wave

A PLAN to shut down a tiny “crimeridden” town in the Australian outback is facing protests from its 30-odd residents who say it is “the last frontier” and offers a peaceful escape from big cities.

The state government of South Australia announced earlier this year it would close Mintabie, an opal-mining town 700 miles north-west of Adelaide, the state’s capital, saying the town was enabling bootlegging of alcohol and trafficking of drugs into remote Aboriginal communities.

However, many residents want to stay, despite – or perhaps because of – its isolation and limited phone and internet access. The town can only be reached via a 20-mile dirt road that connects it to a highway.

Luka Sumanovic, who opened Mintabie’s pub in 1981 after fleeing the Communist regime in Yugoslavia in the Sixties, said he believed the plan to close the town next year marked an assault on freedom and human rights.

“I thought providing you did the right thing, you shouldn’t be pushed from anywhere,” he said.

“Mintabie is a very unique place, it’s the last frontier – I don’t think you’ll see another place like it in this country.

‘Mintabie is a very unique place, it’s the last frontier – I don’t think you’ll see another place like it in this country’

Freedom is unpriceable and this is what it [Mintabie] is.”

Mark Hoobin, an opal miner, said closing the town would not end the state’s drug and crime problems.

“If they close Mintabie because of the drug problem that they think we’ve got, they’ll take it somewhere else and they’ll still get it. Most of us live in lined tin sheds. To move into a new town it would probably cost [£140,000].” The government has leased the town’s land and opal fields from the local traditional Aboriginal owners since the early Eighties and issues licences to residents to live and work there.

The previous Labor government said earlier this year it would close Mintabie and force the residents to leave as their licences expired. The town is due to be handed back to the Aboriginal owners.

The decision followed a confidential report, obtained by ABC News, which noted a series of crimes that were not reported to police, including the burning down of a house, a woman imprisoned at her home and sexually assaulted, verbal threats towards store owners, three cars being set alight, as well as home burglaries, reckless driving and drug dealing.

The government also said that many residents in Mintabie – whose population veers between 30 and 60 – were living there illegally.