Ann: Dec 2020 Half Year Results Investor Presentation, page-106

There are a few things about Dargues that are on the public record but have never really been spelt out here. First is the degree of opposition to the mine from locals. They are mostly hobby farmers and retirees and have no interest and derive little benefit from having the increased economic activity of a mine in their midst. They opposed every step of the permitting process and slowed it all down by years.
When the original earthworks were being undertaken, there was a spill of silt or mud into a local creek during a heavy rain event. Unity Mining, the owners at the time, ended up being fined in the Land and Environment Court. It was a large amount, I think about $200,000. There may have been two separate incidents. You can be sure the vigilantes are out on patrol every time it rains.
The ore at Dargues is difficult to treat as the gold is tightly bound in the pyrite. Dargues only has a permit to crush ore and do flotation, not do anything else with it. Andrew McIlwain, CEO of Unity tried very hard to have the permits amended to allow cyanide processing on site, which is what would be needed to extract all the gold. Andrew even flew key locals down to Tasmania to observe a modern gold processing plant using cyanide. He nearly won the day I think, they came back fairly impressed, but ultimately the eco warriors prevailed. The eco locals pulled out fears of a possible cyanide spill into Major's Creek, which flows over the nearby escarpment and down into the water supply for some of the South Coast.
So instead of all gold bars coming out of Dargues, very much more concentrate has to be shipped out, in trucks. My estimate is that it is about 25,000 tonnes of low grade concentrate per year. At least one train load has gone to Pt Kembla by rail from Goulburn, but no matter where it is loaded onto the train, it must leave Dargues by truck and go up the road to Braidwood and beyond.. The last ore Pybar moved went all the way by truck to Port Kembla.
Concentrate from Newcrest's Cadia mine, near Orange already ships out of Pt Kembla. But that is pretty concentrated gold and copper. The Dargues concentrate seems to only have about one ounce of gold per tonne in it, so there is a lot of non-paying waste getting transported all the way to Asia for processing. Pybar did have a plan to take the concentrate to a mothballed plant near Parkes for processing but the locals there put up the usual NIMBY opposition, so that seems to have fallen over.
The locals have been able to push through a restriction prohibiting trucks from using the Major's Creek to Braidwood Road during school bus hours, probably 0800-0930 and 1430-1600. This combined with hours restrictions on the crushing plant for noise reasons so that it can only operate about 12 hours per day are all drags on efficiency.