how a marble bar store ended up in a mine row , page-3

here's the full story.

It gets murkier and murkier.

"That's just bullsh*it," Mr Lever said. "I'm not an agent."

Just keep your mouth shut and this will blow over. I somehow do not think that this will be the case.



How a Marble Bar store ended up in a mine row
MARK DRUMMOND
29 April 2006
The West Australian
METRO
Government emphasis on a courier in the Shovelanna lease dispute comes under fire
For decades, Lenny Lever has looked after the power and water supplies, the airport and the general store in Australia's hottest town.
But more recently, the 68-year-old Marble Bar veteran has inadvertently become the central figure in a tenement dispute destined to become part of Australian mining folklore - the fight over the multi-billion-dollar Shovelanna iron ore deposit near Mt Newman.
Under immense public pressure, Resources Minister John Bowler sought to explain on Thursday why he exercised his ministerial discretion to deny Cazaly Resources the rights to the disputed lease and return ownership to Rio Tinto, even though the mining giant had missed the deadline to lodge its renewal forms last August.
In his explanation, Mr Bowler placed much stock in the efforts made by Rio to send its renewal documents to the mining registrar's office in Marble Bar. He said Rio had dispatched an "overnight first-class courier" on August 19, allowing a week for the papers to be delivered before the lease expired.
The all-important renewal forms arrived in Marble Bar a week later on Friday, August 26.
But instead of being delivered to the mining registrar's office, the papers only made it to Mr Lever's Francis Street shop - Lever's Discount Store - a few hundred metres down the road.
Critically, it took until the following Wednesday for Marble Bar registrar Helen Mitchell to collect the renewal forms from Mr Lever's shop.
By then Rio's hold over the Shovelanna lease had expired - and Cazaly had pounced.
Mr Lever added a fresh element of intrigue to the Shovelanna saga yesterday by disput~ing part of Mr Bowler's official version of events.
For starters, Mr Lever said the TNT "overnight first-class" courier service referred to by Mr Bowler went only as far as Port Hedland, with no official arrangement in place for the last 200km leg of the journey to Marble Bar.
"It all boils down to TNT advertising a service they can't deliver on," Mr Lever said.
"They threw it off in Port Hedland and hoped to Christ it would find its way to Marble Bar. It could have sat in Port Hedland for Christ knows how long.
"And if they'd finished their job they'd have taken it straight to the mines department and not my bloody shop."
Mr Lever said TNT had only started making courier deliveries all the way to Marble Bar in the wake of the Shovelanna affair. "Since the sh*it's hit the fan they've sent a young girl out from Port Hedland in a ute," he said.
Mr Lever said while it was Nexus Freight which ended up delivering Rio's envelope from Port Hedland to his general store in Marble Bar on August 19, Nexus was not acting as an agent for TNT and he wasn't an agent for either transport company.
That conflicts with Mr Bowler's claim on Thursday that Rio's renewal forms were received "by the courier's agent" in Marble Bar.
"That's just bullsh*it," Mr Lever said. "I'm not an agent."
While TNT refused to comment, Nexus managing director Peter Howell confirmed yesterday his company had no arrangement with TNT to deliver goods from Port Hedland to Marble Bar.
However, Mr Howell said Mr Lever acted as an "unofficial agent" for Nexus in Marble Bar. "He asks for nothing and we pay him nothing," Mr Howell said.