SMALL-time opal miner Peter Crawford is set to sell the last of his belongings to battle what he says is a wrongful conviction based on perjury and lies.
That's after he finds enough money to pay the initial associated $2.5k fine and $32k in legal costs.
The allegation of perjury did not come from Mr Crawford, but from Maitland-based senior mining titles manager David Muxlow.
Mr Muxlow alleges that his colleague, a junior compliance officer named Radomir "Mick" Babic, knowingly gave false evidence in court against Mr Crawford.
It was based on that officer's evidence, as well as other material, that Mr Crawford was convicted.
The legal costs which he is being asked to pay includes the cost of flying Mr Muxlow and others out from Maitland to the state's opal mining centre of White Cliffs on a chartered flight.
In his statement, Mr Muxlow said he became aware of Mr Babic's alleged perjury the day Mr Crawford was convicted on August 26, 2022, and that he shared that information with the department's legal counsel. But, sources say, the statement was not handed to Mr Crawford for four months, the day the matter came back to court for a sentence hearing in December, at which point the magistrate refused to receive any 'new material'.
Mr Crawford's case is that he did have permission to dig for opals at the site in question, having applied and paid for authorisation, and receiving the appropriate tag numbers. He had applied and paid for the right to dig for opals at White Cliffs, which has been renown for opal prospecting since the 1950s.
He was issued with tag numbers, and was working the site when he says that Mines Safety Officer Mick Babic also told him he was "right to go ahead" with it.
In Wilcannia Court, Mr Babic said he could not recall that conversation, and when he was asked what authorisation he had under the mining act, he said he had none.
However, Mr Muxlow said he later asked Mr Babic to see his authorisation card to see if it said he was authorised under the Mining Act. He alleges that Mr Babic said "I know it does, but I wasn't going to tell her [the magistrate] that. I didn't want her to know. I don't know why".
Once he got back to Maitland, Mr Muxlow told the director of compliance Scott Murray, also based at Maitland, of his "concerns relating to the quality of the evidence and the inaccurate evidence" of Mr Babic.
"I believe Mick Babic knew he was authorised under the Mining Act and gave false evidence in court," Mr Muxlow's statement says.
A former staffer at the department said that if Mr Crawford did not have authorisation he should only have received an official caution for a first, and minor offence. Further to that, the photos relied on were of the wrong site, she said.
The same was true of another case, in which an 80-year-old man was similarly fined and ended up with legal costs of $60,000, where he too should have received a warning at most, she said.
"What's really sad about this is that Mr Crawford has severe PTSD, after the 2019 Black Saturday fires when his house and everything in it was burnt to the ground and he just escaped within an inch of his life," she said. "He came out to White Cliffs to have a new beginning."
The perjury allegation was revealed in the Land and Environment Court where Mr Crawford is fighting against the NSW Department of Mining, Exploration and Geoscience on appeal. In order to run the appeal, Mr Crawford has told chief judge Brian Preston SC, he will need to sell his motorbike and his car, and borrow money, to raise what he hopes will be enough cash for legal representation.
The department has refused to answer any questions about the actions of any of its staff, citing privacy and confidentiality.
Dave Brown, secretary and treasurer of the White Cliffs Mining Association, said Mr Crawford seemed to be being made an example of and "I think he's been treated very unfairly".
Solicitor Rachel Storey, who has represented Mr Crawford and other White Cliffs miners, said the allegation of perjury is not the only issue with his case, and that his conviction is based on photos of the wrong site, confusion over whose job it was to provide site tags, and other errors and inconsistencies. The matter is due back in court in December.
"It's the wild wild west out there," she said. "The department doesn't get any royalties from opals so they don't want to spend any money doing anything properly out there."
The department's records of White Cliffs sites were haphazard, she said, many written down in pencil, covering sites as small as 20 square metres, which are out by 200 metres in some cases.
