PIP COURTNEY, PRESENTER: Northern Territory pastoralists are the most unprotected in the country when it comes to their rights in facing up to mining and exploration companies. For years, they've been pushing for better protection and a bolstering of legislation. But nothing has happened and tensions are reaching boiling point.

Kristy O'Brien filed this report from Central Australia.

KRISTY O'BRIEN, REPORTER: Sherwin Iron promised big business when it came to the Roper Bar region five years ago. So much so, the mine was given major project status by the Northern Territory Government, so it could be rushed along.

HARD HAT MAN: This represents an enormous step forward for the Northern Territory.

KRISTY O'BRIEN: But a dive in ore prices, instability with management and a lack of capital meant the company went into administration this year.

Truck driver and pastoralist Dan Cahill runs Mt McMinn Station, where the mine was built. He says it was sheer luck they even found out exploration had begun on their place.

DAN CAHILL, MOUNT MCMINN STATION: We were notified by one of our neighbours that they were doing exploration on Mt McMinn, being our place, of which we had no idea, but we did go and have a look-see along the road and found, yes, there was fences down and tracks in, so we followed the tracks and eventually found someone.

In a short space of time, Mt McMinn Station had a full-blown workers camp and mining operation underway. He says they were allowed, even just in the exploration phase, to take a bulk sample of up to 200,000 tonnes of ore worth around $20 million from the station to sell to China.

We're actually still standing on Mt McMinn Station. What you can see are the remnants of Sherwin Iron's legacy. A carved-out range, a few piles of iron ore lying dormant and a bitter taste for locals.

Dan Cahill says he quickly realised he didn't have a leg to stand on.

DAN CAHILL: We'd send emails and then our lawyers would send emails and generally we wouldn't get any reply. So we had our backs to the wall, but we weren't gonna give up. We just thought this is too unfair and unjust. You know, people might say it's sour grapes on our behalf. We were quite happy to work in with these guys. In the end it became sour grapes because, you know, we were trying to do everything right and these guys were just bombastic.

KRISTY O'BRIEN: He says the company threw any good faith to the wind with their unwillingness to engage with them or their lawyers.

DAN CAHILL: It was just rushed. There was one time there we booted them off and the director had sent this email saying, 'We don't care what notice we have to give you. We are going ahead, 100 miles an hour, to get this up and running.' So we knew we were pushing into the wind there.

vKRISTY O'BRIEN: He says the Minister also ignored their communication.

WILLEM WESTRA VAN HOLTHE, NT PRIMARY INDUSTRIES MINISTER: McMinn Station has always had sufficient information provided to them. They were obviously unhappy with the way things have progressed with Sherwin Iron and I guess they're perhaps feeling a bit slighted about that.

KRISTY O'BRIEN: At Mt McMinn, the final straw came when Sherwin Iron built its six-metre-high dam wall, which collapsed during the wet season and flooded the highway. He doesn't know how many cattle were lost.

The Environmental Protection Agency has since found out they didn't wait for drainage pipes to arrive from Darwin because they were in such a hurry to complete the wall.

DAN CAHILL: Something's gotta give. And it did give. There could've been, you know, a 100-tonne truck driving across that when it gave way. It could've been disastrous. It could've caused lives. You know, if that happened to us in the transport industry, I'd be talking to you behind bars at the moment. But these guys seem to get away with it. It's just mind-boggling.

KRISTY O'BRIEN: This tale now stands as a very real example of why cattlemen want basic regulations in place to protect them from this type of experience. An agreement would dictate a basic set of rules around issues like weeds, water and stock disturbance, before they even set foot on the land.

TRACEY HAYES, NT CATTLEMEN'S ASSOCIATION: I think the Mt McMinn example is a perfect case, in the absence of an agreement between landholders and between operators, of where conflict has occurred, of where practices have gone awry and due process has not been followed. So should there have been an agreement in place, some of these would've been picked up earlier.

KRISTY O'BRIEN: In Central Australia, the situation is no better and pastoralists are desperate for a solution.

ANNE STAINES, LYNDAVALE STATION: I'm a long-term Territorian and I assumed we had rights. We run a really good business here. We've lived here for a long time. And to find out that we had no rights was quite distressing and has caused us a lot of grief.

KRISTY O'BRIEN: Lyndavale Station first dealt with Santos on their land and say it was lucky the company has a policy of bringing in their own access agreements.

ANNE STAINES: At that stage, we didn't even know about agreements. So we didn't know what our rights were, or anything like that. It's all very new to us. And so they did bring an agreement in. It was a very fair and equitable agreement, yes, and in that, again, we discussed impacts on us, how they could minimise the impacts. And it's ongoing, so if there's any issues, we continue to bring it up with them and talk about it and talk it through.

KRISTY O'BRIEN: Santos says it's signed agreements with 20 Territory stations over the past year.

MATTHEW DOMAN, SANTOS: We don't think it needs to be enshrined in mandatory frameworks that are legislated. We believe we're better to have the flexibility to work with pastoralists to ensure that we reach agreements that work for individual properties as much as for our activities.

KRISTY O'BRIEN: But down the road, another founding Centralian family say they refused to sign the Santos agreement.

LINDY SEVERIN, CURTIN SPRINGS STATION: Our relationship with Santos was a little bit different. They ultimately ended up not doing the work on Curtin Springs. We had major issues with their access agreement and we wouldn't sign it. Our legal advice was to not sign their agreements. And we fought pretty hard about that. That was before the, sort of, more generic one had been put in place by Cattlemen's.

So we struggled with what their expectations were because we felt that we were basically signing away any rights.

KRISTY O'BRIEN: Curtin Springs has been scarred by encounters with another company. Salt lakes of cultural and environmental significance on their property were drained, even after they told the company not to go near the area.

LINDY SEVERIN: The damage they're doing to disturbing the landscape is going to be visible for hundreds of years. So that's really hard for us to deal with, because that's not how we treat the country. That's not how pastoralists in general treat the country. And we're having to accept, on our land, this scarring that we have to live with and we have to be able to explain for a long time. It's part of the process, but I don't think there's an understanding that the landscape takes a long time to heal. And those scars are going to be around for a long time.

KRISTY O'BRIEN: With 90 per cent of all pastoral properties now under some exploration licence and no end to the resource hunt, the need to get it right is pressing down on both pastoralists and the mining, oil and gas industry.

TRACEY HAYES: It's those companies that don't enter into agreements where we're seeing conflict and problems occur quite a way into the process. Often it will begin right from the very beginning and it's only natural when a landholder has someone entering his property without notice that they're arriving, without any idea of what activities they're planning to undertake, it's only natural that you're going to get push-back from landholders.

KRISTY O'BRIEN: Cattlemen have been lobbying the Northern Territory Government for years, to bring in mandated access agreements.

TRACEY HAYES: We're saying to government that the time is right now to be getting the regulatory platform right from the outset to set both industries up for success longer term.

WILLEM WESTRA VAN HOLTHE: I want to make sure that the pastoral sector's rights are not adversely impinged upon by mining activity or oil and gas activity into the future.

KRISTY O'BRIEN: But the industry is resisting that mandate.

STEVEN GERHARDY, APPEA: Putting something forward in legislation is difficult, in that it could reduce the flexibility available to both parties to tailor an agreement that suits them. Voluntary agreements, we think, work best.

DREW WAGNER, MINERALS COUNCIL: I don't think the protectionist reality probably needs to be there, or the governmental intervention, at this point in time. As I mentioned before, the reality is that there is appeals tribunals in place that can deal with those mechanisms. But we're trying to overall put forward a relationship that's gonna be mutually beneficial to all parties. The way in which we do that is through open communication, honesty of product and a position where we all understand where each of us sit. That actually gets formed by communication benefits, not through going down legislative frameworks.

TRACEY HAYES: It's about good manners, it's about affording a level of respect, it's about equity in the partnership of users of a shared piece of land.

KRISTY O'BRIEN: Mt McMinn Station will be pursuing Sherwin Iron for compensation. But with the company now in the hands of administrators, they know it's going to be a long fight.

But they say it's high time pastoralists stopped being walked all over.

DAN CAHILL: Everyone knows it's slowing now and the mining's taking a turn. But we'll still always be there. The cattlemen, the pastoralists, will always be there. Yeah.