George Manantan wears a pained expression. He has injured himself hunting pigs barefoot in the bush and is now on crutches. Worse, says the Aboriginal landowner, 'A croc probably got one of me dogs.' He shrugs stoically: 'If she rocks up later, I guess we'll know she wasn't eaten.'
The crocodiles that inhabit the Wenlock River, which flows through Mapoon Aboriginal Shire, in Queensland, Australia, are 'mega-sized', says Manantan. But dog-eating reptiles are by no means the 300-strong community's biggest problem.
The locals in this two-street outpost, some 3,200 kilometres from Sydney, have found themselves caught in a rancorous land dispute between Cape Alumina - a mining company part-owned by Shandong-based Chiping Xinfa Huayu, one of China's largest alumina producers - and environmental lobbyists headed by Terri Irwin, owner of Australia Zoo and widow of conservationist Steve 'The Crocodile Hunter' Irwin.
'It's our food out there walking on the land they are gonna [dig up],' says Manantan of the bauxite mine Cape Alumina has been planning to operate in the area for almost six years. 'Wild cattle, pigs, geese; we know it's going to make a big impact on them.'
His view reflects an instinctive anti-mining sentiment that pervades these parts, informed by a 40,000-year bond with the land on which his people have been dependent, not just for food but shelter and medicine.
This, though, is not your run-of-the-mill dispute between big business and an oppressed compact of indigenous minorities and tree-hugging liberals. For starters, Cape Alumina has fostered a local reputation for transparency, community consultation and partnership. Anyone travelling this far north to seek views about the company's plans would encounter remarkably widespread support for a tradition- ally ill-tolerated industry.
That tolerance was born of necessity. Mapoon, like much of rural Australia, offers precious few opportunities for the social and economic development of Aboriginal communities. While the mine promises 1,700 jobs and a A$1.2 billion (HK$9 billion) injection into the regional econo- my, a visit to the settlement's solitary convenience store provides some sense of local reality: a man carrying a baby asks for credit to buy infant formula and cigarettes. The cashier refuses.