CHITTERING — A local campaign group is urging residents to sign a Western Australian parliamentary e-petition calling for closer scrutiny of Chalice Mining’s proposed Gonneville nickel-copper-platinum group elements project near Julimar.
The campaign, run through the website Gonneville Be Gone under the banner “Wrong project. Wrong place,” argues that an existing rural community should not have to be reshaped around a large mine and its supporting infrastructure. The site, linked to the group Protect Our Valley – Chittering, says its material draws on public documents and distinguishes between company statements, government material, community concerns and the group’s own analysis.
Gonneville is a large open-pit proposal on Chalice-owned farmland immediately beside Julimar State Forest, about 58 kilometres north-east of the Perth CBD. The group says the development envelope is much closer to the northern fringe: roughly 7 kilometres from the Chittering Valley Community Centre, 17 kilometres from the Shire of Chittering administration centre, and within reach of Bullsbrook, Ellenbrook and the Swan Valley.
The proposal is not limited to a pit. Campaigners say it includes processing facilities, waste-rock landforms, tailings storage and other mine infrastructure, with the potential for later underground mining. Off-site works would also be required. Chalice’s preferred approach, as described by the group and the company, includes a water pipeline of about 63 kilometres from Alkimos and a roughly 27-kilometre, 132 kV power connection to the South West Interconnected System at Muchea. Parts of that corridor would cross or pass near private rural and rural-residential land in the Chittering and Muchea areas.
The campaign site cites Environmental Protection Authority figures allowing for clearing of up to 940 hectares inside a 2,240-hectare mine development envelope, and up to 664 hectares of disturbance inside a 2,034-hectare infrastructure envelope. It says those figures may be reduced as the design is refined, but argues that cumulative effects — habitat fragmentation, edge effects, waterways, traffic, dust, noise and landscape change — matter as much as the raw hectare count. Species of concern named by the group include Carnaby’s cockatoo, the chuditch and the woylie.
Traffic is another unresolved issue. Construction traffic, workforce movements, deliveries and concentrate haulage would use local roads, and the campaign says the final concentrate route has not been confirmed through the environmental assessment.
The group also raises the long-standing status of Julimar State Forest, noting that more than two decades after Parliament was told the area would become a conservation park once mineral prospectivity was resolved, that park proposal remains unstarted. Chalice has said the mine itself would not be inside the forest.
The company describes Gonneville as a strategically important critical-minerals project — palladium, platinum, nickel, copper and cobalt — and Australia’s potential first primary platinum-group metals mine. A pre-feasibility study has outlined a long-life open pit, with average production in company material of about 220,000 ounces a year of palladium, platinum and gold, plus nickel and copper. Chalice has said the mine sits on company-owned farmland, that water and power corridors have been defined, and that it is targeting major environmental approvals and a final investment decision in the first half of 2028, with first production around 2030 if approvals are granted. It has also said part of the power line would be placed underground through the rural-residential zone near Maryville Heights, and that the preferred infrastructure route may still be adjusted before a miscellaneous licence is lodged.
Environmental assessment is under way as a Public Environmental Review. Draft environmental review documents, originally indicated earlier, are now expected later in 2026, after which the public will be able to comment. In June the Shire of Chittering resolved to advocate against mining infrastructure through private property and to prefer existing corridors or underground options. Residents have since pressed the council to go further, and Mid-West MLA Shane Love has met both residents and the company.
The e-petition asks Parliament to examine the full cumulative impacts of the project. Residents can sign it through the WA Parliament website, linked from gonnevillebegone.com. Further conservation material is also published by the Julimar Conservation and Forest Alliance.
