.....Turcaud's nomenclature refused

The names were refused on the grounds that naming landmarks after persons still living was unacceptable.  Not all of them however, ..only those close to the main prospect.

Turcaud had sought to register the name of the main show, Pascale Hills, after his younger sister.  A year later however, the NAC did accept the name proposed by Newmont for the very same landmark, which they named after Robert Searls' (Newmont Australia's Managing Director) "old friend (still living) ..Bert Telfer" (Tyrwhitt, 1995, p.32).   Whilst those names proposed by Turcaud for landmarks distanced from the deposit were approved by the NAC, none of his names  in the vicinity of the deposit were approved by the NAC, only those considerably distanced from it.  Turcaud wrote:-

"Pascale Hills is the very place where the first mine is going to be started by Newmont.  I am very well aware in May 1975 also, as to the rumours spread by Newmont concerning Pascale Hills, to the effect that I did not ever go to the place.  Can we say that none of the feature names proposed to the NAC and connected closely to the very same show which the prospector Turcaud had found were accepted?  Why then?  How, I am asking now, how can any one in my position counter this insidious negation of my prospecting efforts?"

To demonstrate the importance of "key people and relationships" in securing Newmont's stamp on the prospect Tyrwhitt (1995, p.33) wrote:-

"BHP's involvement in Telfer was another example of key people and relationships...  A meeting was set up by me in Perth for Searls with WA Mines Minister Andrew Mensaros.   Bob (Searls) brought Jacques Leroy, General Counsel with Newmont Mining, and Ed Fontaine, Treasurer, also from New York.   On briefing Mensaros I was surprised when he seemed cautious about Newmont's need for an Australian partner.  He talked about the need for Australian equity in the fullness of time.  This appeared contrary to Bob's  reading of the political climate.  After the meeting Ed Fontaine commented: " That was one zero of a meeting Bob, what have you been telling us?"   Bob called his old friend, retired State Secretary of Mines Bert Telfer (who) knew Sir Charles Court, and promised to set up a meeting for the following day."

It was.  According to Tyrwhitt, Court asked why Andrew (Mensaros) "couldn't work this one out".  The meeting was concluded after twenty minutes with BHP being an approved partner.  And thus it was that David Tyrwhitt also wrote:-

"My first challenge was to ( ...)  register Telfer as a place name for a town. No-one had previously named a town after a living person. ..After deliberating on whether this naming would cause any political scandal and whether Bert Telfer was perceived as still being in a position to exert any influence over government policy, (...) Telfer was gazetted WA6762, its registered post code, in the Great Sandy Desert."

Tyrwhitt need not have worried. To the NAC, this name allowed exception to the rule, as indeed did the names of other people deemed by Newmont to warrant immortality, namely Ronnie Thomson, after whom 'Thomson Dome' was named,  and Tim Wilson,  a paid contractor who carried out air photograph interpretation work for Newmont over the prospect, and after whom 'Tim's Dome' was named.

"Make of that what you like,"  observed Turcaud who wrote:-

"Is it a coincidence that the only feature names to be accepted by the NAC from me are miles away from the show which I have found?  ...Can we say that none of the names proposed to the NAC and connected to the very same show which (I) had found were acceptable?  Why then?  How!?  I am asking now, "how can any one in my position counter this insidious negation of my prospecting efforts?" (Turcaud's own report, p.73)

There is no doubt that to Newmont and their desire to sever the connection  between Turcaud's discovery and their ownership, both Telfer and Thomson were 'key people' indeed.  Thomson had obtained for them the information they required to secure the deposit, and served the purpose of scapegoat,  and Telfer (now that the earlier entitlements of Day Dawn and Narla had been disposed of) had secured for them a key meeting over the head of the Mines Minister Mensaros with the Premier which had netted for them government approval of their preferred Joint Venture Partner, BHP.  How could a body such as the Nomenclature Advisory Committee go against the logic of recognising this constellation of 'Key People' and approve instead the chosen nomenclature of the pioneer who had actually risked his life exploring the desert,  found the show in the first place,  whose samples to prove it had actually been lodged with the Department of Mines, and whose names were to some extent already in common use.  Or even the name of Phillipe Koehn who had first recognised the gold (and not Thomson, whom Newmont conveniently asserted was the discoverer)?

To the casual reader of this saga, proud of the explorers who have ventured into the inhospitable interior of their land and the stories etched thereby in the nomenclature of the landscape, there must inevitably occur a certain cynicism towards Newmont's success in inscribing their miserly injustice even into the historical record.    In interview with Sheppard (2002) Bill Latter (Secretary of The Fire Brigard Employees Industrial Union of Workers W.A.) informed Sheppard that he had written to Telfer asking him to refuse the nomination, but had "no recollection of any reply".

(See Sheppard, 2002 for a fuller account)