Chinese mine giant snaps up 43 NSW farms A CHINESE government-controlled mining giant has spent $213 million buying up 43 farms so it can explore for coal outside the NSW township of Gunnedah. The mining boom has triggered an overnight property boom for the rural community 500km northwest of Sydney. A NSW title search reveals that Shenhua Watermark Coal carried out a two-year spending spree in 2009 and 2010, making some of the sellers instant millionaires. Some of the properties changed hands for 10 times more than their previous sale price. The highest price the Chinese miner paid was $18.3m for 1051ha of land at Curlewis. Shenhua paid $5.2m to a farmer for a house on four lots of land totalling 594ha in Duddy Road, Breeza, last November -- a property that last sold in 2002 for $376,000. A 183ha property along the Kamilaroi Highway at Breeza sold for $1.9m in June 2009 -- more than five times its previous sale price of $350,000. A farmhouse on 535ha that sold for $500,000 in 1993 fetched $9.2m in 2009. Shenhua Watermark Coal -- a subsidiary of the world's biggest coal company, Shenhua Energy -- is seeking NSW government approval for a coalmine on the Liverpool Plains, surrounding Gunnedah. The Chinese government-controlled company has paid the NSW government $300m for an exploration licence covering 19,500ha, and promised not to mine within 150m of the productive "black soil" farming country. But data sourced from the Land Titles Office reveals the company has bought out 43 farmers in the past two years, in another case of a mining company encroaching on farmland. Gunnedah Mayor Adam Marshall said the mining proposal was dividing the community. "Feelings are mixed," Mr Marshall said yesterday. It's perfectly legal, and some of the people have been able to make some very, very good money out of their properties and are very, very pleased. The concern is more that the Foreign Investment Review Board allows overseas-owned companies -- and in this case an overseas state-owned company -- to buy Australian land, to mine Australian resources and take them out of our country. Mr Marshall said mining companies had to seek owners' permission before exploratory drilling but Shenhua was free to drill on its own properties. The Chinese coal giant's spending spree slips under the FIRB radar, as the Treasury unit only investigates investments totalling more than $230m. Other multi-million-dollar purchases in the Liverpool Plains have included $12m for 518ha and another $12m for 418ha nearby, $12.5m for 947ha and $5.4m for 424ha of "general farmland." A further $12.5m was spent buying a 120ha farm at Breeza last year; the same property sold in 1997 for $615,000. A 206ha farm that sold for $275,000 in 2005 was bought by the Chinese mining giant six years later for $3.5m. And a 182ha farm at Gunnedah that sold for $405,180 in 2002 was bought by Shenhua for $2.8m. The owners of another Gunnedah property were paid $1.85m -- more than 10 times the $77,864 purchase price in 2004. A lot of "vacant urban land" at Nea that sold for $500,000 in 2008 was bought for $4.65m last June. The company also snapped up three houses in Gunnedah.