He held that native title was not part of the law of Australia, and even had it existed, any native title rights had been extinguished. Justice Blackburn found that the Yolngu people could not prevent mining on their lands. The lengthy legal battle culminated in 1971. The applicants asserted before the Court that since time immemorial, they held a “communal native title” that had not been validly extinguished, or acquired under the Lands Acquisition Act 1955 (Cth), and should be recognised as an enforceable proprietary right. The plaintiffs claimed they enjoyed sovereignty over their land, and sought the freedom to occupy their lands. The plaintiffs' lawyers were Edward Woodward, Frank Purcell, John Little and John Fogarty. The plaintiffs were Milirrpum Marika, elder of the Rirratjingu clan Munffaraway, elder of the Gumatj clan, and Daymbalipu, an elder of the Djapu clan, who represented that clan as well as acting on behalf of 11 other peoples with interests in the land. In December 1968, the Yolngu people living in Yirrkala, represented by three plaintiffs, obtained writs in the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory against the Nabalco Corporation, which had secured a 12-year bauxite mining lease from the Federal Government.
However, in 1968 the Commonwealth government granted a special mineral lease to the company over the land for a period of 42 years. The Yolngu people, the traditional owners of Arnhem Land (which includes the Gove Peninsula), had petitioned the Australian House of Representatives in August 1963 with a bark petition after the government had sold part of the Arnhem Land reserve on 13 March of that year to a bauxite mining company, Nabalco without consultation with the traditional owners at the time. Main articles: Native title in Australia, Yirrkala bark petitions, and Indigenous land rights in Australia Although Milirrpum was not appealed beyond the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory, it was overruled by the High Court of Australia two decades later in Mabo v Queensland (No 2), when the notion of terra nullius was found to be false. The issue of terra nullius was not contemplated in the case. The decision also noted that the Crown had the power to extinguish native title, if it existed. Instead his ruling recognised that in the law of the time of British colonisation of Australia there was a distinction between settled colonies, where the land, being "desert and uncultivated", was claimed by right of occupancy, and conquered or ceded colonies. The decision of Justice Richard Blackburn ruled against the Yolngu claimants on a number of issues of law and fact, rejecting the doctrine of Aboriginal title. Milirrpum v Nabalco Pty Ltd, also known as the Gove land rights case because its subject was land known as the Gove Peninsula in the Northern Territory, was the first litigation on native title in Australia, and the first significant legal case for Aboriginal land rights in Australia, decided on 27 April 1971.
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