Drug squad detectives with Narrabri police raided the rural property known as Valala at Jacks Creek at about 7 am on Thursday 8 April 2004 and arrested 16 people.[1][2] Six were arrested in the farmhouse, which held temporary beds for workers; three more, including a couple in a car, were picked up nearby; and seven were found at a crop site inside the property boundary.[2] Police called the 2.5 tonnes of dried cannabis found there, valued at an estimated A$35 million, the biggest haul in New South Wales history.[1]
Three crops and a drying shed
The property held three crop sites: Crop A of 1,300 to 1,600 plants, Crop B of 850 and Crop C of 450 to 550, most already harvested and drying on lines, with 41 plants still in the ground.[2] About 30 plastic sheets each holding more than 50 kg of leaf lay across the sites, and a camouflaged generator-powered shed held drying beds filled to capacity.[2] Those arrested included workers cleaning leaves and men who admitted knowing the drying process.[2]
The manager’s sentence
A later judgment names Demitrios Hantzis as a participant in the 2004 cultivation and records that Judge Finnane sentenced him on 10 June 2005 for knowingly taking part in cultivating not less than a commercial quantity of cannabis plants, taking into account a further deemed-supply offence based on more than 10 kg of cannabis found at his Sydney home.[3] The judge found Hantzis had a major, high-level management role, running the operation from late February 2004 until his arrest, and imposed nine years with a five-year non-parole period.[3] On appeal the Court of Criminal Appeal re-sentenced him to six years with a non-parole period of three years and four months.[3]
