One of Australia’s most contentious rural land holdings is on the market less than three months after the NSW government paid Shenhua Watermark Coal $100 million to walk away from government mining approvals.

In the final chapter of a saga dragging on for more than a decade, Shenhua has appointed CBRE Agribusiness to sell the 16,570 hectare landholding it assembled near Gunnedah in north-west NSW to build an open-cut mine.