coal

Wines, not mines, in Margaret River

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The latest unthinkable area to be targeted by the coal mining frenzy is the world-renowned wine and food area of Margaret River in south-west Western Australia. 

A town, a river and a region, it is one of that state’s main tourist destinations, offering a Mediterranean climate and a combination of surf coast and scenic hinterland as settings for rich and varied cultural and gastronomic experiences.

The people who moved there and gradually created this special — and sustainable — economic Eden know what they have to offer. They also know what they have to lose if the coal industry gets a toehold here.

Bye-bye Leederville aquifer, bye-bye rural peace and quiet, bye-bye Margaret River as a holiday refuge for the city-stressed.

This is the mine site on Osmington Rd, near Rosa Brook, 15km from the actual town of Margaret River, and a much-visited and picturesque part of the Margaret River region, with wineries, dairies, berry and olive farms, equestrian centres and charming rural B&Bs, like the owner-built Rosa Brook Stone where I stayed.

LD Operations is currently applying to mine coal underground here; other exploration leases await. As you can see from the swampy centre, it’s clearly a wet area, despite, as locals say, a dry winter.

It is inconceivable that they will be able to mine without damaging the aquifer, although I am sure they will find experts to assure us that this would be ‘unlikely’.

The visible neighbouring farmhouses are modern, new-ish; they weren’t expecting this. Nor were these inhabitants of the adjoining lifestyle block.

Locals like TV chef Ian Parmenter (left) and Brent Watson have formed a strong NoCOAL!itionmargaretriver group to fight this entirely inappropriate mine.

Ian Parmenter and his wife Ann moved here 20 years ago, building a haven — home and garden and orchard and vineyard — over that time. Brent Watson and his family run the highly successful Horses and Horsemen equestrian resort and training centre just down the road.

They have the support of the local Council, winemakers and tourism associations and notables such as James Halliday. Local member Troy Buswell says he’s agin it, but Premier Colin Barnett has finally stated that he is not about to step in and deny LDO their ‘due process’

And we all know what that portends.

At Rosa Brook Hall with Peter Rigby and Brent Watson. Photo by Derek Pool, Augusta Margaret River Times

Because I was visiting Collie, only two hours away, Ian asked me to speak at a public meeting the day before I headed home. About 70 people turned up at the Rosa Brook Hall to hear about what I’ve seen in coal areas in other states and were audibly shocked at the Rivers of Shame DVD shown afterwards. As a reward, I was treated to a Parmenter feast of a dinner — vegetarian, in my honour!

I know these good people had very full lives and livelihoods before this mine threat exploded and I know how much time they are now spending on trying to save them — and the future and water resources of the whole region. This is a huge part of the unfairness I see all around the country. I hope they can last the distance — and win — as all reason and justice say they ought.

If Mr Barnett is not thinking of the southwest’s water and longterm land use, he might like to think about this, which I’d read before this whole mining madness became public. It’s was in The Weekend Australian Financial Review May 22-23, 2010, ‘How space and place dictate your happiness’ by Deirdre Macken. She reported that Glenn Albrecht, Professor of Sustainability at Murdoch University, had studied the Upper Hunter’s existentially distressed coal mining area populations, where ‘everything they valued was being taken away, … shovel by shovel’. 

He became interested in finding places that work best for people, ‘health-enhancing environments’, and he and urban planner Roberta Ryan of Urbis independently agreed that  ‘the place in Australia that best captures the qualities that please the psyche is the Margaret River.’   

Says Ryan, ‘It’s the most extraordinary place… and it just feels like the most fantastic place to be. It helps that it has an incredible level of investment by locals and so the locals feel as if it’s owned by them.’

Which is why they won’t be allowing Mr Barnett to allow the mining company, under his rubber stamp legislation, to take it away from them — and the rest of us.

Collie, coal town

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In Western Australia I drove about 200km south from Perth to spend a few days in the town of Collie, the state’s coal mining and coal-fired power base. Like many towns founded in the late 19th century on underground coal mining, Collie is proud of its history.

However, I fear the that townspeople have not realised the vast difference between impacts from those old mining methods and the large open-cut mining employed since the 1990s, now much in evidence — but only if you drive 10 minutes out of town.

Collie has two companies, Wesfarmers Premier Coal and Griffin Coal, the latter under administration, mining mainly to supply the four privately owned power stations, more of which are planned to to open or re-open in the next few years. Collie Basin is set to remain the carbon powerhouse we don’t need.

 As I first approached Collie, one obvious difference to the similarly coal-dependent Hunter Valley was the heavily forested, hilly surrounds.

Collie itself is a nice town, with all the services you’d want. Residents can go ‘down the hill’ to the city and port of Bunbury for anything else — just as ‘flatlander’ workers come ‘up the hill’ to the mines and power stations. However, the Collie coal work force has roughly halved in the almost 20 years since the mines went open-cut and mechanised.

The mine landscape of overburden, dust mountains and vast stepped holes was familiar to me. There are farms under current impact right near these mines, which are expanding or moving operations along and so threatening more properties with unacceptable noise and dust. And of course there are the people already forced out, those who used to live where now nothing can.

From anecdotal evidence, I’d say that health damage from infrasound is likely to be occurring.

The other familiar aspect was the milky air. Pollution? It was winter and most Collie homes have wood fires, plus there was hazard reduction burning in the forests, following an unusually dry winter. I accept what the locals say, that it doesn’t look like this in summer. 

However, if Collie Valley holds the winter smog like this, it has inversions and is highly likely to also hold the fine PM2.5 dust particulates from those uncovered mines and those high coal-fired power station stacks. Plus the uncovered coal trains go right through the heart of town.

Since I was there, a 2008 Collie Basin air quality study has just released its PM 2.5 section and yes, there were ‘exceedences’, but hazard reduction burning seems to be getting the blame. Ongoing monitoring was recommended, however, plus particle analysis.

Collie itself doesn’t seem to want to know. Afraid of what might happen, jobwise, if health damage proved that mining might be stopped? How about insisting on better practices right now from mining and setting up cleaner industries for the future of Collie?

Instead they are planning a coal-to-urea plant! That should spice up the airborne particles with plenty of nitrogen and put Collie folk on a knife edge, as many are very worried about the dangers inherent in storing ammonia. They don’t mean ill-health; they mean almost instant and widespread death for the people of Collie. They have no faith in the assurances of Perdaman, the company wanting to establish this industry — who only estimate seven deaths at worst case scenario.

So that’s all right, then?

The other serious and totally unsustainable issue here is the dewatering of the area’s groundwater, estimated at about 1m overall drop across the Collie Basin, but up to 50m below the pre-mining water table in places.

The pools in the branches of the Collie River are not likely to join up soon and the outlook for what might still live there is bleak. Salinity is a fact of life.

The mines are supposed to treat their used water and put it back but it’s still too acidic. While also allowed to pass on their water to the power stations, the sums for overall water allocations do not add up.

With a drying climate and more water-hungry power stations to come, there will simply not be enough water for Collie industry or its people.

Who isn’t joining the dots — and why?

Another water issue for me was the water-filled old open cut void, Stockton Lake, a popular spot for camping and waterski-ing, and more are promised.

The tourist brochure warns ‘As the lake is a disused coal mine, the water is more acidic than other natural lakes and skiers are advised to limit their time in the water — especially those with sensitive skin. Swimming is not recommended.’

‘Yeah, they say they’re a bit acidic,’ said a local, ‘but I’ve swum in them for years and my legs haven’t fallen off yet’.

H-hm-m. Shades of The Simpsons?

What about the heavy metals this acid causes to leach out — lead, arsenic and mercury —  the effects of which may not show up for decades?

I liked Collie, and I am sad to see its head-in-the-sand response to the health issues and future job challenges, but they are taking their lead from the state government. A few well-informed local voices continue to tell it as it is, but, unlike the response to the boy who dared cry out that ‘The Emperor has no clothes!’ most of the townsfolk in earshot here would seem to be blocking their ears.

Election choices?

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On Saturday Australians must vote for a Federal government — as if we didn’t all know, with the election campaign dominating our media ad nauseam.

Because we no longer believe what Labor or the Liberals say, in or out of campaign mode, it’s hard to care what they’re saying.

And neither of them cares about us — or else they’d be offering us real leadership and action on climate change.

Not perhaps a carbon crumb in 2014, Julia, and certainly not more funding for the dirty myth of clean coal — for God’s sake, Tony Abbott, go talk to the coal mining unions! Nobody believes in that any more!

On Saturday 21st will the sun set on a wasted day, or worse, an Abbott-win day? I wish climate change was crap, as Tony says, but what sort of system do we have where such a man might be ‘leading’ us into worse global warming and extreme weather events?

I’d like to see him tell the Pakistanis that their unprecedented floods are just a spot of wet weather. Where has the urgency for action gone? Into reverse. Carbon is still an OK product in Australia; we are even planning new coal-fired power stations and lots of coal mines to keep emissions up. 

I can only hope that more people of conscience vote for those candidates of conscience who are un-aligned to Coal. This is especially critical — and achievable —  in the Senate, where they will have some influence.

To compare the parties’ climate change policies, go to this page on the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) website.

No prizes for guessing for whom I’ll be voting!

Voting and preferences

Voting for a minor party or independent is never wasted as your vote flows on at full value to your preferences if that candidate is knocked out, and then on to their preferences — and on. Major parties need to be kept? — or made? — honest; make your vote count by sending them a strong message that you’re not happy, so their primary vote has fallen.

Don’t forget that you can choose to allot your own preferences. I always do.

For the lower house you must number all the boxes in order of preference, that is, favourite to least-favourite. This ballot paper is green and smaller.

For the upper house or the Senate you can either put a number 1 above the line — in which case your preferences go to wherever that party or person has given them — or number every box below the line and allot your own. This ballot paper is white and large.

Fingers crossed!

Outback Eden under threat

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If the Galilee Basin in central-west Queensland sounds biblical, the scale of the threat facing it is certainly of epic proportions. The coal underneath it has always been there, but cattle and drovers, not coal mines and drillers, have dominated the land.

If you’re listening to the Queensland Government or the mining industry they’d use words like wealth and opportunity, revenue and development, but they would agree with the scale. Some of the world’s largest coal mines are proposed for the region, and coal gas industries scramble to tap into the underground energy potential.

If the powers-that-be have their way, the Galilee Basin could provide enough coal to almost double Australia’s current thermal coal exports, especially to China, to be burnt in coal-fired power plants and contribute billions more tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere. That’s the global reason why we should leave it in the ground, there or anywhere, but the rustle of prospective dollars drowns out that argument.

Yet there’s also a critical precedent here, a unique regional reason why we ought not allow the Galilee Basin to be degraded from an outback Eden to an industrial wasteland.

Nobby-tailed Gecko

On top of the coal seam that Clive Palmer’s Waratah Coal wants to dig up is Bimblebox Nature Refuge, 8000 peaceful hectares of biodiverse remnant woodland. If allowed to proceed, it would be one of the first protected areas, part of the Australian National Reserve System, to be lost to coal interests.

All of Bimblebox, as well as many surrounding properties, are under Waratah’s exploration permit. As current legislation stands, as long as the company receives the standard approvals from the state and federal governments – as we know they usually do – there is nothing to stop the innumerable living treasures, the plants and animals of Bimblebox, from becoming nothing more than dead overburden.

In 2000, when Queensland’s land clearing rates were amongst the highest in the world, several concerned people, aided by funding from the Australian National Reserve System program, bought the land and signed it up in 2003 as Bimblebox Nature Refuge Agreement with the Queensland government, to permanently protect the conservation values of the property.

White-browed Woodswallow; Kookaburra and Grey-crowned Babblers

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Man-made murk

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Once the fog had lifted from the Latrobe Valley, the old Hazelwood Power Station near Morwell showed the true colour of its emissions — brown. Of course the real toxic output of such an outmoded technology — CO2 — is colourless, and all the more insidious for being invisible and thus unacted upon. Hazelwood produces 16 million tonnes of greenhouse gases each year — 15 per cent of Victoria’s total emissions.

It is also Australia’s largest single source of dioxin pollution.

Due to close in 2005,  its private owners asked, and were given permission, to keep pumping them out until 2031.

The brown sky trail edged around the valley for kilometres, still clearly visible beyond Traralgon where it seemed to bank up against the hills in what was, for a Hunter person, a more familiar milky pollution mist. It was not fog.

In the newer power stations like Loy Yang A and B, the only visible output is the water vapour from the cooling towers. Looks harmless, doesn’t it? Almost clean! But while the CO2 emitted is less than at Hazelwood, it is still more than our planet can stand.

Brown coal contains about 65 per cent water, and is 33 per cent dirtier than black coal as a CO2 emitter.

There is much research afoot into various ways of drying it and reducing emissions — but mostly only to as much as black coal. Not good enough!

A few scraps of fog hung in the mine void, but no dust. For local impact, brown coal mining is amazingly clean and tidy compared to our Hunter open cut black coal mines. Loy Yang uses big excavators and conveyor belts, all run on its own electricity — very little diesel machinery.

I was sorry to hear that Yallourn mine had not replaced its excavators, but went to diesel power. I thought of the infrasound impacts of that, as well as the fossil fuel consumption.

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Coal-powered clouds

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Victoria’s Latrobe Valley is the state’s powerhouse, burning their abundant brown coal for 85% of that state’s electricity. I knew that, but until I went there and stayed to see it in different weather conditions and times of day, I didn’t know it made its own cloudscapes.

The eight little dots creating this amazing, yearning sort of cloud are the tops of the eight stacks at Hazelwood, their oldest power station. Here the output looks harmlessly white and fluffy, which is surprising, given that Hazelwood doesn’t use water cooling towers as the more modern stations do — but then, since Hazelwood was supposed to be dead and buried already, nothing should surprise about it.

That afternoon, Hazelwood seemed to be making the dark cloudscape that hung over the valley. That’s not true either, but it seemed more appropriate than white and fluffy.

Next morning, the Valley was lost in fog, but the many stacks rose above it, erupting like boiling lakes in a sci-fi film. The Valley being also home to huge pine plantations for the paper mill, the stiff foreground outlines of the young pines added to the strangeness of the scene.

Driving down into the fog was eerie, the sun a cold white dot, the town of Morwell as murky as I imagine 19th century London was.

And yet after my visit I know the Latrobe is nowhere near as polluted as my Hunter Valley, so all this is illusion — my imagination working overtime, my head in the clouds, as usual.

Cuter than coal

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About 80 km south-west of Bowen in Queensland is the historic mining town of Collinsville. They’re proud of their strong coalmining and union past here — as the saga of underground strikes and fatal accidents and protest convoys to Brisbane attests. I know this from the coal museum and their interesting online history site.

But the old underground mining methods and the mateship ways ended in the 1990s; now the Collinsville mine is a vast opencut and most of the workers come from outside the area, do their 12-hour shifts for four days, then go home to their families on the coast.

Just west of Collinsville is the tiny village of Scottsville. Here I am to stay with Carol and Vince Cosentino at Wurra Yumba — Kangaroo House — who have a very pleasant accommodation building in their garden, which really belongs to a menagerie of rescued wildlife on the mend.

It is often used by backpackers, whom I imagine would be fascinated by Carol’s varying ages and breeds of wallaby joeys, all with large and thoughtfully planned play areas and with their own night-time racks of colourful sling bag/pouches.

Before I leave in the morning I watch Carol give the morning feed to this appealing group of young Pretty-face Wallabies who had slept — slung — just outside my door. As you can see, she can always use an extra pair of hands!  When the slower ones emerge for breakfast, she has to use her knees as well as hands to hold the bottles.

This is merely one of many groups. Carol gets no funding for her rescue and rehabilitation work, which includes birds as well as other mammals. Feed and formula bills are huge, let alone all the incidentals, and the constant restructuring of the space to better cater for her charges’ needs. Husband Vince helps with the latter work, while donations for the occasional accommodation might cover the tonnes of tissues Carol must use, from what I saw!

You can reach Carol at Wurra Yumba on 07 4785 5497 or visit her website.

But it is actually Carol’s village of Scottsville that is closest to the Collinsville opencut mine.

At night, a drive along a hilltop road revealed how huge this mine is, or so I thought; but satellite maps show me it is far bigger.

And the newer Sonoma mine is far too close as well. There has been a coal-fired power station here since 1976, and with what I know from the Hunter, the combination does not augur well for the health of Scottsville and Collinsville residents.

Trashing the tropics

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Lately I went to look at the coal mining explosion in Queensland, to see for myself if it was as frighteningly out of control as that in NSW. It is.

This grim industrial scene is on the coast just south of Mackay, Hay Point — not your typical tourist vision of sunny Queensland’s tropical waters.

The coal comes by rail in trains up to 2 km long, uncovered, passing through Central Queenland for up to 300 km to the two major coal loading export terminals, Dalrymple Bay and Hay Point. These extend far out into the bay, 3.85 km and 1.8 km respectively.

As you can see, they can’t load fast enough; I counted 50 ships, and there were probably more obscured further to sea. About 130 million tonnes a year passes through here to fuel climate change elsewhere in the world.

At the viewing parks, large signs boast of the output and the environmental care being taken, and invite me to follow the Mining Trail inland to the mining towns that feed this port. I  did, but I doubt my reaction was the intended one.

Yet tourists who were fortunate enough not to live in coal mining areas might be awed at the novelty of the mechanised scale — or the ugliness.

They wouldn’t want to hang around too long or breathe too deeply, as the coal stockpiles are large and open and right next to the tourist car park.


People with no choice in what they breathe or what their seascape looks like still live in the small community of Louisa Creek, just north of the coal terminals. A major industrial development threatens on their other side.

Louisa Creek is a picturesque seaside village, the street now gappy where the houses of those who gave up and sold out have been taken away on trucks.

It is being whittled away, with a few stalwarts attempting to hold the remnant community together and the coal operations to account.

People had chosen to live here for the beauty, the fresh air, the peace and quiet – and not least the fishing – and sacrificed the convenience of shops. There were still a few fishermen by the creek the day I visited, but the peace and quiet no longer exists; I’d be concerned about the air — and I doubt I’d be beach fishing.

The wooded point opposite is Mount Helton Conservation Park, whose immediate rear the industrial area will be nudging. 
I fear for Louisa Creek.

My Mining Trail has just begun — and the all-too-familiar anger and sadness for the victims of coal is well ignited.

Lithgow landscape

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Recently I visited Lithgow, partly to see how the area just south of it compared to the Hunter Valley, since both are now threatened with a third power station, also likely to be coal-fired.

At Wallerawang power station the village of the same name is extremely close by, as the church shows. I wonder if the residents are aware of the toxic contents of those plumes of smoke? In the Hunter, Ravensworth, once probably the closest village to those power stations, is now obliterated, the abandoned school the only testament that once it thrived.

South of Wallerawang, between that and the Mt Piper Power station, with a 200MW extra power station planned just 2 km away, is  the village of Blackmans Flat. It reminded me of Camberwell in the Hunter — being choked out of existence by coal. 

Blackmans Flat only has 13 houses, but they are surrounded by open cut and underground mines plus a power station fly-ash dump, all blaming each other for the dust, noise and blasting cracks. 

With more open cut mines in the wings, and  a new 10 million tonne fly-ash dump proposed to be placed 800m from the village, and Lithgow Council’s Regional Garbage dump proposed to be 600m away — how much more can these villagers take?

Why doesn’t the government take the cumulative effects of these approvals into account? It must seem to Blackmans Flat residents that it’s because people don’t count.

In the village cemetery I see that people have lived here for over a hundred years. With the health hazards that surround them now, and worse looming, I fear for the village and its residents. But how can they leave, for who would buy their houses?

 

 As the valley fills with dust and noise, the cliffs split and fall away and the filtering hanging swamps drain dry through the cracks from undermining, we must remind ourselves that all these operations are under ‘strict environmental guidelines’.

I wonder if Lithgow Council, who support the third power station, know what they are allowing to happen to their scenic region and its inhabitants. While underground mines currently dominate here, unlike the Hunter’s open-cut moonscape, the pollution and the destructive impacts are increasing and so are the mines.

As my bumper sticker says, ‘Coal costs the earth.’

Farmers versus BHP

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On the Liverpool Plains near Quirindi, New South Wales, local farmers at Caroona have been defending their properties from invasion by BHP Billiton’s coal exploration drillers.

For 615 days, until Thursday 25th March, they have inspired coal-threatened communities everywhere with their blockade, by saying ‘No’ — and meaning it.

Trish Duddy and Tommy and George Clift (front L to R, all hatted) have been at the blockade camp every single one of those 615 days, joined by other locals on a rolling roster for cups of tea, information swapping, resolve steeling — and symbolic trailblazing.

The drillers had government permission in the form of an exploration licence but these farmers did not agree to access because they have strong and reasonable fears that any drilling through their precious aquifers could cause contamination or loss of the water on which their highly productive grain cropping depends.

Recently the Supreme Court quashed the Mining Warden’s decision where ‘access agreements’ were imposed on two Caroona properties. The access agreements were declared null and void because BHP had failed to notify the mortgagees for the properties.

It was the the first victory for the Brown and Alcorn families in an almost two-year battle to keep BHP Billiton off their land. The ruling could set a precedent that voids every access agreement in the exploration licence area and across the state.

So the blockaders have won a major and significant battle, but the war continues to save their fertile farmlands and its water supplies.  And they will not hesitate to reinstate the blockade if need be.

I had driven in to the Blockade that morning, looking south across the Plains to the polluted and dust-laden skies of the Hunter Valley, where the government has allowed every coal company to win every battle. Down there it is the wineries and thoroughbred horse studs now protesting that their industries cannot cope with any more coal mines.

The difference when I looked north, away from the coal-trashed Hunter, is obvious – clear blue skies as country skies should be, not murky brown. I admired the vast patchwork of ploughed land and crops, with the rusty red of sorghum seed-heads, the green of new crops, the cream of harvested stubble and the rich dark soil itself.

Later that day, heading towards the hills and home, I pass incredibly flat golden vistas of sunflower heads and their vibrant green plants and I am struck by its ‘livingness’ as I think of the appalling contrast I will meet back as I drive back into the Hunter.

Vistas of dirt and coal, an industrial hell, a dead landscape, seen through the veil made by one of the highest concentrations of fine dust particulates in Australia. I hope the Caroona farmers manage to stop this happening to their Plains — and after speaking to many of them I believe they will!

Natural treasures

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In the Goulburn River National Park north of Mudgee, from The Drip picnic area, I recently took the easy 1.5km walk beside the river to the fabulous and deservedly famous Drip gorge formation.

On the way, I passed moss-clumped cliffs, vertical gardens that looked like they ought to be lying flat.

The sandy path led me under massive balancing acts and grotesque weatherings of ancient rocks. The river was gentle now but the effects of its different moods were evident on the cliffside banks.  From the footprints and scratchings in the sand of the depressions and overhangs, it was clear that many animals use the shelters and overhangs.

And then I came to The Drip itself. Arching over my head, cantilevered layers of rock soared against the sky. Groundwater from the land above filtered through the strata and dripped steadily into the pools below. The scale of this cliff was majestic, yet the gravity-defying structure felt fragile. I am sure nature knows what it’s doing — only an earthquake will bring this down.

If a coalmine had not been approved nearby.

I dispute that the owners of the Moolarben Coal Project know what they are doing. Why else would they contemplate running longwall mine channels under the land that leads to the cliffs, under the water that feeds it?

Imagine what will happen here from the vibrations of huge machines tunnelling underground and the subsequent collapse of strata above their tunnelling. Then think of the water that will no longer reach the river.

Only pressure from The Save the Drip group forced the agreement for the tunnelling to stop 450-550m from the river, instead of the 50-80m proposed! I’d have thought , as they did, that kilometres, not metres, was an essential setback zone if either mining company or government was serious about protecting this irreplaceable and irremediable natural — and national — treasure. 

Or don’t they think past the profit they will make from the coal?

Nightmare country

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When you finally settle on your piece of rural paradise, build your home with your own hands, landscape your gardens and get to know the wildlife neighbours– you expect to enjoy the peace and quiet for the rest of your lives, right?

Wrong, if there’s coal in the area.

North of Mudgee, NSW, I recently visited such a home. It now has a new open-cut coal mine as a neighbour that can’t be ignored. That huge wall of overburden (the dirt and rock they dig up to get at the coal) is just 400 metres from their house, rising beside the small creek in the treeline. You can just see the top of one of the giant trucks operating there.

The dust is a constant problem, and so is the noise. When I was there it was like standing in Marrickville, Sydney, right under the flight path —only the traffic was non-stop.

A rural dream turned into a nightmare — and they had no say in the matter. Selling to the mine is their only option, which is a Clayton’s option as they didn’t ever want to move. They still don’t — but how long they can stand this is in doubt.

I travel south to see another mine in the region, down a pot-holed dirt road with mine vehicles hurtling along it at speeds that make me pull over to get out of the way.

Here the coal heap happens to be on fire and the giant excavator is biting into it and dumping burning heaps into the dump truck. If you have ever seen one of those mammoth yellow trucks, which looks like a toy here, you can get some idea of the size of that excavator.

Along this road there are no longer any signs of human habitation or usage, no houses or farms, just huge Transgrid towers straddling the landscape on one side and huge machines disembowelling the earth on the other.

Hell on earth.

I leave the mines behind and head down a dirt road in what seems a green and still rural valley to find a spot to have my picnic lunch. It is quiet enough, but then over the green hills I see dust rising; I have not gone far enough to escape the effect of the open-cut, although the mine would probably have classed this valley as beyond its ‘area of affectation’.

The more coal mining areas I visit, the more horrified I am. Rural people do not live in the lucky country any more. Even if mine-free now, over the next hill drilling could be going on for their worst nightmare to come tomorrow.