Bush revolt: Toowoomba Chronicle reports community anger of coal seam gas

A "bushie revolt" is being staged in the Western Downs of Queensland, according to the Toowoomba Chronicle, as outraged landholders fight to keep mining companies from consuming the region’s farming lands and invading residential areas.

The article (here) reports that the region has become a hotbed of community-based protest groups and sometimes heated showdowns between rural residents and mining companies.

But the article also quotes Scott Collins from the Western Downs Alliance, who claims that the mining companies are deliberately portraying the local residents as dangerous and extremist. Collins denied that members of the Western Downs Alliance were using extreme acts to protest gas installations near homes and schools, saying: 

I feel sorry for any resident who’s forced to take matters into their own hands because no-one’s listening to us.

It’s a feeling of helplessness, frustration and anger.

[The accusations of violence by the Queensland Gas Company is] just a beat-up. QGC are going out of their way to portray us as out-of-control vigilantes.

QGC is reported as having accused members of the Western Alliance of abusing and intimidating gas workers, sabotaging gas wells and even of shooting at work crews.

Another group, known as the Fairymeadow Land Protection Group, formed as a result of QGC’s need to fast-track gas field works and its proposal to build a massive compressor station, which needs a 40 hectare site, in the middle of prime farming land.

Group member David Uebergang said the group just wanted to know what QGC’s plans were so they could prepare.

“We’re not being antagonistic but we must know what’s happening,” he said.

Mr Uebergang said that forming community lobbying groups was the only way landholders could protect against the “divide and conquer” tactics of mining companies.

See the original article, "Farmers fight Mining Companies" by John Farmer, Toowoomba Chronicle, 6th April 2010, here.