Self drive Gas & GAB Tours website

Farmers in northern NSW and Southern Queensland have banded together to fight the combined power of big business and governments in an attempt to have heard their side of the debate about Coal Seam Gas and the future of the Great Artesian Basin.

Narrabri and Chinchilla are almost as remote from Sydney and Brisbane as life on the land is from the world of inner city hipsters and politicians reclining on their padded leather benches.

But it is in these recharge areas of the Great Artesian Basin a relative handful of farmers are fighting for what they say is the future of agriculture in their areas.

They are practical men and women who are not opposed to change and development but their lifestyle and the lives of hundreds of thousands of sheep and cattle are dependent on the continuing flow of water from the Great Artesian Basin -- the million year old aquifer that supplies water to more than 22 per cent of our dry continent.

Without the drinking water produced from bores that tap into the Great Artesian Basin (GAB), it would be impossible to run the current stock numbers, either cattle or sheep, on the sweeping western plains.

The farmers fear that Coal Seam Gas exploration and production that involves drilling thousands of gas wells into and through the GAB could destroy the aquifer and force them to walk off and abandon their farms.

Already many bores near Chinchilla have stopped producing clean water, or in some cases, any water at all.

But getting their side of the story over against the powerful public relations machines and cosy political lobbying groups used by the billion dollar mining industry is an uphill fight.

Only when someone such as Wallaby flanker David Pocock chains himself to mining machinery in protest does the farmers’ one-sided fight even impact on the big city media.

So farmers are now asking Australians, particularly those in the cities, to take a long drive into the scrub to see for themselves the truth of the matter.

They have established a website, Gas & GAB Tours www.gasgabtours.com, to allow everyone to take a self guided tour of the areas affected by the on-going gas exploration and extraction.

The site gives detailed information on how to get there, what to see, where to stay or camp and who to talk to for expert information.

It also warns against trespassing on land owned or controlled by the mining giants -- an action which under new regulations recently pushed through by the NSW Government can now result in fines of up to $5,000 and long jail terms.

What to do with treated water

Irrigation near Chinchilla. Courtesy of Karen Auty.

‘We call the gas companies liars, cheats and thieves,’ said Joe Hill. ‘They lie to get on your place, they cheat you out of money they should be paying you and they thieve the water.’

Gas companies have to extract water from coal seams to get the gas out and keep it flowing. The water they suck out of an aquifer on one property, could be somebody else’s irrigation allocation on the other side of the river.

CSG, Bore Water & Bubbles in the Creek

Wambo Creek, Avenue Road,
south of Chinchilla

Gas companies, extracting lots of groundwater for CSG operations, are causing the water levels of aquifers to drop. ‘I don’t have a bore,’ said Joe Hill from Miles in Queensland, ‘but my next door neighbour has one. It’s about 1,100 feet into the Walloons aquifer but it’s dropped 60 metres and they estimate that around here it could drop up to 100 metres.’

‘A report named all the bores in the area that would eventually blow gas. Agreements were made with landholders to cap and seal these bores. The compensation paid only covered the cost of drilling one new bore, so if it’s no good you don’t have any more bore water. When a bore is capped, water and or gas sometimes comes up outside the casing.’

Mental Health & CSG

Roma man camp

‘The mental and financial stress of having a mining company knocking on your door is phenomenal, and not recognised,’ said Chinchilla resident, Karen Auty. ‘As a number of mining companies may have licences over different parts of the same property, some landholders have several coal or gas companies to negotiate with. They may negotiate with one company and then another takes over and they have to start again. This may go on for years.’

Landholders have been bullied into making quick decisions and threatened with legal action they simply cannot afford. Signing or not signing with a mining company will bring on the wrath of some neighbours or family. A divide and conquer strategy has worked for many years for big business.

Health Impacts of CSG

People living on lifestyle blocks of 30 to 800 acres just out of Tara in Queensland have been impacted the most by the CSG industry. As some of these blocks are off the grid, houses are powered by solar energy. The blocks are mostly too small to produce an income but owners run a few horses or cattle and grow their own vegetables.

‘Adults, who are sensitive receptors, and most children living in this area, have experienced nose bleeds, headaches, sore eyes, skin rashes and in some cases neuropathy,’ said Karen Auty. ‘A three year old boy runs around normally, then suddenly his limbs go limp, like a rag doll, sometimes lasting for 30 seconds or 20 minutes. The same child has lots of nose bleeds. Some people have breathing difficulties, which may bring on asthma, heart attacks or epilepsy which has not been experienced before.’

Noise & Air Pollution

'Beneficial water' is pumped into the dam
 in the distance for irrigation

Karen Auty from Chinchilla describes the noise generated by the infrastructure. ‘A gas well sits in a paddock on an acre or half an acre block of land that has been cleared, fenced and the ground pounded to give vehicles access. A metal box, like a garden shed, sits beside it housing a couple of diesel generators to keep the gas well going. Some of these are quite close to people’s homes. At night it’s very quiet in the bush so the noise is amplified and it doesn’t stop. You can’t turn the television up high enough and when you want to sleep you have to close your windows. Imagine having three or four noisy diesel engines running every night, 24 hours a day at your neighbour’s place. A gas well is a small piece of infrastructure.’

Roads & Litter

CSG mining around Chinchilla has brought an enormous increase in traffic. Thousands of mine safe utes travel on the back roads and the Warrego Highway. Despite improvements to the highway, it now takes longer to travel to Dalby or Brisbane due in part to the speed limit being reduced from 110 kilometres an hour to 100.

‘The road toll went up by 25 percent in one year,’ said Chinchilla resident, Karen Auty. ‘Many others were injured. People are affected forever and that’s a huge unseen cost to the health system. People, unfamiliar with the area, drive after working very long hours, and go off the road. They are not used to kangaroos, emus and pigs jumping out in front of them. We have lots of 457s here. These overseas workers’ driving skills leave a lot to be desired.’

Chinchilla - Boom to Bust

'Beneficial water' from CSG runs into Chinchilla's water supply

The Chinchilla gas boom only lasted about four years, during the construction phase, which is the greatest employer of people. Major infrastructure, such as pipelines, dams, reverse osmosis plants and water and gas separation facilities were built.

House rental prices soared. Prior to the boom rents were stable. A three bedroom house with two bathrooms rented for $250 a week but this went up to $650-$700 a week. The most expensive, a five bedroom, five bathroom purpose built house cost $1,500 a week.

Chinchilla Before CSG

New well pad near Chinchilla

Karen Auty moved to the town of Chinchilla in Queensland’s Darling Downs in 2007. She was familiar with area as relatives lived there. It was a wealthy town surrounded by multimillion dollar cropping farms, watermelon farms and feed lots for beef cattle. The CSG industry was just starting but was not evident.

‘I moved to Chinchilla because house prices were affordable, the schools had a good name and it was a clean, tidy town with good people and clean country air. It had twelve churches and three pubs and a population of around 4,000. It’s the Bible belt, which is good and bad, but the good side is that you have neighbours you can trust. 

Hopeland Celebrates Gasfields Free Declaration Day

 Lock the Gate’s Drew Hutton, Shay Dougall & farmer Lee McNicholl

The Hopeland community in the Western Downs yesterday celebrated saying NO to coal seam gas (CSG) taking over their farmland, threatening their water supply and ruining their lifestyle.

About 30 locals gathered at a local property where Rev. Graham Slaughter of the Uniting Church accepted the declaration saying a massive 85 per cent of locals did not want the invasive gas.

Hopeland Declaration Day

Central Processing Plant

A ten minute drive south of Chinchilla brings you to a small area called Hopeland, bordered by the Condamine River. This area of very old river flats with high quality soil is registered as priority agriculture land, similar to the Lockyer Valley and Liverpool and Cecil Plains. The area produces crops such as cotton, sorghum, chick peas and wheat.

Large gas infrastructure such as the Orana Central Processing plant is close by. Origin Energy is knocking on the doors of these multimillion dollar farms as they want to begin extracting CSG, starting with 171 wells at Hopeland. Some landholders have agreed while others have locked their gates and put up no trespassing signs.

A group of people against CSG has completed a survey of all the households in the area and 85 percent of people are against CSG. A Declaration Day will be held this Saturday May 16. This is significant. Hopeland has an extremely conservative community and it’s the first to be surveyed on the western Darling Downs and in the Western Downs Regional Council, which goes from Dalby almost out to Roma, a huge amalgamated shire.

The land at Hopeland will be farmed for hundreds of years. The gas may last for five years, the companies reckon they will get thirty years but can they ever rehabilitate the land and the aquifers?

End of road tour but not the blog

Kenya Water Treatment Facility

I drove from Chinchilla to Kogan with a slight detour to see the Kenya water treatment facility, a monstrous building with huge dams and lucerne crops nearby. I saw ramshackle houses close to noisy gas wells. Then I headed to Dalby through fertile fields of cropping, studded with well-maintained houses, sheds and silos and on to Toowoomba.

The decent from Toowoomba surprised me and soon I was into four lanes of traffic, bumper to bumper. I hadn’t missed that.

Now I am in Byron Bay where I will spend a few days before heading home. This blog will continue to be updated as I go through my notes, interviews and do more research but it won’t be daily.

Chinchilla, rural to industrial

Gas well

Like many people from Chinchilla, Karen Auty escaped the city lifestyle in 2007 to live in a rural community free of pollution. Like others she was not perturbed when gas mining started in the area as she knew it had operated for many years further west at Roma.

Now Karen is an anti-CSG campaigner after seeing the affects it has had on her community. She has learnt about the mining process and how it is very different from the conventional gas mined at Roma. She has talked to people from the surrounding areas and has seen how CSG has adversely impacted their lives. The area most affected is Tara where there are small blocks of land and the industry has been operating for ten years. People, particularly children, are having higher than usual health issues, headaches, respiratory problems, bleeding noses and ears and a cancer cluster is suspected. People living within a 20km radius of the infrastructure are the most affected. The properties have lost their value making it difficult for anyone living there to freely move to a safer environment for their children or closer to better medical facilities if needed.