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.

 If you don’t sign and the neighbour has, you will probably get their pollution anyway. If your neighbour doesn’t sign and you do, they won’t speak to you again. You then have to stand by and watch your land be ripped up, taken over and become worthless. Selling out early is the only way to get a good price, and that means leaving the area and your friends, to start again somewhere else. People who sell out are usually cast out by the community.

CSG has divided friends and family, isolating many, and not just the farmers. A life-long time resident of one area, who now works for a CSG company, complained that his wife has been shunned by other women in their community.

Isolation, uncertainty and a sense of hopelessness breed depression. Suicides in the Chinchilla region are well above the national average.

‘People are starting to speak out about suicides and there have been conferences and information nights about it,’ said Karen. ‘A month ago we were told there had already been eleven suicides this year. Last year there were fourteen and they are just the ones we know about. Overwhelmingly, the victims are male, not from overseas but Australians from across the range of young and old people, local businessmen and fly in fly out workers in man camps. We heard at a conference a month ago that drugs had been an issue in some suicides but I don’t know if they meant that drugs had been the means of suiciding or if there had been a drug issue before they suicided.’