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?

Tree Pear & Prickly pear

When I left Goondawindi I could not help but notice what I thought were giant prickly pears but apparently they are not. They are tree pears. I am told that both are declared pests but the prickly pear has mostly been eradicated whereas the tree pear has not. Farmers are not so concerned about tree pear as they have few spines enabling cattle to eat them during a drought and it does not spread as fast as prickly pear. The tree pear has an deep orange flower and red fruit while the very prickly prickly pear has bright yellow flowers and dark purple fruit.

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.

Keeping miners out

Joe Hill and his sign

Today I met Joe Hill, an Angus cattle breeder from Miles, who has refused to negotiate with or allow anyone from the CSG companies onto his property. He has a big ‘No Trespassing’ sign at his gate. One of the four gas companies that have an exploration licence over his land was forced  to put a bend in their pipeline to skirt his property. It’s known as ‘Joe’s Bend’.

Joe’s primary concern was the filling out of National Declaration Forms which are mandatory when selling cattle. This form requires farmers to declare if any chemicals have been used on their farm. If he had allowed a gas company on his property he could not honestly answer this question and if you are in doubt you have to declare it and that makes it very difficult to sell your cattle.

Roma Oil & Gas

The Big Rig at Information Centre, Roma

Roma is a place I really wanted to visit as I had recently come across several interesting stories about it during my research on the Great Artesian Basin. Roma is where the first natural gas was found in Australia.

The town has an average annual rainfall of 600mm. During a drought in 1900 it was short of water as the creek and a reservoir were inadequate. A bore was drilled to 1350 feet and water and gas gushed out but it took several years to know how to separate them. The problem was solved by sinking another bore inside the existing bore and driving it down to the gaseous strata. A gas plant was completed in 1906 and when shops and hotels were first connected and lit up, they became a public attraction. ‘It gives a perfectly white light, and most brilliant as displayed by the block burners and mantles.’

Ten days after connecting the first premises, the gas flow stopped. It was not known if it had run out, an obstruction blocked it or if the casing had leaked and the gas had found another way of escape. Experts were called in but the bore was not restored.

Moree to Roma

Victoria Hotel, Goondawindi

Today I drove from Moree to Goondawindi, The Gums, Surat and Roma, through towns I have not seen before. What surprised me most were the old buildings, which indicated the prosperity of this region in times gone by.

Cotton, on the roadsides, floated up whenever a car passed on the road between Moree and Goondawindi. Dust from a vast area of ploughed ground was visible from miles away. Goondawindi is a thriving cotton town on the border of NSW and Queensland. I visited the Goondawindi Cotton Shop but I was unable to buy anything because everything was made in China (see blog 29 April – My Protest to the Death Penalty).