This Is What's In Store For Towns Around The Riverina

Coal meets the last man standing

• by: Andrew Fraser
• From: The Australian
• June 18, 2011 12:00AM

   

Glen Beutel is the only resident left in the Acland township on Queensland's Darling Downs. Picture: Jack Tran Source: The Australian

GLEN Beutel's story is almost a parable of modern Australia.

As the last man standing in the Darling Downs town of Acland, where mining company New Hope has been buying its 50 houses in a bid to expand a coalmine, Beutel is one of the forgotten faces of the two-speed economy. Mining may have enriched the nation as a whole, but individuals such as Beutel are feeling impoverished and frustrated.
Beutel's former neighbours have taken New Hope's money and moved to nearby towns, leaving the 58-year-old the sole landowner in a town situated squarely in the middle of a planned 7km-wide open-cut coalmine. And yet Beutel, who grew up in Acland, would never live anywhere else.
"I've travelled a lot, but this will always be home," he said. "I've got an attachment to the town that I feel I'd regret if I abandoned it."

 His main attachment is the town's gardens, where many of the trees were planted by his mother and father back in the 1970s.

The gardens changed the town. Previously it had been the standard, dry, dusty, Darling Downs township, but the plantings encouraged the citizens to sharpen up their own houses and gardens.
Acland became a regular winner of the Tidy Towns award throughout the 1980s and 1990s. But when the council abandoned the town in 2007, it cut off the contractor who would mow the lawns, so Beutel now mows them himself. "I think I'm keeping Mum and Dad's work going. The leaves that the koalas eat -- they come from the eucalyptus trees my parents planted. The birds sit in the other trees that Mum and Dad planted.
"I think one of the worst moments in all this came when a fella from New Hope rang me and said they'd move me to Jondaryan and they'd put up a plaque there to honour my parents' work.
"I yelled at him -- a plaque for a park! Is that all it's worth? All those days spent working down there at the gardens, creating something for everyone to enjoy. And all that's worth is a plaque somewhere else?"
At a time when Australia's mining industry is growing rapidly, Beutel's story touches a nerve. The question his life and his stand pose is how far Australia wants to go in pursuit of financial gain while destroying people's quality of life.
It's especially galling for farmers to see their elected representatives -- the government -- coming in on the side of the miners. The Acland project was declared a Project of State Significance by the Queensland government, meaning it can be fast-tracked and the state has the ultimate sanction of being able to direct people to sell their land.
Beutel may be the last man left standing but he's certainly not alone, receiving support from all over Australia. Sydney broadcaster Alan Jones, the best-known alumnus of Acland Primary School, is championing Beutel's stand on radio.
Jones told his 2GB listeners yesterday "prime agricultural land is being raped" and "landholders robbed" by mining companies on the Darling Downs.
"The movie The Castle is alive and well," Jones thundered.
The irony is that Acland has been a mining town for most of the 130 years that it has been in existence. Beutel's father was a miner, and most of his schoolmates went down the mines.
"But that was an underground mine. It was the centre of our community. We'd fish for yabbies in the tailings pond; we'd go for showers at the mine's bathhouse.
"The mining people now all tell you that mining and farming is compatible -- it is if it's an underground mine. It's not if it's an open-cut mine."
The Darling Downs in Queensland, the Liverpool Plains in NSW and the Hunter Valley in NSW are the three main areas in Australia where the question of whether to use land for farming or mining is most difficult.
Acland is in the middle of rich blacksoil country, which supports the growing of crops such as sorghum, wheat and barley, while cattle graze in some parts on the plentiful grass.
The Acland mine and another about 60km due south at Millmerran are the only two mines in the inner Darling Downs at the moment, but there are plenty of applications for more mines in the western part of the Downs.
Further out on the Downs, farmers are concerned about how coal-seam gas will affect their operations, especially their bore water supplies.
Many farmers and landowners feel the impact on their lifestyles and businesses is being shoved aside in the scramble for export dollars.