Rural Affairs

You get the feeling not much happens on a Saturday morning in Merriwa. The sleepy country town in the Upper Hunter region of New South Wales just hums along quietly. Except for its proud and tidy RSL, where the front bar opens at 10am, horse races flash across the television screens and tickets pump out of the Club Keno machine.

In a stuffy back hall, on neat rows of red vinyl chairs sit the Merriwa Healthy Environment Group; a group of local farmers and landowners who came together in February to unite against the coal seam gas companies as they rode into town.  Seven months later, they feel under attack. 

Their enemy? PEL 456, PEL 468, PEL 4 and PEL 433; coal seam gas exploration licences for Merriwa and its surrounding areas of cattle, sheep and cereal farming land, up for sale to the highest bidder.

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  • Brian says:

    07:30pm | 02/10/11

    Methane is not highly poisonous. There is no exposure limit, and other than the risk of catching fire it is considered no more dangerous than nitrogen - the only way it can harm you through inhalation is by displacing oxygen, and with the exception of a cylinder being opened in… Read more »

  • Kheiron says:

    09:58am | 30/09/11

    Romans and Normans and to an extent Vikings can make the claim of British conquest and occupation. French, British and Spanish can do the same for America. All this in, or before, the Age of Sail when the sea was a much more daunting barrier then it is today. Britain… Read more »

 

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