ON an afternoon in March 2008 on southeast Queensland's fertile Darling Downs, farmer Bob Free got a call from men working for US-based company Ambre Energy, saying they'd be at his house in an hour.
Free, like everyone else in the Felton district 40km south of Toowoomba, knew what the mining men were about. The farmers had always known there was coal beneath the rich agricultural soil in their valley, but no one had thought seriously about mining it, although lately there had been a lot more drilling activity. But it was still a surprise when the Ambre men arrived.
"We sat down and they got out these maps and spread them across the table and said: 'We're going to need your land,' " Free says. "They said: 'We're taking the Bryces' and we're taking yours, too.' And they said that they could do this under some legislation back in 1902 or something like that." Read More
The Australian
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