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.
The Punch
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