Geralyn McCarron - A doctor from Brisbane!
We are told coal and CSG is good for Queensland. Recently I went out to Tara, Miles, Wandoan and Acland and met a few people affected. Near the gasfield's of Tara, I met Jackson, age 3, with blood and mucus dripping steadily from his right nostril (that was a good day for him - on a bad day he is hospitalised). He constantly tells his mother his head hurts. I met little Noah, 17 months - he can’t tell his mum what he feels - he just holds his head in both hands and screams. I met children who were coughing, coughing, coughing.
I met Marion who has constant headaches, who wakes in the night with headaches.I met Michael who moved to Tara from a remote sheep station with his wife and their two youngest children. Since then they have suffered rashes, eye irritation, fatigue, sinus problems, nose bleeds, headaches.
I met Brian. Three generations of his family live on their 5000 acre property. They are all ill. His infant grandchildren are constantly sick with rashes, headaches and one now has fits. He can light his water bore on fire (and has posted a video on you tube to prove it) but the government officials can find no flammable gas.
I met Celia who runs sheep and cattle on over 1000 acres. She doesn’t have gas wells yet but QGC are running the gas pipeline through her property. They promised they would be in and out in 12 weeks; that she would hardly notice them there. They promised when they were finished the grass would be as good as the grass on her lawn. She lost 128 sheep to dingo attacks when QGC took down her fences. QGC cleared a corridor of 20 metres of her land on both sides of the pipeline which they ran right through the middle of her property. 11 months later the giant elevated pipe is still not in the ground. It is impossible to farm, she cannot gain access to half her property, she cannot muster, and sheep run in and out under the pipeline. She has lost three crops already and QGC cannot tell her when they will be finished.
I met an air traffic controller who had retired to the bush in 2006 only to find in 2009 that Yang Coal opened a huge open cut mine 9km from their property. He cannot sleep. There are two times in the day when it is quiet- from 5:50 in the morning until a quarter past six, and the same in the evening during change of shift. The rest is constant noise from the crushing plant, the coal trains loading and going out 4 times per day, manual shunting, loaded trucks accelerating up the pit, travelling 9 km and going back, dozers, diggers, other machinery and once a week there is a blast that shakes the house. So far there have been 57 blasts. His wife who is a charge nurse at the local hospital is similarly
And.... Then there were the many farmers, graziers and croppers, stoical and reticent who have been under extreme stress trying to fend off the threat of coal and gas to their homes, lives and livelihoods for up to 5 years, sometimes more.
Tale after tale of distress and despair.
