'A sad and sombre air surrounded the group when Sr. Aine O'Connor and I walked into the home of Shay Dougall in Hopeland near Chinchilla, Queensland, Australia last October. Shay, a very active member of the grassroots, anti-coal seam gas campaign known as the Western Downs and Wider Unconventional Gas Group (WDWUGG) was hosting us.

Activists against coal seam gas mining: Drew Hutton of Lock the Gate, with Shay Dougall of the Western Downs and Wider Unconventional Gas Group, and Lee McNicholl, a farmer in Australia. (Karen Auty)

Both Aine and I work with Mercy International Association-Global Action that links the Mercy Family worldwide. Our visit to Chinchilla was arranged by Sr. Deirdre Gardner and Dr. Mark Copeland, Executive Officer of the Social Justice Commission, Catholic Diocese of Toowoomba.

Upon our arrival in Brisbane, we were told that George Bender, a founding member of the Western Downs group, who was loved and highly respected in the area, had taken his own life the previous week. George, a prize-winning farmer of cotton, wheat and pigs, had battled for 10 years to keep the coal seam gas mining companies and the negative impacts of unconventional coal seam gas mining off his beloved farm, which had been in the Bender family for generations...'

Read the complete article in the Global Sisters Report

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