I am just home from seeing the premiere of the movie Frackman at the Byron Bay Film Festival and I am on fire!
Set in a southeast Queensland community invaded by the CSG fracking industry, Dayne Pratzky and his neighbourstry everything to stop the relentless determination of vested interests.
Set in a Mad Max landscape of drill rigs and pipelines, convoys of monster trucks and legions of willing workers completely destroy peoples lands and lives.
Children with chronic headaches and bleeding noses; water too toxic to drink; the constant roar of industry and their land a crosshatch of pipes, roads and security fences rendered unsaleable and useless for farming.
The Condamine River bubbles with methane you can set fire to.
This industry is utterly unnecessary. We don’t need the gas and we certainly don’t need the pollution.
The billions being spent on the fracking industry could roll out renewable energy for all Australians for all time. It’s the worst of big oil imposing its will, and history will see CSG fracking as a crime against humanity.
It gave me a taste of what it must feel like for the First Australians having their sovereign land invaded and turned toxic by an irresistible outside force.
Like the asbestos industry, the amount of mild-mannered people including the police, willing to stand on the wrong side of the barricades and on the wrong side of history, is truly disturbing.
You really must watch (Google/Youtube) Frackman, watch it and share it with as many as you can before the state election.
We owe it to our children to get informed about the world we are passing on to them.
Our politicians have been serving the wrong masters. We can change this on March 28.
Michael Balson, Upper Wilsons Creek
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
