For top farming land only a few road hours from Sydney, the Bylong Valley came late to settlement. Its remoteness imposed by the surrounding sandstone curtain and the national parkland that separates it from the Hunter Valley, this canyon riverbed is as productive and as versatile as it gets when seasons are good. But rain has been poor this year.
Peter Grieve, whose grandfather and father took up the 1300 hectare Talooby in 1937, has been cursing the dry only half as loudly, however, as that other intruder he considers the valley's greater affliction.
"I've nothing against coalmining," says Grieve, who is helping to spearhead the Bylong Valley Protection Alliance, one of dozens of landholder groups springing up around the bush in a spirited but mostly futile resistance to the Great Coal Rush. "On principle, I don't believe country like this, or the Liverpool Plains or the Darling Downs, should be turned over to mining. This country was made for food production."
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