Dayne Pratzky loved the quiet life on his rural block in central Queensland. Then the coal seam gas company arrived, and that changed everything. Legally he couldn’t stop them mining his land, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t fight. And so began a David and Goliath battle against a $200 billion industry. Along the way he found love, tragedy and triumph.
More information from the FRACKMAN Website:
This is a film about a bunch of ordinary people caught up in a modern day multinational “gold rush” to secure and exploit coal seam gas.
Fracking is an issue that is presenting difficult questions for all of Australia’s political parties, but at its heart is a very human drama. What we find is that smouldering resentment has turned conservative country people to civil disobedience. Politicians with their snouts in the trough are caught off-guard not knowing who to support.
Our central character is Dayne Pratzky – a knockabout pig shooter building a simple home on his block of land in Central Queensland. One day the gas company comes calling and demands access to his land for gas mining. Dayne is told he has no right to refuse access to his land, and so begins his journey as a reluctant activist that will take him around the world.
Dayne introduces us to the people drawn into a battle that is crossing the ideological divide, bringing together a peculiar alliance of farmers, conservationists and political conservatives. Along the way Dayne finds love, tragedy and triumph as he battles to save his community from becoming an industrial wasteland. There are laughs, tears and near death experiences, and a raft of colourful Aussie Bush characters.
But it’s the underlying theme that is critical: Who owns our land? Who owns our future? Can we balance competing claims for our water, food and energy and still preserve the environment?
One thing is certain: the rush to extract Coal Seam Gas is forcing us to ask difficult questions about our way of life and what we value.
I will be keen to see the full edition of this story about the battle of ordinary people against the corporate giants ruling all of our lives not just on the Gas Fields of Australia. I coined the phrase a three stringed cord as describing this make up of people who have been drawn in together in this fight to save the water and the land and for some lifestyle. I say it different to Dayne who forgets the first peoples and their very precious and important stake in this fight. I like to say its the Greenie / Environmentalist, the Farmers and the Aboriginal people who have been drawn together in this fight.
The aboriginal people have had to battle their own in this fight as mining companies seek to cause even more division within the clans of the first peoples with outrageous wages to pick up artifacts a lot ending up in the garbage bins of Australia. All for loss for that mighty dollar. It would make you sick.
Any way I am grateful we have some sort of film that depicts what the heck is going on in the country at the present with the Big Mining and the Big Gas Corporations here and overseas and the politicians who are feathering their own nests by the Stolenwealth of us all.
Images @ Eminpee Fotography - Dayne Pratzky
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