Megan Kuhn: Mother and grass roots anti-coal seam gas activist.
UTS Journalism student Lauren O'Connor travelled to the Gunnedah area in North Western NSW. She spoke to a local farmer and activist Megan Kuhn about the energy company Santos who plan to start Coal Seam Gas fracking under sensitive agricultural land in Narrabri. Kuhn fears the contaminants left over in the aquifer and soil, could seriously effect her son and families in her community.
If I was being true to what I've been learning all these years I really have to stand up and say this isn't right.
"[My son and I] have met kids from all over the world and they were all learning about removing as many toxins from your body so you could aid in repair, strengthening and development.
We saw all these amazing changes... and then we had a gas pipeline put through the back of our place.
At that stage [Santos Energy] said it was just a pipeline... nothing else, that went from Moonbah in central Australia to Tamworth to supply gas.
All of a sudden coal seam gas started to be talked about, we realised what was coming at us.
After all this that I have been trying to nurture with my son they think they're going to come in the back door and inflict this on us, not just our family but our whole communities. I was terrified for families.
So my feeling really was, if I was being true to what I've been learning all these years I really have to stand up and say this isn't right.
That's what got me going and I asked my local community did they feel the same about it?
That's where it started, back at home in my own local community.
[I'm here to] bring awareness to the institutional failure we face in this country, I'm promoting the grass roots democratic process.
A lot of people don't realise the benefits we've got living in a community like this, I mean we go without a lot of things, we don't have curb and gutters that people like, we don't have street lighting, but we've got the benefit of breathing fresh air. And they're about to come and take fresh air, fresh food and fresh water away from us.
Then when the community next door saw that we'd done it they said: "well you've done it once, so do you want to come and help us do it,"
And then the next, and then the next and now we've done 2.5 million hectares.
And I love these people."