Golden Grain

Golden Grain, originally uploaded by cnlizziebns.

Not black coal yet!!

Nearly ready to harvest...November is usually harvest time on the Darling Downs of Queensland.

The Queensland Government is allowing mining companies to dig into the best topsoil arguably in Australia to mine coal for export to China and others and from all accounts is short term gain for long term pain as appears the coal may be stockpiled overseas. That is not the problem as coal deposits exist in country not as valuable for food production as this precious pocket of Australia. Seems a little lacking in foresight from this a layman's view where here in Australia our topsoil is very fragile and in the most parts of the continent is only a few feet thick and here the topsoils are rich and go 60 feet down. A no brainer from where I sit. One would imagine the commodity that is going to most sought after in 30 years will be food.

The other point I can not get my head around is that the coal in the past six months is being carted on the roads instead of the rail. How stupid are our politicians as rail arguably causes 60 percent less carbon footprint than running the road trains let alone the damage to the roads and the fraught Toowoomba range crossing and hundreds of road trains negotiating the city streets of Toowoomba.