New Hope's Black Pit

Three years ago

the delightful

Darling Downs

village of Acland 

had two-hundred-fifty people.

Now it has just one.

Unlike the other

good citizens,

Glenn Beutel

refused to go.

Over a cup of tea

he hands me photos

of koalas walking down

Acland’s main street

through his garden

and under the back fence.

Along the street is the

Anzac War Memorial and Park

erected by Glenn’s 

late father and mother

and the other villagers.

In remembrance.

Glenn’s father

was the baker.

His mother turned Acland

into a garden village:

Queensland’s Tidy Town

of 1989.

Acland was full of old hope.

But then the coal company,

New Hope,

arrived.

Now New Hope’s

black mine pit 

is swallowing up

Acland’s nearby farmlands,

farm houses and sheds.

The final pit will be

seven kilometres across.

Soon

Acland will fall into it too

along with its trees 

the koalas

and the Anzac Memorial.

At night Glenn lies listening

to the rumble of New Hope’s

approaching machines

and the boulders tumbling

off Bottle Tree Hill

into the pit.

His time is coming too.

From the pit are rising

a mountain of coal,

twice that weight

in greenhouse gases,

Earth’s fever,

and New Hope’s profits.

Vale Glenn.