For more than a century, Miss Donaldson’s family has been toiling on the fertile grounds of the Gunnedah Basin.

During that period, battle-weary soldiers, migrants and proud farming families like the Donaldsons have found a future in the basin’s verdant paddocks and gentle, rolling hills.

Their ambition has been a noble one –  through honest labour and a gambler’s instinct to produce food and fibre for a growing world and build a legacy for their families.

They’ve endured the worst that nature could dish out – floods, plagues and suffocating droughts.

But never have they faced a graver threat to their way of life than what the mining industry poses.

Like Gaul in the Roman Empire, the Donaldsons’ farmland is being monstered by the Pilliga’s coal seam gas operations to the west and coalmining expansion to the east.

The burgeoning influence of the mining sector in the region hasn’t just split communities in two,  it’s also caused a profound talent drain away from farming.

Where once young people would naturally pursue a career in farming, they are now lured to the money and opportunities mining offers.

The farmers of tomorrow have become the miners of today.

Alarmingly, Miss Donaldson – who still holds out hope that she will return to the land – knows of only one other young person in the area willing to do the same.

This seismic shift to mining has left a gaping generation gap the farming sector may never recover from.

So much of this region’s identity, this nation’s identity, comes from the land.

Yet it won’t be long before Australia, a nation built on the sheep’s back, becomes a net importer of food.

And regardless of which side of the environmental fence you sit on, you can’t help but be a little mournful about that.