In 1972 I started primary at the Limbri Public School. The apex event for that year was the school concert. Being the smallest in kindergarten, I would at times be put through the small ticket shutter window in the corrugated iron wall to open the door to the local hall from the inside.
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With Mrs Jamison playing the piano we would rehearse our songs for the parents from Weabonga to Danglemah and the village of Limbri.
It was a magical time in the hills which was our country, our home.
This was who we were and this was where we belonged and the war memorial said this is what those before us would offer their life for.
On Tuesday night, I returned to the same hall with its war memorial to the locals who fought for our land as the same community desperately tried to fight the incursions of the state owned EnergyCo who are forcing through the transmission line corridors over the country for the foreign owned wind factories.
We feel powerless against the state. We feel that the government is now our enemy.
We are angry of the conceit by which those who are not affected protect their patch against what they inflict on ours.
We are cynical of those from EnergyCo who say they are there to consult, to listen, to empathise, when we know full well that it is a tick a box exercise and on the winding road back to the city they will disregard, forget and sneer.
No doubt EnergyCo itself will be flipped to some other multinational when it has done its state sanctioned job of compulsory acquisition.
This is, for our area, the most ardent reaction against the government by the community since I was a young child practising carols in that same community hall.
The government is not seen as good. We feel our rights are meaningless and the whole virtue of government is a farce as they trample all over us. We are the first casualties in their climate war.
And this absolute garbage of regional jobs, with the billions spent on government subsidised Chinese wind factories in Glen Innes there should be a thousand or at least definitely hundreds of new jobs in the town. However, you would be lucky if there were five and they are basic maintenance roles.
For that we get power we cannot afford and the poor become poorer as they can't afford the basics of electricity.
The community has to tolerate the vision of wind towers whose perverse monument does not include the cost of dismantling and rehabilitation of the land when they inevitably become obsolete.
This will occur when the gravy train from the taxpayer, that subsidised their construction and operation, dries up.
People ask me what am I going to do to stop this profanity on our land. If the community can't devine who is on their side, they will dismiss all as on the side against them.
Don't come to our hall for your dance. How can we be loyal to any government that is so condescendingly disloyal to the land of our families.
