IT WAS the first time Ken and Aileen Harrison (pictured) had experienced the "hospitality" of the mining industry.
About a decade ago, a vehicle of coal workers drove through the front gate of the couple's farm, past the shearing shed the couple was working in, on to a back paddock, back past the couple again and on to another paddock. The driver then sheepishly returned and parked in front of the shearing shed, where the couple stood, watching in disbelief.
A man opened the door and told the bewildered couple that he could not find a specific bore on their property and could they direct him. It was the first time any mining company had entered their property.
And he never even told them his name.
More than a decade on and the couple's lives and retirement plans have been irretrievably altered due to the expanding New Acland Coal Mine, west of Toowoomba.
They told Queensland Country Life of how they suffered headaches, bleeding noses, dizziness and coughing fits as a constant flow of coal dust whiffed over their home for more than eight years.
Mrs Harrison was found passed out on the floor in her kitchen and could take days to rest in bed and cough up the filth in her lungs.
After years of complaining to the State Government and the mining company about the noise, lights and dust from the mine, which was less than 2km from their front door, they were finally offered a buy-out package. They said it could be considered a "fair" package given their neighbour was an expanding coal mine.
But they claim the property was worth a lot more before the coal mine opened. They now live at Kingsthorpe and, ironically, the only accommodation they could afford was old mining dongas.
Their new, ramshackle home is again under threat, with a mining exploration permit for the Kingsthorpe region in the pipeline.
Their new home is too small to house their possessions and so sitting unused in shipping containers are piles of furniture and a pool table.
"But now it feels like we are worse off than when we were first married more than 50 years ago," Mrs Harrison said.
Their daughter, who also lived on the property near Acland, now lives with her husband and two teenage daughters in a one-bedroom cottage on the Kingsthorpe farm. At Acland, the family lived in a five-bedroom home.
"We had no power to negotiate - they had all the solicitors and all the power," Mrs Harrison said.
Mr and Mrs Harrison joined more than 100 protestors at a rally at the Surat Basin Energy and Mining Expo at the Toowoomba Showgrounds last week.
The couple stood quietly at the rear of the protest gathering, clutching the surgical masks which provided small comfort during their years next door to a coal mine.
"There is an old saying that you have a right to make a living but you need to also be a good neighbour," Mr Harrison said. "We just don't want people to go through what we have."
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