It took strong legal action last week to stop a Caroona farmer from physically blocking an exploration drilling rig from entering his property.

BHP, under the law as it stands, certainly does have the right to carry out exploration works on land covered by its mining licences.

What residents in the Caroona basin are concerned about is that the State Government is both the development authority that controls mining permissions and also a beneficiary of the royalties from mining.

They have suggested, not unreasonably in our view, the system may not always work in their favour.

BHP-Billiton – which said yesterday it wanted to work with local landholders – may already have begun to regret using its financial muscle to shoulder Tim Duddy out of the way via the legal system last week.

His friends and neighbours have rallied to his defence and are now blockading the farm gate themselves.

It is one thing to get an injunction against a lone property owner. It may prove another to exercise the same tactic against a community that it is obviously up in arms and determined to fight for its future.

People power has come to the Liverpool Plains.

We hope this strong show of community concern over the dangers of introducing long wall mining techniques into a rich agricultural area is taken on board by all the vested interests involved.

The irony of the situation is that, as Tony Windsor says in today’s Northern Daily Leader, it is quite unlikely the areas BHP-Billiton is pushing its weight around to explore will ever be mined in any case.

The coal and gas reserves in question are intermixed with underground lakes and rivers that form an integral part of the Murray Darling system.

As of last week those water reserves were placed off limits by the Federal Government.