Guardian: The tiny chopper quivered in the wind. It hovered at 300 metres and 75-year-old Uncle Neville Sampson, a Gomeroi elder, surveyed the Leard state forest below. Lush box gum woodland, the land that Sampsons ancestors have walked for thousands of years, stood proud. But eventually, as the chopper zipped along, the terrain gave way to the mine construction.
For Uncle Neville it was both breathtaking and heartbreaking in equal measure. The Maules Creek mine, Australias largest coal mine under construction,...