LONG time Barney View resident Sue Bradbury is scared. So scared that she wakes up in the middle of the night with panic attacks.

The well-spoken 65-year-old woman is calm, sensible and intelligent.

A threat to her much loved sanctuary at Barney View, however, is consuming her thoughts, her time and her creative energy and is making it impossible for her to live in peace.

With mining exploration in the southern Scenic Rim hitting local headlines earlier this year, Sue’s worst fears became reality.

She now fears that her security, her home and her social network could be taken from her if mining giant Carabella Resources discovers viable deposits of coal in the area.

Sue and her friend Mary Adelle Street, 68, have owned their nine-acre property “Pamoola” at Barney View for 25 years.

In that time they have created an environmental utopia, revegetating the cleared land with more than 300 trees and welcoming many species of wildlife.

Wallabies graze to their hearts content, and they are so at home that they practically nibble at the grass around Sue and Mary’s ankles.

The odd kangaroo can be spotted too, and koalas, hares and several kinds of birds have made the property their home.

But Sue and Mary both fear that the wellbeing of their fauna friends and their idyllic lifestyle are in real danger.

THE intense fear Sue and Mary are experiencing is described by Australian philosopher Professor Glenn Albrecht as eco-anxiety.

The Murdoch University professor describes eco-anxiety as the stage before solastalgia, a concept he coined in 2003 to describe how people respond emotionally to changes in their environment.

Solastalgia, according to Professor Albrecht, is a form of human distress created by negatively perceived environmental change resulting from industrial development, mining, drought and climate change.

Professor Albrecht says Sue and Mary’s fears do not fit into the category of solastalgia because their environmental utopia has not yet been taken from them.

He says the intense anticipation they are feeling, however, is a very real and legitimate form of anxiety which he calls eco-anxiety, the precursor to solastalgia.

A positive defence against eco-anxiety and solastalgia is to take action.

The name for this defence is soliphilia, and it involves people power.

“People reach the conclusion that in order to counter the threat they’re going to have to collaborate and cooperate with others,” he says.

And taking action is just what Sue and Mary have been doing.

They have been spending their time going to rallies against coal seam gas and protest meetings against the rezoning of rural land.

Their weekends have been spent doing research and writing submissions.

Mary says she feels that this response is healthier than accepting the inevitable.

“There’s nothing worse than feeling disempowered,” she says.

But the energy they are putting in to trying to stop mining in their area is taking its toll.

Usually, Mary likes to paint with oils, and Sue’s hobbies are woodwork and photography.

But their creative energy is being sapped from them, and they have abandoned their creative outlets to fight against coal exploration.

“We’re too emotionally unsettled to do any creative things anyway,” says Sue.

“Sometimes I look out at our property and I can see bulldozers going ahead.”

The very thought of it makes Sue go quiet, and she takes a moment to compose herself.

She and Mary have lived at their Barney View property for 25 years, which is longer than they have lived anywhere else.

Sue and Mary have created many special memories there together, doing renovations on the 100-year-old homestead in which they live and building a workshop from the ground up.

Sue feels that the only good lasting thing she has done in her life has been to restore vegetation at her Barney View property.

Pamoola is their home; their security, which is something they are valuing more and more as they mature into their older years.

“The thought of not having a home really terrifies me,” says Mary.

Sue nods her head vigorously in agreement, and it is obvious from the fear in the women’s eyes that they are both deeply unsettled.

“To lose a home and to not be able to find another one because you have been ripped off by mining companies and governments is very scary,” says Sue.

Sue and Mary have spent the past few decades developing a social network at Barney View which Mary says they simply will not have the opportunity to develop again in their lifetime.

They are part of book clubs, sewing circles and community revegetation projects, and the thought of losing that is more than Sue can bear.

Sue feels deep despair at the thought that their efforts  may be written off, but she is translating her despair into anger, and her anger into action, which she feels is the only way to survive.

It is people power, soliphilia, that is keeping Sue and Mary going.

“We’ve got a good chance if people unite,” Sue says with an optimistic smile.

- By Susie Cunningham