The mayor stands up and congratulates Brown on having the “balls” to front the pack and, consoling himself out loud, goes on to say the senator will never be prime minister, and never have the power to go through on his threats.

“Well, no, that’s true,’’ Brown says.

“I won’t ever be prime minister, but we Greens are making headway, these ideas are becoming mainstream, no one wants you all to shiver in the dark, but things can’t go on the way they are. If nothing changes, you will all lose your jobs anyway, you may have to think about taking your skills into new industries and other places.”

Like a piston, the Rotary president raises from his chair.

“Go where!?” he yells.

“I can’t go anywhere else, this is my home, this is were I am, I can’t go anywhere else. My family’s here, my life is here. This might just be some backwater hick town to you, but our lives are here.”

The cameras of every TV station are pointed squarely at him. They’ve found their sound bite. He turns to the wearied nodding heads of the orange army.

“What’s your answer?” he shouts at the podium.

Brown shifts and gives a conciliatory answer about green industry moving in to Blackwater and offsetting the losses from the coal industry of the future, but everyone in the room knows how unlikely that is.

In all the years since settlement, Blackwater was nothing but a train station and a truck stop, there were more cattle than people and a school didn’t even spring up until well into the 1930s. Even then, it was only one room until the big discovery.

Coal was the making of Blackwater, and Emerald, and Clermont. The towns of Moranbah and Tieri were only built for the purpose of servicing the mines. If that most precious resource goes, nothing will replace it. Money, families and hope will run out of town as if it were on fire.

People have steadily been dripping out for the last 30 minutes. The fighting spirit has evaporated and the meeting is drawn to a close. Brown does his TV interviews and miners gather in small groups, eyes downcast and shaking their heads gently.

Back at the Black Diamond I go over the night in my head and through the tape, trying to get down a few notes for the report. There’s plenty of drama, a clear beginning and middle, but nothing was resolved. In retrospect, it seems Blackwater allowed itself to be the rube in a clever political game. On TV they’ll be a faceless, uneducated, polluting mass and Brown gets to come down from his ivory tower.

But the question remains, if the great polluters in Asia show no interest in the global problem, why should these people, only one stop down the highway from me, suffer?

I step outside for air. The Dutchman’s seated a few metres to my left, we acknowledge each other and together look to the thunder clouds rolling in from Clermont.

“I thought you were off to Bundaberg, what about your wife?” I say.

“Damn truck,” he says. “Gasket’s gone. I’m stuck in this place for at least a few nights yet. Did he get out alive?”

“Yeah, it was all pretty tame in the end, everyone behaved themselves.” 

Two dark clouds converge. Even in the blackness of the night sky they leap out in contrast. Slowly expanding, they swallowing the stars at their edges. It means relief, there’s hope tomorrow will bring rain for crops and respite from the scorching sun.

“How long do you think you’ll stick around here?” the Dutchman says.

“I don’t know, until I can move back home I suppose, there’s not much here for me.”

“I’m gone as soon as a better offer comes.”

“Can’t blame you, back to Europe?”

“No, probably not, there’s still a lot of money here, but I’ve had enough of this place. They act like it’s the most important thing in the world, about how there’s so much money here. They think they’re holding up the whole economy, maybe they are, but it’s just not worth it anymore.”

I can’t wait to get back to Emerald, to my own bed and familiar surrounds. Back in the bare hotel room, I can’t sleep. On TV there’s drought again in Africa, starvation in the subcontinent and political scandal in the US. Tonight’s meeting, in this tiny spot on the globe, will be forgotten completely in a week, and barely noticed outside Queensland. Every speck on the blue marble thinks it is the most important and everyone guards their little piece of prosperity with such violence.

I leave first thing in the morning to make it back to Emerald in time for work. The sun’s baking and flesh falls from the fish hanging on the outskirts of town.

A freshly killed kangaroo, on the road just metres from the school welcomes me into Comet. Children will arrive at the front gate in half an hour, so I stop the car, take a towel from the back seat, wrap up the corpse and move it into the bushes and out of sight.

A trickle of blood runs from its head and pools on the ground. It must have lived a hard life of competition, constantly fighting and locked in a daily battle for survival.

Overhead a flock of birds fly together in giant V, together hoping to find bluer skies, food, water and a little peace.