Landholders were last week served with documents by Leichardt Resources Pty Ltd, Planet Gas Ltd and MBA Petroleum Consultants to seek rights to explore land for coal seam gas.

At the landholders meeting that lasted more than two hours, farmers said they would “bring the fight” to the gas companies and would not “back down and let them come in and destroy our farmland”.

The president of the Lock the Gate Alliance, Drew Hutton, spoke to concerned landholders about the effects coal seam gas extraction would have on prime agricultural land.

“The impacts on agriculture in the region will be enormous,” Mr Hutton said.

“There will be radical transformations of the landscape turning it into an industrial wasteland.

“It is already happening in parts of Queensland,” he said.

“Why ruin our farmland for a period of 25 years of economic sunshine for some people?” Mr Hutton said.

Mr Hutton said landholders in the region would be in for a period of sustained social conflict.

“You cannot win this on your own,” he said.

“You need to be a part of something bigger.

“The people that work for these gas companies are very manipulative, they take advantage of people in the country,” he said.

“If we don’t work together you will get done over.”

The meeting’s main purpose was to move a notion to start an action group for local landholders.

The chairman of the newly formed action group, Penny Blatchford, believed the group had an opportunity to say no to coal seam gas extraction around the whole Pel 470-670 area.

“If we allow these gas companies into Pel 470 you can kiss your retirement goodbye,” Mrs Blatchford said.

“This will be a fight like no other.”

The group will be starting a “fighting fund” to cover the cost of solicitors and for any landholder in the group who goes into arbitration.

“I’m asking you all, begging you all to say no and to lock the gate,” she said.