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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Lisa Cox Environment and climate correspondent

‘A real-life moment from The Castle’: the retired couple who took on a coal giant and won

Coal Tony Lonergan MACH Energy New South Wales Environment Mount Pleasant Greens
Wendy Wales and Tony Lonergan on their property in the Upper Hunter Valley in Muswellbrook, NSW
‘If anyone was going to take it on, it was going to be us’ … Wendy Wales and Tony Lonergan on their property in the NSW Upper Hunter Valley. Photograph: Zoe Lonergan/Climate Media Centre

When Wendy Wales and Tony Lonergan and a few of their neighbours in the New South Wales Hunter region decided to take on the expansion of a local coalmine, people thought they were “crazy” to engage in the David and Goliath battle.

“When we started this, people thought we were crazy – a little community group taking on a billion-dollar coal company, arguing that the climate harm from burning this coal is our problem too,” Wales says.

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