Rural Australia believes in self-sufficiency, so let’s set the terms of the renewable energy boom

‘We need as communities to collectively bargain with governments and power companies about how we want this change to happen.’ Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

I recently discovered the chest freezer in our shearer’s huts had blown up in a lightning strike. The power had been out for two weeks. It felt like a CSI plot: I’m the woman with the torch, pushing the creaky shed door open to find a cloud of blowflies hovering around a bad smell.

The little bastards had found a tiny breach in the freezer seal. I did my best rendition of Brad Pitt in Se7en – What’s in the box? When I opened the lid, even the maggots had gone to fly heaven. The vestiges of splendid homegrown lamb were a grey mush at the bottom of the freezer.