Anti-fracking farmers stage world's longest protest in Australia

Australian farmers, landholders and environmental campaigners have staged what they're calling "the world's longest protest" in opposition to fracking and coal mining. In rural communities across the country, farm-workers vehicles lined the roads to raise awareness of the plight of the industry.

Protestors angry at their right-wing government's pro-fossil fuel, anti-environmentalist stance have created massed columns of farm vehicles, including trucks and tractors right across the continent in a bid to protect their drought-hit farms.

The protest was organised by the Lock The Gate Alliance, a pressure group set up in 2010 to try and protect rural industries and communities from the encroachment of Australia's increasingly powerful fossil fuel mining lobby. In a statement, the group said: "Australia's water is under threat from risky gas and coal mining. Mining expansion creates a small profit for a few, yet permanently damages and contaminates water sources for many."

"People are concerned that not enough is being done to protect water resources from unconventional coal and gas mining," Georgina Woods, a spokesperson for Lock The Gate, told the Daily Mail Australia. "The protest is about getting the word out to candidates and politicians."

She added: "Being on the highway, everyone who is on the move can see it. There are people in remote communities that feel they are not being addressed by mainstream politics."

The protest looped right around the county's south coast along major highways, starting at Alice Springs near the centre of the continent, looping north and then west through all the major cities, and ending in the north-east, near Cairns. Protestors all along the way held up signs and banners.

Lock the Gate Alliance is a cross-party coalition of campaigners, including the former Green leader Bob Brown, as well as various conservative personalities. Its mission is "to protect Australia's natural, environmental, cultural and agricultural resources from inappropriate mining and to educate and empower all Australians to demand sustainable solutions to food and energy production".