Honour for environmental activist farmer, 83, surrounded by mines on three sides

For 30 years anti-pollution campaigner Wendy Bowman has stood firm against mining giants, supporting other landowners under pressure to sell

Each morning just after dawn, if you stop at the top of the hill that separates the town of Singleton from the tiny village of Camberwell in New South Wales, says Wendy Bowman, "you'll see this brown scud across the sky".

"It doesn't go over the ridges; it stays in the valley, going up and down all the time." She mimes a slow sieving motion: up, down.