Those old motors were disconnected from their car bodies and sat beside bore holes, where they were fuelled by the gas and pumped up the CSG and sent it on.

But they never expected Arrow Energy to cross the Condamine to explore for CSG on their property.

The Lafrenzes crop wheat, chickpeas, sorghum, cotton and corn on their 1800-hectare property about 85 kilometres west of Toowoomba.

"We could hear the engines going, but we thought surely that would not be silly enough to come on to the black soil flood plain," Mrs Lafrenze said.

"They were over in the cattle and sheep country on the western side of the river. The river is the great divide.

"On the western side you have cattle and sheep and marginal farming, on the eastern side you have the highly-intensive, irrigated flood-plain country."

Here the Condamine Alluvial Aquifer is too close to seams of coal, containing methane, locals say.

About 15 months ago Arrow Energy crossed the Condamine to the black soil side and approached the Lafrenzes' Cecil Plains neighbours to explore for coal seam gas.

It was only then the neighbours hurriedly began to learn what they could about CSG exploration.

This was well before public meetings, well before notices in the rarely-read local paper and well before "community interest" committees since set up by miners Arrow Energy.

"We knew that it was Arrow Energy, so we went to the Arrow Energy website and looked at the tenures they had over the area and what their plans were," Mrs Lafrenze said.

"And we flabbergasted. We didn't know that there had been some notices in the paper.

"But they were in a paper that we don't get. And they were a small little notice. So unless you get the paper and unless you were trawling through the notices section you had no idea of what was going on.

"And even if you did know what was going on, it was difficult to find out what it really meant."

Families had lost their first opportunity to lodge submissions against the coal seam push.

That situation is why the Environmental Defenders Organisation asked that a raft of changes be made to a range of Queensland Acts.

The conservation lawyers wrote to Premier Anna Bligh, Deputy Premier Paul Lucas and then-Environment Minister Kate Jones on June 15.

They want to make it easier for rural people to learn their properties may be threatened by CSG exploration permits.

Mrs Lafrenze said the EDO's suggestions made perfect sense.

"There are still a lot of people out here who still have no idea of what is going on and they believe the government will protect them," she said.

"And it doesn't seem to me to be the case."

Mrs Lafrenze said it would make rural Queenslanders' life easier.

"They make some quite reasonable points. From what I have learnt, no-one in the department is going to help us unless we help ourselves," she said.

"The information that is being fed to the department by the companies is not always correct.

"And it is very hard for us to work out how we can make a difference and what our rights are."

The Queensland government was approached for comment, but did not respond before deadline.

Meanwhile, Queensland's Conservation Council said the suggestions from the EDO were welcome and pro-active.

The EDO on Tuesday called for legal aid funds to be available for environmental issues - like New South Wales - and for a central registry of mining project applications.

In New South Wales legal aid for environmental issues totals just $50,000 a year.

"Legal aid is usually only made available to cover witness costs, expert reports and other disbursements," a spokeswoman said.

"Quite often we deal with the EDO and they apply for grants from us."

QCC chief executive Toby Hutcheon said these type of changes were essential to simply make it fair for rural Queenslanders.

"They are in a situation where they can have these operations just come along on to their land whether they want them or not," he said.

"And they can't do very much about it. So I think just giving them the right to challenge this is very, very important.

Mr Hutcheon said the idea of making legal aid available to people disputing environmental issues would be invaluable.

"One of the problem for rural landholders is that have nowhere to really go to get that assistance if they wish to challenge what is happening on their land," he said.

"So being able to access funding for this and to engage organisations like the EDO would be a real service to them."

And Mrs Lafrenze said legal aid would be a real starting point for battling rural Queenslanders.

"I think that's an excellent idea. Especially in this area at the moment," she said.

"In the last two years we have had minimal cropping income firstly because of the drought, and followed quickly followed by the floods.

"No-one has spare resources to use to fight these things."

Queensland Resources Council declined to comment on the conservation lawyers' recommendations.

Arrow Energy could not be contacted yesterday.