Normal text size Very large text size The town where Wendy Farmer was born no longer exists. It was literally dug up for coal in the 1980s when mining in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley expanded. As a schoolkid, she took tours of the old power stations, of their towers belching out the planet-warming emissions that stripped the blue from the sky. "We were taught that it was just steam – and the power stations make the weather," Farmer says. "But it was Victoria’s backbone, it powered the whole state. There’s a lot of pride still in those old stations and mines."