It was black Friday all right – for world peace, but also for NSW's fabled food-lands, abandoned by a justice system too false or feeble to protect them from an invasion more destructive than fire, plague or drought.

This is a story about property; when what's yours turns out not to be yours at all, but someone else's to traduce or destroy at will. It's a story about food. And it's a story of breathtaking cultural wantonness.

On the cultural wantonness front, it's up there with the gold standard – those 19th-century colonists routinely fuelling their Sahara-crossing steam trains with plundered mummies. Verily, that was double audacity; the arrogant destruction of irreplaceable treasures and the fact that said treasures weren't theirs to burn. So is the way, under the auspices of the Mining Act, that NSW is being dug up for burning.

Gunnedah, Bulga, Maules Creek, Bylong, Berry, Gloucester, Ilford, Ulan, Springvale, Braidwood, Berrima. You name it, most of the state's loveliest and most productive food land is either under threat or already mined.

This treasure – more precious and less replaceable than even sacred mummies – is embodied energy: ours. Yet our fearless leaders still cannot genuflect fast enough, siphoning our energies into the bulging pockets of mega-mining.

We think we own things. Property sits at the heart of Australianness; our shared and sacred value, our grail. Were we true to ourselves, it'd be not Phillip, Macquarie or the Queen on our coins and statues but that philosopher of property, John Locke.

And sure, property is venal. But at an intuitive level it makes perfect sense. Property is a kind of battery that lets you store your expended energy and reap its reward. This Little Red Hen idea is the core of democratic capitalism. The Mining Act calls it "valuable work" – a lovely concept. And that's what is being plundered. People's valuable work.

Sutton Forest bull breeders Ross and Marg Alexander are pretty tough. They've had to be. Three years ago, receiving Hume Coal's notice of intent to prospect for coal on their land, the Alexanders refused. "We're denying you access because a covenant on this property says it is for agricultural purposes only," they wrote. It was a farm, not a coal mine.

A month later they were in court, and lost – with costs of $180,000 awarded against them. This was negotiated down to $120,000, and the community helped to raise funds to pay it. But last Friday the 13th, in a group action, they lost again, also with costs.

With them were Kathy and John Roche. Kathy, a former pharmacist, is 80. Her husband John, a former GP, is 86. In May, Kathy was midway through chemotherapy for bowel cancer when Hume Coal's arbitrator left messages and emails demanding next day drilling access to their land. The Roches refused.

Kathy no longer has cancer. "I've bounced back," she chuckles, recounting her recent killing of a black snake with a spade and proudly displaying a dozen delicately speckled free-range eggs. Now, although perhaps a tad less chirpy, she declares, "we're gonna fight".

Scores of properties are affected: Hume's exploration licence covers 89 square kilometres. Some of the land owners yielded, lacking the energy or chutzpah to take on the mammoth Korean steelmaker POSCO, which owns Hume Coal. (Lurking behind the arras, too, is the Korean Australian Free Trade Agreement, which – unlike most such deals – allows Korean investors to sue Australian governments for policies or laws that prejudice their investments.)

But three other local land owners joined the Roches and the Alexanders. Five little Davids, chins out, took Goliath to court.

They figured they stood a chance. Section 31 of the 1992 Mining Act clearly states: "The holder of an exploration licence may not exercise any of the rights conferred by the licence over ... land on which within the prescribed distance ... is situated ... the principal place of residence ... or any garden or ... significant improvement except with the written consent of the owner."

Read it as many times as you like. That's pretty simple. Right?

Wrong. The case turned on two issues: one, do luscious pastures, truffle orchards, tree-lined driveways and internationally renowned Olympic equestrian courses count as "significant improvements"? And two, does the definition of "exploration" include not just the actual 200mm bore-hole, but the kilometres of access road across paddocks, the grassland destroyed by turning trucks and rigs, the megalitres of dirty water pumped back onto pastures and water courses?

Since 1989 the Roches' property, Araluen, has been almost wholly devoted to the renowned Berrima Horse Trials, a not-for-profit three-day eventing course set up by their son Vince, also a local GP. The course, comprising 28 permanent jumps (including ponds, walls and hedges) occupies 155 acres and is internationally renowned. The Alexanders' stud, Roscoe Park, breeds champion Limousin bulls – notoriously more cosseted in the performance of their duties than newborn kittens. The other three properties are invested with similar intensities of human energy and, well, love.

Make no mistake. This could be anyone. Your bush retreat. My hand-planted forest, if I had one. Is any of us protected from big mining? Not at all.

The landowners provided masses of expert evidence, including an inch-thick geo-tech report predicting serious interference with the water table. Hume offered none. The commissioner found against the landowners on every front.

The commissioner found that a cross-country horse event course is not a significant improvement. To support the land owners' rights to their own land would, said the commissioner, have "alarming consequences for mineral exploration on vast areas of rural land in NSW."

Suddenly, it seems the courts don't simply interpret the law. To quote that time-honoured legal treatise, The Castle, they go with the government "vibe". What they seem spectacularly less interested in protecting is us, our food, our water, our property, our valuable work.