This modest town of about 80,000, about 1000 kilometres north of Brisbane, doesn't really do demonstrations. Neither did Mr Crowe, until Saturday.

"I went into the bookshop and looked for 'Rallies for Dummies' - I couldn't find anything," he tells his giggling audience. "You know why we're an easy target? Because we haven't done this before."

As director of the Resource Industry Network, an industry-funded lobby group, Mr Crowe's newest job is to lead and amplify a groundswell of support in favour of coal mining. In his telling, this silent local majority has been overshadowed and out-campaigned by loud and powerful blow-ins from down south - the environmentalists determined to stop the Adani Carmichael coal mine. "I think overall we're getting smashed," he says at Saturday's rally.

The figurehead of the anti-Adani protests is former Greens leader Bob Brown, who led his convoy from Mackay to the inland agricultural town of Clermont on Saturday, where they met fierce resistance from locals.

Some shop proprietors refused service to anti-Adani visitors. "You may have travelled far and wide, but you won't get food and drink inside," warned one storefront sign.

According to local Liberal National Party MP George Christensen, the fight over Adani and the surrounding Galilee Basin is the only game in town this federal election. And it shows.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson travelled to Clermont to join the pro-Adani protesters, as did mining billionaire Clive Palmer, who has become a sudden electoral force courtesy of an avalanche of paid advertising, strong polling and a preference deal with the Coalition.

"God bless Pauline Hanson, god bless [Resources Minister] Matt Canavan and god bless the CFMEU," Mr Palmer told the Clermont crowd.

The antipathy between the opposing camps is serious. At the Mackay rally, one man tries to start a chant of "piss off Bob", directed at Mr Brown, but it loses out to "Galilee, Galilee, a future for our family".

When the anti-Adani rally starts, some pro-coal protesters heckle with taunts about how the out-of-towners travelled to Mackay (in fuel-guzzling planes or cars, presumably).

Organisers and attendees share a palpable anger about policy being dictated from Brisbane and Canberra - not a new gripe, certainly, but one that is felt acutely right now because of the eight-year struggle to get Adani approved.

The industry says the mine is needed to sustain jobs in the region. But as Resource Industry Network general manager Adrienne Rourke acknowledges, Mackay's unemployment rate is below the national average at 3.7 per cent. Does that undermine the need for the mine? Mr Crowe says it's about projecting confidence.

"Approving a big mine will show people the industry is back on the page," he says.

The Adani fight is also being harnessed by the Liberal National Party as it defends several marginal seats in north Queensland at the election. Parked beside the rally is a large mobile billboard proclaiming "Labor's war on coal means less [sic] jobs for Mackay".

The billboard features an edited photograph of Labor leader Bill Shorten which makes him appear to hold a "Stop Adani" banner - when in fact the banner was held by a protester, who has been cropped out of the photo. The Coalition has been heavily criticised for a similarly misleading billboard in Rockhampton.

Mr Crowe, who is also the managing director of Mackay's G&S Engineering, does not try to engage in partisan politics. He concedes coal will be "absolutely in decline" in 30 or 40 years. But he says this is no time to send the industry to an early grave.

He urges the army of pro-coal protesters to win over their opponents with logic rather than facts: the world wants and needs our coal, and if it doesn't get it from us, it will get it from somewhere else.

"I try to stay away from the 'fact', because I don't think they're facts, they're theories," Mr Crowe says.

"Are we worried about the planet warming? Sure. If it's warming and we're causing it, you'd have to be interested in [that]. But it's a thought and a theory. We can't predict the weather, so how can we predict what's going to happen in 10, 20, 30 years with absolute certainty?

"Are our extra coal-fired power stations going to contribute to global warming? Based on the theories, absolutely. Is there a way to stop that? Not without holding a gun to people's head and saying, 'Sorry, you can't have power'."

SMH/The Age