Moorabool Environment Group president Kate Tubbs said excavation of brown coal was not valid “in this day and age”.

Ms Tubbs, whose property is one of the 15 sites to be dug up in the coming weeks, said the mine will be detrimental to the residents.

“Our whole community is going to be affected by it in a big way,” Ms Tubbs said.

She said the coal in the area was of very poor quality, with 70 per cent moisture, and needed a lot of work to make it usable.

“We will be left with a wasteland and environmental destruction,” she said.

Shawn Murray , a spokesman for the organisers of the rally, Friends of the Earth Australia, said more than 100 people were expected at the rally.

“We are calling on the state government to scrap the project,” Mr Murray said.“It is a violation of the landholders’ right.”

Mr Murray said brown coal mining, in one of Australia’s prime agricultural areas, flew in the face of the serious climate-control action being considered.

“We need to urgently reduce Australia’s emission and coal exports and not increase it,” he said.

A Mantle Mining spokesman said the company had no comment to make about the rally.

The Friends of the Earth Australia group is also urging protestors to email Mantle Mining’s underwriter Intersuisse, to urge it to withdraw from the project.

Mr Murray said the email had collected more than 150 signatures.

“Basically the message is we are threatening direct action against the project by individuals, which will typically involve stopping works from proceeding and locking up the machinery,” he said.

Earlier, Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu said his government was not considering legislation imposing buffers between coal-seam gas extraction and residential areas.

“Farmers do have rights under Victorian law, and everybody has a right to have their say, but there are also mining and prospecting rights,” he said.

Intersuisse’s Melbourne office did not reply before The Courier went to print.

The rally will be held at 1pm today at the City Square on the corner of Collins and Swanston streets in Melbourne’s CBD.