In the New South Wales town of Wollar you can’t hear children laughing in the school playground any more. Coal has silenced the schoolyard, coated the remaining houses in a layer of dust and cut off the future of our community, just as it is doing to our children’s future on a global scale.

When the world takes part in the climate strike on Friday, those with a remaining connection to Wollar will strike too, at the empty local school.

Our school is empty because the state and federal governments put coal above the needs of our children, allowing Peabody’s coalmine expansions to swallow up this town.

350 people once lived in Wollar, before Peabody’s Wilpinjong coalmine was allowed to destroy the countryside and our town. The primary school and the shop were once the hub and lifeline for this community. Folks from all walks of life worked and played together here. It was an ideal place for children to grow up.

As the Wilpinjong coalmine expanded, families moved out of Wollar. The mining company bought the shop and bought out locals. This process of negotiation was very stressful. People were asked to sign confidentiality agreements, pitching the community against each other. During this process people became ill, divorced and displaced. To locals it seemed as though the company never encouraged mining families to move to the village and send their children to the Wollar school. Remaining families complained of rent increases in Peabody-owned companies and soon left Wollar.

Alison Smiles-Schmidt holding her grandson William.

As student numbers dwindled, Wollar school was put into recess. Recess should be when children go into the playground. It should be a time when kids can play and learn life skills. It should not mean the end of a child’s community.

Since last December, there’s been no more laughter, songs, balls over the fence or indeed any life at all at Wollar school. When it went into recess, Kay Bushnell, the school’s principal, observed that “the last vestige of identity has gone”.

To say coal is stealing our children’s future is not dramatic. We have known since the 1970s that coal is driving climate change, fiercer bushfires, droughts, heatwaves and storms. What coal has done to Wollar is being played out around the world in every community devastated by a record-breaking weather event, with residents left to pick up the pieces while the coal companies continue to profit.

Our town is now a ghost town, with a dirty coalmine charging closer as you read. Who would want to send their children to a school with coal dust in the drinking water, the roar of a mine in the background, and trucks careering by the school gate?

The permanent closure of our school is imminent but some still call this progress. I call it an emergency for human life and a lesson. We need to learn from the story of Wollar. The students that have started the climate strike movement in Australia are now asking us adults to listen and to act. We can’t afford to leave it any longer. We can’t afford to wait until coal swallows up the future of all of Australia’s children. We must get active now.

• Alison Smiles-Schmidt used to work at Wollar school. She is the manager of a nursery in Mudgee