Mantle will begin drilling for coal at 15 sites across Parwan and Rowsley this month as part of an exploration phase.

One rig will be about 500 metres from Ms Tubbs' Bacchus Marsh-Geelong Road frontage.

"It will certainly be an issue having drills operating from morning till night," she said.

"We'll have to take horses out of the end paddocks as anything different will upset them."

Mantle Mining plans to develop an open-cut mine near the existing Maddingley Mine, where a small amount of coal is mined to make fertiliser.

It says mining the area's coal beds could open a lucrative export market to India and China.

Mantle advertised its plans in a local newspaper when applying for the exploration licence, as required by law, but Ms Tubbs said most residents were unaware until she began letterbox-dropping flyers about the public meeting earlier this month.

At the meeting, Parwan residents were told most exploration would be on roadside sites, but the company had the right to drill on private land if the owner was compensated.

"The exploration licence went through unbeknown to nearly everybody," Ms Tubbs said.

Rowsley resident Deborah Porter said people within the far-reaching licence area, known as EL5294, had not been properly informed of the application and weren't able to lodge objections in time.

"People don't want it and they're angry they weren't told about it. Now we're in this position that we're finding out they'll start drilling almost immediately."

Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott weighed into the conflict between farmers and mining companies, as similar tensions surface in coal seam gas projects Australia-wide.

He said that if farmers didn't want something to happen on their land, they should have the right to say "no".

Ms Tubbs, who campaigns for environmental lobby group Parwan Land Care, said the meeting with Mantle was to inform residents at a "grassroots" level.

The next step, she said, was looking at the implications a coalmine could have on the area.

-Nick Toscano