Fracking for unconventional gas is about as popular in Australia as in the UK. In other words, not at all. Anti-fracking protestors in the past have resorted to unconventional means to get their message across, but farmers in the state of Victoria may have found the most original.

“Rather than us just saying 'ban gas,' we thought we'd get together some of our animals that will be potentially affected by it to spell it out,” one of them, Mal Rowe, told international journalists who flocked to his farm after a video the farmers made went viral.

The first idea, writing the letters in grain, boomeranged: sheep ate it all or it drifted before the drone finished filming. The second, directing 2,000 of the woolly bodies directly over the grain in the right constellation, worked like a charm, even if it took hours of “rehearsal.”

Viewed from the air, or in the video, the sheep choreography is prize-worthy. How much the stunt will help remains to be seen. Victoria, which has had a moratorium on drilling since 2012, is due to vote soon on whether to extend it. The sheep’s home turf, in South Australia’s Otway Basin, has been flagged for one of the largest unconventional gas reserves in the state.