CONTENTS
ONE A TIME FOR ALL TIME
TWO FROM ALL THE LANDS WE COME
THREE THE FULCRUM POINTS OF HISTORY
FOUR THE PRIME MINISTER WHO DESTROYED AUSTRALIA
FIVE WE WILL WASH AWAY TYRANNY
SIX JOY AND CALAMITY, BRUTALITY AND KINDNESS
SEVEN THE MEEK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH
EIGHT THE GREAT MARCH
NINE THE SAD AND BRUTAL FINAL HOURS OF CAMP FREEDOM AND THE CONVOY TO CANBERRA
TEN AFTERSHOCKS
CONTRIBUTORS
ONE
A TIME FOR ALL TIME
The humanitarian crimes committed by Australian authorities against their own citizens, beginning in early 2020, will live on in infamy, but it is the people themselves who create a nation’s history.
On the 12th of February 2022, the largest gathering of Australians in the nation’s history marched on the National Parliament in Canberra to protest the totalitarianism of the Australian Government, chanting “Sack Them All, Sack Them All”.
Crowd numbers are notoriously difficult to calculate and prone to distortion. Estimates varied between demonstrably incorrect official figures of 4-10,000, up to three million. Many estimates settled around the 1.4 million figure, which we believe to be fair.
Whatever the number, no politician, intelligence agency, police force or political strategist in Australia failed to notice that a massive number of people marched on the nation’s capital, with a remarkable amount of good cheer, jubilance and camaraderie; character traits which the nation’s leaders had failed to show in the previous two years of authoritarian derangement.
Between 2020 and 2022 Australia was gripped by a madness which was spiritual, administrative, political, social and judicial in its dimensions.
This humble record can only do a little to record this seismic shift, a profound turning point in the history of the nation.
In the preceding two years many Australians stood up against the rising tide of tyranny, only to find themselves pepper sprayed, bashed by police in repressive, dictatorial abuses which made headlines around the world, imprisoned, fined, thrown out of their jobs, socially marginalised and ridiculed in the mainstream media.
Across the preceding two years there had been one remarkable demonstration after another, attracting at first tens, then hundreds, then thousands, then hundreds of thousands of participants.
But if the nation’s government manipulated mainstream media was to be believed, they numbered only a few, and all were either nut jobs or conspiracy theorists.
Nothing could have been further from the truth; but the protestors, from all walks of life, were given no credit and no voice – until they found their own.
There is an odd resonance to events of this era, as if the destruction of Australia was only an afterthought; that all the millions of people’s lives destroyed by megalomaniacal politicians, Pfizer funded academics and lunatic, over-paid, self-aggrandising health bureaucrats barely even rated a mention in the power centers of the globe.
Australia’s democracy proved virus thin.
Those who claimed Australia was merely a testing ground for techno-fascism gained a new credibility.
As former New York Times journalist Alex Berenson put it in his groundbreaking bestseller Pandemia: How Coronavirus Hysteria Took Over Our Government, Rights, and Lives, put it: “At the beginning panic made sense. Maybe. But within a few weeks anyone paying attention could see the cure was worse than the disease. We had done more damage to ourselves and the world than the virus ever could. Media hysteria, political partisanship, overreliance on unproven technology, and scientific illiteracy brought the world to the brink of breakdown. Countries such as Australia show just how fragile our freedoms have become.”
A nation which once prided itself on its laissez faire approach and the friendly, easy going nature of its population lay besmirched by a descent into totalitarianism.
All the systems Australians had come to rely on failed them at their time of greatest need; every last one of them.
The mainstream media, the social media platforms, the legal profession, the courts, the politicians, the bureaucrats, the medical profession, the police, the military, and not least the universities, with their filthy hordes of snake peddlers and intellectual traitors loyal to their government and vaccine manufacturer funding sources; mopping up massive amounts of public and corporate monies while peddling nothing but garbage.
In early 2020, seizing on Covid-19 as their excuse, politicians and health bureaucrats stepped into the forefront of everybody’s lives; and created absolute chaos.
While repeatedly refusing to release the medical evidence to justify their actions, because there was none, the nation’s political leaders inflicted unprecedented restrictions on their fellow Australians, and it was not just the political establishment, but the medical and media establishments which had now been utterly shamed.
Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.
Charles Mackay
Churches and places of worship had been closed for two years, and these congregations of believers denied a fundamental aspect of their humanity. Equally, for the secular, those who saw their pubs, clubs and beer gardens as their “churches” had been denied an essential part of being human, the social nature of the species.
A fundamental part of the spiritual experience is the realisation that we are not alone; and whether or not that awakening is of the spirit, or simply to the communality of the human experience, significant number participants believed it to be so.
The long periods of government imposed isolation and absence from all normal forms of communality added to the joy and triumphal nature of the event.
Spiritual wars all have epicentres, and many people, whether of religious or spiritual bent or not, spoke of the spiritual nature of the event.
Many of the individuals interviewed by us expressed almost identical sentiments: “I was compelled to be here. I was drawn here. I just knew I had to be here; I couldn’t not be here. I woke up and God was in my head, and told me I had to go to Canberra. I just got in my car and drove.”
Local Canberrans, who had grown comfortable on the sweat, toil and taxes of the rest of the country were entirely confronted by this gathering of ordinary, good hearted Australians, the citizens the nation’s capital was built to serve.
All those apparatchiks who had rained terror and ceaseless restrictions on their fellow Australians, bashing, fining, jailing and marginalising them now had egg on their faces. They could deny the truth no longer. They had done more harm than good; and the country they were paid to serve would take decades to recover from their self-aggrandising insanities.
The arrogance of Australian politicians and bureaucrats, the so-called “laptop class”, towards their working class fellows drove deep divisions into the body politic.
Despite all the warnings from months of demonstrations in the nation’s capitals, despite the many cautionary words from some of the planet’s sharpest minds and leading tertiary institutions, the Australian authorities did not step back from the brink, blindly leading their nation over the cliff.
Many thousands of professionals, doctors, nurses, teachers, police and others who had lost their jobs because they refused to get “jabbed” were among the demonstrators; and yet still the authorities insisted on an absurd medical apartheid against the nation’s unvaxxed, marginalising their own citizens while ignoring “the science”, which was now turning rapidly against them.
Mainstream media, always the subject of government manipulation, became a primary source of disinformation and fear mongering.
The government offered backdoor funding and tax concessions to mainstream media to peddle their Covid messaging. Loyal to their funding sources, trapped by their failing business models and declining revenue streams, the mainstream media lost all impartiality, and thereby credibility.
You lie by commission or omission; and throughout the period beginning in 2020 the mainstream media lied constantly. Australia became a profoundly dishonest country.
With the death toll from suicides, broken businesses and broken lives mounting by the day, the mainstream media literally helped the nation’s politicians literally get away with murder.
Tell a younger generation that journalism used to be a respected reputation, and they look at you like you’re from Mars.
While in the parallel universe of government manipulated media and taxpayer funded academe it was as if nothing was happening, and mainstream journalists continued to ignore the biggest story of their lifetimes, Australia’s independent media was on fire.
It was at this very juncture in history citizen journalists and independent outlets displaced “legacy” media as a primary source of information for the majority of Australians.
Streamers, bloggers, essentially anyone with a smart phone, pumped out stories and footage in a tsunami of alternative information which well and truly dwarfed the legacy media’s increasingly poorly performing “news” outlets.
David Oneeg, an impassioned singlet wearing truck driver with an enthusiastic following which would be the envy of many a mainstream journalist, became a classic of the new genre of citizen journalism with his podcast Aussie Chat. Fired up by the Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s claim that Australia would stand up to authoritarians in the Russia Ukraine conflict, he declared: “Australia always stands up to bullies!!! Might I remind you Scott Morrison, you opened up the door and rolled out the red carpet for a host of bullies who came here and screwed this country and screwed over regular Australian families. You rolled out the carpet for the World Economic Forum, the World Health Organisation, the United Nations and Big Pharma to lead Australia into medical apartheid, and it has been fucking catastrophic.
“They have trodden down Australia for the past two years. They have bullied, coerced, and manipulated Australians into this unscientific, untested, unjustifiable injection, on your watch.
“I know so many of you are so frikin’ angry about what has happened in our country over the past two years. Many of us have been so angry seeing our country destroyed and torn apart right in front of our eyes. The will of the people has to be expressed.
“When will an Australian politician rise to the top and defend us, the Australian people?
“Our teen and youth suicide rates are at levels never seen before because of this bullying. Don’t you dare say you stand up to bullies, because you don’t. You have aided the destruction of this country. And I hope I’ve put another nail in your political coffin.”
Your average Canberra bureaucrat would never meet a person like David Oneeg, yet here he was, on their doorstep with many tens of thousands of others just like him; completely outraged at the destruction of their lives and livelihoods.
The movement was essentially organic, and spontaneous, meaning that it was at times rudderless, without clear leadership or administrative structures.
The protests were both chaotic and glorious, and the burgeoning campsites first outside the National Parliament and then at the showgrounds on the outskirts of Canberra which became known as Camp Freedom or Camp Epic daily demonstrated a remarkable cohesion and goodwill amongst people from hugely disparate backgrounds.
While political infighting, personality conflicts and conflicting views of the way forward were on clear display amongst the putative leaders, out in the makeshift tent cities which sprang up around Canberra the level of good cheer, cooperation and mutual support brought many people to tears.
Everyone there had been through a terrible time, courtesy of their own government.
All great social movements are born of chaos and extremity, just like life itself.
Thus it proved in Australia’s national capital.
There were frictions and personality clashes; but there was also repeated and heart warming displays of kindness, cooperation and camaraderie.
Together they changed history.
People who had been essentially placed under house arrest for the previous two years embraced each other like long lost friends. Australia became Australia once again; a friendly, open, hard working and decent place.
One of the tongue-in-cheek sign read: “Make Australia Average Again”.
And what a joyful celebration it was.
The Canberra Convoy started out as literally a few people getting inspired by the truck convoy in Canada and thinking “why don’t we do that”?
In early 2022 the blockading of the Canadian Parliament and the massive country wide support for the truck convoy were provoked by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau introducing poorly thought out vaccine mandates for truckers frequently crossing the Canadian US border. Just as in Australia, they came after a two year blizzard of liberty destroying health diktats.
The vaccine mandates were a step too far; with the backlash threatening to destroy the entire Covid narrative.
At this point in history, only the illiterate or the deliberately ignorant could possibly be unaware of the controversy enveloping vaccine rollouts worldwide.
The wave of protests across the globe occurred at exactly the same time as study after study demonstrated the Covid-19 vaccines to be useless at stopping the spread of the disease while producing multiple serious side affects up to an including death, and on a population wide basis producing negative efficacy in multiple jurisdictions.
The brutal crackdown on the truckers in Canada, including the freezing of bank accounts and multiple violent arrests, inspired and outraged millions around the world, including in Australia and New Zealand.
The authorities, with their power and credibility fading by the hour, threw everything they could at ordinary people with entirely legitimate grievances, and they failed for one simple reason: In the end, the truth will out.
Australia’s convoy was different in nature to other countries, attracting vast numbers of supporters across all sections of society; from disabled children in wheelchairs to the elderly, from the young and wildly enthusiastic to thousands of professionals, from members of Australia’s sometimes rough and ready working classes to a very strong indigenous presence.
For everyone who showed up in person in Canberra, there were many others lending their support.
Australians are a phlegmatic people; it takes a lot to make them protest. The young may be drawn to government generated narratives such as climate change or racism; but a genuine uprising or a revolution was always considered impossible in the Land Down Under simply because Australians just wouldn’t be in it, too lackadaisical and too satisfied within the confines of their suburban lives to put themselves out.
Two years of false promises and fake news courtesy of the government and their puppets in the mainstream media changed all that; with the mood rapidly turning sour across the country.
Two weeks to “flatten the curve” had turned into two year blizzard of ever changing rules and regulations, making running a business or creating any semblance of a normal life virtually impossible.
Thus it was that when asked how long they were going to stay, many of those in the Freedom movement replied tongue in cheek: “I’m just staying two weeks to flatten the curve.”
Australians, due to their geographical isolation, had been among the world’s great travellers. Now their homeland had become a Prison Island, with many of its residents unable to leave the country due to some of the worst travel restrictions in the world, akin to North Korea.
Equally thousands of Australians were stranded overseas, unable to return home; while internally the state borders opened and shut on the whim of power-drunk Premiers, creating utter chaos for businesses and producing many heart wrenching scenes of divided families.
Even as Australia became one of the most heavily vaccinated countries on Earth, the promise of mass vaccination as the path out of Covid restrictions proved entirely illusory.
How insane it all was.
Everywhere the country was grinding to a stop, and everywhere individuals of independent mind began shouting out: “Enough is enough.”
And so people, a significant number with no homes and no jobs to go back to, having lost everything as a result of the government’s deranged mishandling of the Covid scare, got on their bikes, piled into their cars, packed up their trailers and their vans, and headed to Australia’s national capital.
As poet Bill Massie put it:
Oh Canberra here we come, here we come here we come
Lookout Canberra here we come,
we come from far and wide
Millions of Aussies can’t be wrong
We are young, old, free and strong
Truckers, Farmers, Teachers, Plumbers, Doctors, Nurses and all the Drummers
We cannot be wrong
We cannot be wrong
We cannot be wrong
Lookout Canberra here we come, here we come, here we come
Mums and Dads Babes in gowns
Heading to Canberra to see the clowns
They are the clowns who have let us down
Let us down, let us down
Lookout Canberra We’ve arrived.
TWO
FROM ALL THE LANDS WE COME
The excitement, and let’s be frank, the astonishment, gathered like a rolling storm.
The preceding days had taken everybody by surprise.
No one, not even the most optimistic of activists, predicted the size, strength, power and popular support for this spontaneous uprising.
Australians converged from all parts of the country, some footage showing mini-convoys barreling down country roads. Everywhere was the same; blaring horns, waving flags, triumphal shouts.
As the convoy gathered strengths on the many roads leading to Canberra, crowds of locals assembled on overpasses and roadsides, waving flags and cheering them on.
Already these scenes and the rising tide of excitement were utterly unprecedented in the Australian experience, speaking to the historical nature of the event.
Day after day, images and footage of cheerful scenes at truck stops and campsites across Australia filled social media streams.
One participant, with an Instagram feed labelled Drain the Billabong, described himself as just a dude who loves everything to do with sport and works his ass off. He said of one of the impromptu roadside scenes at Wyong on the NSW Central Coast: “This is the Australia I remember and LOVE.”
They hadn’t even got to Canberra, yet on full display was a huge level of cooperation as trestle tables went up, BBQs were lit, food handed out, flags waved and t-shirts proudly worn, “I Stand For Freedom”.
One professionally signed utility read: “Communist Australia. You Masked For This.”
Hundreds of people, not one of them wearing a mask, were clearly in a celebratory mood; busily exchanging experiences and making new friends. Their dogs, which had also spent two years in the extreme isolation of Australia’s draconian lockdowns, mingled freely amongst the crowd.
Signs were erected: “Our Teachers Have Been Fired Because They Support Choice”; “The Threat of Unemployment Is Not Consent”; “Thousands of Workers Sacked”; “Help End Vaccine Mandates”.
Along the highways, long queues of cars festooned with flags and makeshift signs tooted their horns while drivers and passengers shouted cries of victory out their windows.
There was much to be angry about; but perhaps what was most striking about these spontaneous displays was the festive atmosphere.
In just one of the many scenes across the country, massive lines of trucks and cars descend on Pheasant’s Nest, normally a rather boring service centre on the road to Canberra; again the flags, the shouts, the horns, the spontaneous gatherings as people embraced each other, or engaged in earnest conversations as they shared their horror experiences of the previous two years.
It slowly dawned on everybody that they were not alone; that they were not in fact cranks and outliers flying against “the science” and the overarching wisdom of “the medical advice”, as their power-drunk political leaders had repeatedly told them was the justification for the destruction of all normal community life.
Their views were now mainstream; their longing for a return to the nation’s traditional freedoms, for the right to go about their normal ordinary lives, the lives they loved, was mirrored in everyone they encountered and embraced.
Families on the Pacific Highway leading to Canberra manned overpass bridges, waving flags and signs saying “Thank You”. As the multiple convoys converging on Canberra grew in size, so did the crowds applauding them.
Michael Griffith recalls his own experience on the road: “On Sunday morning I left Melbourne in a convoy of fifteen vehicles, several of which only came for a section of the journey, to offer us support and see us off. Still, the next morning, by the time we reached Wodonga we had grown to over 170 vehicles.
“All through the night people kept arriving at the makeshift camp, established on the side of the road opposite a service station.
“It was camp that had an electricity running through it. The kind of electricity that attracts. Most people didn’t know each other. Most had never done anything like this before, and no one had any idea what would happen next. All we knew was that we had come too far and now there was no going back. We were on a quest to save our country from tyranny, and we were all one people. We could all feel that too. Two years of division was bonding us into a tribe.
“One of the most remarkable things, was that on nearly every car was an Australian flag. A lot of people were also wearing it like a cape. And mostly it was the blue flag, and yet despite their clear pride for their country, their country had ostracised them.”
New arrivals into the Canberra campsites were greeted with cheers and waving flags.
“This is it, folks,” popular Aussie Chat streamer Dave Oneeg declared to camera on the main avenue leading to the national parliament, the sound of horns blasting in the distance. “We’ve been hearing rumours that this convoy approaching is about 25 to 30 kilometres long, maybe longer.
“This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Here they come. This is beautiful. I’ve got goose bumps. Aussie pride is back. This is the real deal.”
And then a most remarkable sight heaved into view on the normally sedate boulevard leading to Parliament House; a wall of trucks, cars and four-wheel-drives, Australian flags waving and horns tooting.
Messages of support from across the country and around the world streamed across Oneeg’s feed: “So proud of you of all you freedom fighters”, “Awesome”, “Ohhh, so beautiful!“, “My eyes are tearing”, “Stick together, stay strong, make us proud”, “Go you amazing people”, “The Aussie spirit has woken up.”
“Convoy for Freedom” reads the banner on one of the two lead trucks, the other reading, perhaps appropriately, “Over Size”, as the camera panned to a seemingly endless line of vehicles.
“HANDS OFF OUR KIDS” read a banner along the side of one massive lorry.
Another truck was bannered with the words: “Maskerade Over”.
Yet another was signed across its rear: “End Tyranny Free Australia”.
“Come on Aussies,” Oneeg continues, almost jumping out of his skin with excitement. “This is people from all over Australia.”
A young family on the side of the road waved makeshift placards, “Freedom”, “Stop Mandates”.
From the very first moments the protests were remarkably good spirited, as jubilant protestors waved and shouted out their car windows and Oneeg joyfully shouted back: “Heh, how you doing? You’re live on Facebook!”
Country music performer Dusty Starr put it thus in his song Locked Down Under:
One thing about history
It helps you see how tomorrow could be
And if you think we’ve learnt from our mistakes
They’re just reruns, old repeats
Denying freedom of speech
Propaganda machines
Clearing the way for a new regime
And when they call in the dogs
To herd all the sheep
It’s time to hit the streets
And make a stand
While you can
For your lucky land
The one thing we know that is true
This is a time of change.
There was not a mask or a QR code in sight; and zero social distancing.
The nation’s Chief Medical Officers, the same self-important bureaucrats who had been preening in front of the cameras month after tortuous month, suddenly appeared like the out of touch fools they were.
These grotesquely privileged apparatchiks, paid more than ten times the average wage of the workers they were trying to control, mesmerised by their own self-importance as they became household names, were so damn clever none of them realised you cannot save a society by destroying it.
For the first time in a very long time ordinary people, the ones without university degrees and fabulous salaries, felt vindicated; the feeling they had clung to that they were on the right side of history confirmed at last. Their days of isolation, of being ridiculed by politicians, bureaucrats, media pundits and their double vaxxed neighbours, were finally over.
This was not a few isolated crazies; this was a country which from coast to coast was declaring its disgust at the bureaucratic and authoritarian overreach which had been visited upon ordinary, decent people; the police bashings, the pepper spraying, the hi-tech weaponry used for crowd control; and the disgraceful deceits of the nation’s political class.
Hashtags blossomed across the internet, #convoytocanberra, #convoytocanberra2022, #Convoy2Canberra.
Observer and life coach David Nieuwenhoven wrote: “There had been a lot of talk in various groups about heading to Canberra and making a stand of some sort in a non-violent way to let those know in power that we are well and truly over this absolute nonsense, mandates, fear mongering and more and many good people including nurses, doctors, fireman, teachers and essential workers just want their jobs back!
“Let’s face it, pretty much every person in Australia has been affected in some way in the last two years. Many people lost everything; including loved ones to suicide, jobs, friends, family and more.”
One young tradie spoke for many when at one of the parallel protests in Perth he shouted at the Premier of Western Australia Mark McGowan: “Give Us Our Jobs Back Ya Dog.”
It was all many people wanted; the right to work, the right to live their lives without the government in every corner of their lives.
The rich had grown massively richer, the public sector had expanded significantly, and the politicians ate up television time putting themselves front and centre of everybody’s lives; all, in the end, for what?
The only people who hadn’t had their lives and livelihoods destroyed or savagely impacted were the privileged political class, bureaucrats and the already ultra-rich, who were more than satisfied with the historic transfer of wealth upwards from the middle and working classes.
What started out as a “road trip” for a few dedicated activists desperate to reach out from the isolation of their own bunkers rapidly turned into something much bigger. The meme “Let’s go to Canberra” turned into a widespread and joyful chant, “Everyone’s going to Canberra”, spreading across social media and through the thousands upon thousands of individuals, families and groups coming from all corners of the country.
Social media platforms like Telegram and even Facebook, which had played an invidious censorship role throughout the Covid era, suddenly had thousands of people saying they wanted to go too, then tens of thousands, all focused on the sole idea of getting people to the capital whatever way they could; to be seen and heard, to at long last take meaningful action against the tyranny which had been crushing them and their families for far too long.
Trucks were out of the question for many, because most truckies in Australia do not own their own trucks.
So, people organised buses, carpooling, caravans and trailers were loaded, and people just decided they would get there however possible, by train, by bus, by plane.
Soon tens of thousands; then hundreds of thousands over a very short period felt compelled to head to the capital.
Every last person compelled to come to Canberra had a powerful and intensely human story to tell.
Many, without even the petrol money to return home, declared: “We’re not leaving until this is over!”
As one protestor observed: “Everybody here is on the verge of losing everything.”
There is an old saying: “Grace is more likely to be found in crisis than in comfort.”
And perhaps that was part of the reason for the wildly festive atmosphere; not a dance macabre in the face of death, but a breathtaking act of defiance and the triumph of the human spirit.
THREE
THE FULCRUM POINTS OF HISTORY
Canberra’s Parliament House, an elegant 4,700 room building designed as a symbol of national unity, was opened in 1988 by Queen Elisabeth II and cost what was then regarded as a wildly extravagant $1.1 billion. The front forecourts are normally a sedate tourist zone, characterised by tour operators and the comings and goings of sleek white Commonwealth cars.
The Prime Minister in 1988 was Bob Hawke of the Labor Party, the last Prime Minister to have any genuine connection to Australia’s working classes.
Hawke passed away in 2019, and we will never know what he would have made of the nation’s great unwashed, that is its citizens, showing up on the doorsteps of the national capital.
The current residents of Canberra sniffed, turned the other way, or unleashed the hounds; their supreme arrogance and indifference intact.
Although to be fair not all of them behaved this way, with donations of food, clothing, toiletries and bottled water pouring into the camps.
The first members of the Convoy to show up on that Monday, 31st January 2022, all expressed themselves frightened, exhilarated, overwhelmed, both moved to tears and very much out on a limb; a few brave souls determined to protest in the face of the grinding, heartless and massive machinery of an authoritarian government.
By 2pm the normally sedate forecourts of the national parliament were packed with hundreds of protestors waving the white, red and blue Australian national flag, the Australian Red Ensign flag, traditionally associated with military service and thereby national pride, the Aboriginal flag with its bold red, orange and black colouring, and the blue and white Southern Cross Eureka flag, historically associated with worker revolts.
And thus the biggest story in Modern Australian history began.
Early footage shows campers parking on the lawns outside Parliament House, while police look on helplessly.
Stories emerged in the following days, whether apocryphal or not we cannot confirm, of numerous police in Canberra quitting their jobs rather than acting against their fellow Australians; or bursting into tears and throwing their badges on the ground; or of passing out ear plugs to protestors to help protect them against the hi-tech weapons their fellow officers were using to target the crowds.
What can be easily confirmed is that hundreds of police officers quit their jobs rather than comply with vaccine mandates, an estimated 1200 in Queensland alone, while many senior police who resigned provided moving online testimony of their absolute disgust with the authoritarian abuses against their fellow Australians they had been expected to execute.
Some of the nation’s most senior police condemned in no uncertain terms the politicians and health bureaucrats who had destroyed the lives of so many of the citizenry.
This particularly telling response by those expected to act as the frontline for the diktats of the nation’s politicians and bureaucrats is well documented on a Telegram Channel by a group calling itself Cops for Covid Truth.
The mainstream media were notable for their almost total absence from the protests; for their blatant lying about crowd numbers, and in any case were decidedly unwelcome when they did show up.
One piece of footage shows a middle aged woman giving a television cameraman such an earful he makes the professional mistake of arguing back. She is unrepentant: “Bloody disgraceful. I asked him which station he worked for and he wouldn’t tell me. That’s not doing his job. Other people in this country don’t have a job right now. Why should he have one?”
The mainstream media might have stayed away; but citizen journalists did not. One of the most prominent, Janaya Markwell, who posted under the tag Convoy Roller Girl, was exuberant when asked by celebrity streamer The Real Rukshan what she thought: “It’s absolutely incredible. I love every minute here. The energy here, electric, beautiful. Everyone is coming together, so excited, loving it. Seen the food tents? Locals are constantly dropping off supplies, food and water. We’ve even had games. It’s so exciting. Everyone is having the best time.”
There were impromptu concerts; drums, clap sticks, didgeridoos,
The massed, masked up and heavily armed police offered a sad contrast to the joyful attitude of the protestors themselves.
By midday of that first exhilarating day vehicle after vehicle were being welcomed onto the lawns in front of Parliament House by their fellow Convoy members. Police found themselves surrounded by a chanting, flag waving crowd every time they tried to intervene or block a vehicle from entering: “Let them go. Let them go. Let them go you dogs. You dogs. You’re outnumbered today.”
It’s not that often in Australian life you see the indigenous fighting with one voice alongside their white brethren, but today they did, with the Aboriginal flag everywhere to be seen.
And polite language was not on the menu.
“Wake Up Rise Up Australia” read just one of the handmade signs being waved in a sea of flags.
Police attempts to block entry the lawns ultimately failed.
As Michael Griffith wrote of the exhilaration of those opening hours: “Our culture has been raped, and now, within the trauma, turmoil and the shame of that, is a new future forming? A future never more visible than within the camp growing outside the front of the national library in Canberra.
“It is a camp forming from people who are arriving here from all over the country. Many are coming in waves of convoys, like the one I arrived in, others are turning up alone, some after driving for hours. One unemployed gardener I met came with his daughter from Mt Gambia, after racing out to buy a campervan. Another woman told me she drove all the way down from Cairns. It was a long way she said, a long way.
“And down here the police, at least on the first day, were trying various tactics to move us on. But on to where? The reason most of us had nowhere to go was the reason we were here.
“I believe that what is happening now is something that will not have been seen before. It is an ongoing explosion of courage, that will keep exploding all over the country, as those who have had enough will go fuck it, if not now, then when?
“For thousands of years people have awaited the second coming, and without question, most people in the resistance see this as a spiritual war, a war between good and evil. Well what if, under the darkening shadow of evil, this is the second coming? Except that what is good, call it God or call it what ever you like, is arriving within all of us. Forming within the conjoined souls, who, after still refusing to comply, are coming together and forming, organically, and without even knowing it, the womb of our new world.”
Greeted like conquering heroes after what was inevitably a long drive, new arrivals were grinning from ear to ear.
By midday the protestors were gathering around the front of Parliament House, the mood a surprising mix because nobody knew what to expect, nobody knew what was about to happen, and the initial confrontations with police attempting to stop the campers from setting up on the most public and symbolic lawns in the country had already set a sour tone of conflict and confrontation.
Just to add to the atmosphere, a violent storm appeared, with dark clouds hovering over the nation’s seat of government.
By half past one the chants outside the doors of Parliament had begun. “Sack them all. Sack them all.”
A spokesman for the group Informed Medical Options said the “Sack Them All” chant exemplified the frustration many people were feeling.
“They feel they are not being heard,” he said. “And they are not being heard. The mainstream media will probably label us as crackpots. That there is something wrong with us. No. No. It is well past time when they can hide out in this house and ignore the people of Australia.”
The atmosphere was defiant, but the hundreds of thousands of people who had marched in towns and cities had done nothing to change the incompetence and the cruelty which had characterised the state and federal government Covid responses to date.
Most protests outside parliament, however noisy, fall flat; with a few hundred chanting, placard waving civilians unlikely to change an aloof and unresponsive government, either its politicians or its phalanxes of bureaucrats. There may have been plenty of bravado, but at this point in time nobody realised that they were about to be bolstered by well over a million supporters in the largest spontaneous uprising the country had ever seen.
Truckers of the world unite
This is a battle we all have to fight
Hitch up your rig, trailers & gates
Go fight this battle with all your trucking mates
Start up your rig throw it into gear
This is the battle of the year
Politicians have let us down
Time to throw them out of town
We the people must take control
No more mandates no more jabs
No more lockdowns by these scabs
Without our truckers we’d be lost
You carry the country through sun hail ice & frost
Honk your horns loud & clear.
Bill Massie.
Even as protestors wore their “Real Men Don’t Wear Masks” t-shirts and waved “Hands Off Our Kids” placards, and thousands more continued to pour into Canberra, their vehicles festooned with variations on the “My Kids Are Not Lab Rats” theme, came the news that GoFundMe had frozen access to more than $160,000 in funds raised by supporters.
The action followed a similar move in Canada, where more than $5 million in funds had been frozen.
And then the heavens opened up and poured rain upon the protestors; with dogs and children and flag draped protestors splashing cheerfully through the environs of the national parliament.
From the very beginning the politics of it all were remarkably confused, with various factions competing for their points of view to be heard.
While there was a remarkable atmosphere of collaboration and good will between protestors, there were deep divisions between sections of the movement on clear display; both personality clashes and political differences. The division ran along the lines of those who wished to work within the system to reform the policies they disliked, such as lockdowns and vaccine mandates, and those who wish to dissolve parliament altogether and establish an new kind of polity.
Not that any of it mattered. Australia’s political system had failed everybody. Professional politicians were not welcome. This was a people’s uprising.
In the end the reality was clear: both sides of Australia’s Tweedledum Tweedledee politics of left and right had ramped up Covid hysteria to ridiculous levels, abrogated previously unheard of powers to themselves, destroyed the liberties and freedoms of Australians and betrayed the people they were meant to serve.
One figure who enjoyed some community respect was avowed Christian and former Qantas pilot Graham Hood who said that on his journey there he had spent the previous night at Pheasants Nest. “I saw hundreds of people in tears, not because they were sad but because they finally realised they were part of something that was worth being part of. They are proud and they are alive and they are part of Australia. We have allowed this country to degenerate into something that sucks.
“The last time Australia mobilised like this was during the Wars. They rode to enlist on horses, motorbikes, they caught trains, they walked. They went because they wanted to defend and protect this country. That is what we have done.”
Another polarising figure to emerge was former SAS officer Riccardo Bossi, who repeatedly and passionately called for the dissolving of Parliament and fresh elections: “This is a moment in history. We either win or lose. Those bastards up there are already killing our kids. What do you think they’ve got in store for us next? We have to end this here and now. This is it.”
Somehow in this entire melee the conflicting personalities and agendas were of no great import; it was clear, Australians had had enough.
As one of the many flags declared: “The People’s Revolution”.
There were no camping permits; there was no coordinated plan, there was no administrative structure or elected leaders, but most startling of all was that after the vicious idiocy which had destroyed all semblance of community life over the previous two years, the prevailing atmosphere was one of immense good cheer.
One participant amongst those first campers, Simon Hunt, who spent three nights between Old Parliament House and New Parliament House and outside the columned edifices of the National Library and Australia, described the atmosphere thus: “We rolled in. There were so many people there; and they just kept on coming. The atmosphere was incredible. Families and dogs, and wherever you went everybody was engaged in conversation.
“Above all it was very welcoming, like finding yourself in a crowd of old friends after getting out of a two year stint in prison.
“So many people came with nothing. Many came by themselves. But everyone was on the same page.
“Australians are reticent on the whole; but everyone was friendly, supportive. Food tents started up. Kitchens were organised.
“All the people who came with no money got fed.
“There was so much good will and camaraderie, it was incredible.
“Then the police started hassling us.”
FOUR
THE PRIME MINISTER WHO DESTROYED AUSTRALIA
One young woman wearing a halter top with the word LOVEDOWN pencilled across her breasts pretty much summed it up. She held high above her head a sign which read: “We’re not from the Left or Right, We’re from the Bottom and We’re Coming for those on Top!”
Many hundreds of thousands of Australians had been protesting for months on the streets of the state capitals.
But this time around the deceptive conduct of mainstream journalists and the government apparatchiks pulling their strings no longer mattered; every single abuse by the authorities was streamed multiple times live to the internet; every last detail of this historic event was recorded and uploaded in real time.
People had travelled from all over Australia to be part of the Convoy; and it was now crystal clear that the government had entirely lost control of their Covid narrative of fear, hysteria and oppression.
A government which had lied constantly, which had destroyed the country and betrayed the people, now had a fomenting revolution on its hands.
Destroying millions of people’s livelihoods, careers, dignity and bodily integrity, as the Australian authorities had done, was always going to end only one way; with protestors in the streets.
Every day in the lead up to the major march there were demonstrations at various institutions around Canberra, including the High Court of Australia.
As luck would have it, on that first full day, as the town began to fill with demonstrators, Scott Morrison was scheduled to speak at the National Press Club.
Morrison’s shameless lust for power had landed him in a job he was not intellectually or temperamentally equipped to fill.
And made him the most despised person in the country; loathed not just by the millions of people whose lives he had destroyed under the cover of Covid-19, with his totalitarian instincts and his ever repeating lie that he and his ilk were “keeping Australians safe”; but by his own party, many of whom were just as aware as the public of the massive amount of harm this Prime Minister had done to the country and to his countrymen.
Not to mention their chances of re-election.
With well over a million people descending on the limited camping grounds of Canberra there was no privacy; and here is just one telling vignette.
Sitting in adjacent cubicles in the toilets, one excitable lad shouts to his mate, “I’m doing a ScoMo, I’m doing a ScoMo.”
You know you’ve lost the public when your name becomes synonymous with the act of defecation.
Scott Morrison had shown not one single shred of sympathy for the hundreds of people who had died as a result of the vaccine he so ardently promoted, nor a shred of sympathy for the thousands of adverse events, including permanent disablement.
He had shown no sympathy whatsoever for the many protestors bashed in the cities, locked in their homes, fined and imprisoned; and not a single shred of empathy for the thousands of people who had lost their jobs for refusing the vaccine, or the tens of thousands of business owners who had seen their livelihoods destroyed by the governments totally over-the-top response to response to Covid. And no sympathy whatsoever for the hundreds of thousands of families separated from their loved ones thanks to the dramatic, and ultimately pointless, shutting of state and national borders.
Rather than siding with the people, he had inevitably sided with the dictatorial out-of-control conduct of State Premiers, acting under Emergency Powers they had gifted themselves.
The country broke apart under Scott Morrison’s watch; and now he was being forced to confront the people’s whose lives he had trampled on.
All in an election year.
If he was trying to keep up the pretence that the protestors descending on the capital were of little import; Scott Morrison had to do even more dodging and weaving than usual as he was confronted by a loud, proud and angry crowd at the National Press Club, normally a rather sedate venue where politicians are given undue reverence as they unveil their various plans, their speeches ritualistically followed by softball questions from tame journalists.
As the Prime Minister spoke the platitudinous words of his well prepared speech, a typical mélange of homilies mixed with a list of supposed public service achievements, his words were broadcast over the PA system to those who could not make it into the comfortable and exclusive rooms of the National Press Club. The crowd outside were having none of it.
Each mention of the virus and each self-congratulatory justification for the ruin his government had visited upon the country were greeted with groans and jeers.
“The past three years have been some of the most extraordinary that our nation has ever experienced,” the Prime Minister intoned. “Younger generations have never known anything like it.
“The succession of natural disasters from drought to flood, fires, pestilence, a once in a century global pandemic, the recession it caused, has pushed our country to the very limits.
“It has been tough raising your family, keeping your job, doing your job – especially for those health and aged care workers, who we thank for their tremendous service.
“It’s been tough keeping your small business or your farm going.
“It’s been tough keeping your children’s education up, caring for elderly relatives, those with a disability, and it’s been very tough on them too.
“Our way of life has been completely turned upside down.
“For so many Australians it has been exhausting – financially, physically, emotionally.
“And I don’t doubt many have stayed awake at night after telling their kids or those they care for, or those they employ that it’s all going to be OK, but wondering to themselves, in the quiet of that night, whether it really will be.”
It would be the last time Morrison would publicly attempt to put a positive spin on his and his government’s abject mishandling of Covid before he realised he was not on a winner.
Members of the crowd were colourfully and casually dressed; standing on the roofs of their cars, waving flags and placards including “In A World Of Propaganda Truth Is Always A Conspiracy”, and generally making it clear that the time for bullshit was over.
The scene inside the National Press Club was also more lively than usual, with prominent political commentator Peter Van Onselen confronting the PM with a leaked text exchange between the then NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and a member of his own Cabinet where he was described as “a horrible, horrible person”, a “fraud” and a “complete psycho” more concerned with politics than people, a Gotcha moment which added memorably to the public humiliation of the occasion.
The expression on the Prime Minister’s face when asked for his response to this contempt by people from his own side of politics was what Australians would call “classic”; “whacked over the head with a mullet”.
As the senior politicians who had shown up to support their leader departed in their chauffer driven Commonwealth cars, they were greeted with cries of “Shame On You, Shame On You”.
The Prime Minister’s car, with an apparently dumb founded Morrison inside, was pursued by protestors shouting “You Dog, You Dog”.
For Morrison haters, of whom there were many, it was a truly splendid day.
For a frustrated crowd, it was all great fun, and would have been funny if it had not been so serious, the damage wrecked on Australian society so complete.
FIVE
WE WILL WASH AWAY TYRANNY
Day three was a cooler day, but only weather wise, Matthew Gray of Café Lockdown wrote.
Every hour the police entered the campsite in Canberra’s parliamentary zone and did a walk through. All of them were masked up and initially polite. As they passed through the growing camp they were surrounded by protesters, who were trying to convince the officers to come over to our side.
“These were angry people. People who had driven here from all over the land in a search for simple things: The right to work, the right to socialise, and the right to choose what went into their bodies.
“It was initially agreed upon that these walk throughs would happen every hour, but since there was no designated leader in the camp there was several schools of thought regarding this. Some wanted the police to stay out, others wanted them to be allowed to do their walk through only twice a day, while others, who felt we had nothing to hide, and needed to find a way to convince to police to join us, were happy for them to wander through.
“Matt Lawson, the Melbourne man who was shot in the stomach at close range by a rubber was filmed having a calm yet persuasive conversation with a policeman. The young officer admitted that he agreed with all of Matt’s points; everything from the disgraceful erosion of individual liberties to the questionable efficacy of the government peddled vaccines.
“But one sympathetic young cop wouldn’t be enough to stop the escalation of tension.
Within an hour the police had change their tactics. Now they not only wanted to walk through when they wanted to, but began to block the main entrance. Whilst they let our cars out, they were not letting these people back in. They also began telling protestors that they were illegally camping, or trespassing.
But as the tension continued to rise near the main entrance, where more and more police were arriving, the rear of the camp was open.
“I went there with a few others to wait. It didn’t take long. Suddenly, four unmarked, four wheel drives with darkened glass, pulled up in a line and with their engines running, they sat in a line like a modern day cavalry charge waiting for their order to order to charge.
“I live streamed this, and with my good friend, the photographer Daniel, a Mauri in his late sixties, we sat on the grass before them. Soon other freedom seekers, for the word fighters is wrong, sat next to us.
“We believed that despite the clear intimidation that they wouldn’t run us over. This was Australia.
“But then two of these four wheel drives reversed before driving off, at speed into the camp, past young children who were playing cricket, and as they did this officers from a tactical branch, burst out of these remaining four wheel drives and ran into the camp.
“We followed these men.
“By the time we reached the centre of the camp it was all a mess.
“The police were kettling themselves, as their colleagues were arresting someone, and the freedom seekers were surrounding these officers, our hands in the air, to show the world that we were unarmed, and all of us were chanting, ‘You serve us, You serve us’.”
The rest, as Michael Griffith puts it, was a shit-fest.
Perhaps some could argue that police were trying to do their job; but every war, including a war conducted by politicians against their own people, needs infantry. If everybody had just said no, if every officer in uniform had refused to pick up the cudgels, the guns, the pepper spray, the fists and truncheons and bullets, had refused to bash, fine and imprison their fellow Australians, it would have all ended before it had even started, two long destructive years before.
The same police brutality Australians had seen time and time again on the streets of the nation’s capitals, from the true psychopathology on Melbourne’s streets to the military manning the streets of the western suburbs of Sydney while army helicopters and surveillance drones flew overhead, from police pepper spraying children in the suburbs of Brisbane to the utterly outrageous rounding up of indigenous peoples from their sacred homelands in Central Australia; all that had proved a national disgrace and international embarrassment for two long years, all of it was now in the nation’s capital.
And all of it was being streamed multiple times by anyone with a smartphone; adding to the layers of shame that had accreted across the national psyche.
As Gray records: “Instead of spreading fear, these officers were met by old people who had come here, from all over the country because they were over the fear.
“And this, for our side, was a victory, for all of us had our phones out and were live streaming everything. And whilst people at home would try to find a way to exonerate the tactics of the police, the visuals of how these police officers were treating us, brutalising our old would speak not only a new truth, but a shameful truth.”
Heart wrenching footage emerged from the conflagration.
This is Australia? People were asking, and their voices were the voices of the broken hearted. This is Australia?
Gray continued: “One man hugged me because I was crying. He was crying too. Lots of people were. And not from the pepper spray or the fear. But from disbelief that these police officers, who should be our heroes, were now our oppressors.
“They were here to try to move us on because their masters knew lots more people were coming. Lots more. And they wanted the head of the forming snake cut off.
“These officers weren’t protecting the public, they were, instead being used by the politicians to try and crush what we were.
“And over these few days, many of these officers have told us they are on our side, although that is hard to see sometimes.
“And their masters should be scared, for what we are is the counterbalance. These officers are doing this for a pay packet, while we have nothing to lose, because apart from our souls, it has all been taken away.”
While authorities in Canberra tried to disband the burgeoning campsites around the city, multiple mini-convoys were still threading their way to the Australian Capital Territory along the highways and byways of the nation.
By now the ignition switch had been pressed, the fire lit, the contagion of wildly enthusiastic Convoy participants were being swept up in one of the most extraordinary events any of them were ever likely to experience; whatever cliché you wished to grasp for, none could suffice.
Multiple streamers, bloggers and independent news sites documented the gathering wave; the shouting, the waving, the tooting horns, the blaring trucks, the glory of it all.
Photographer John Napper, on his way down from the Gold Coast, recorded: “The wet roads have not dampened the spirits of the second convoy wave headed to Canberra from Queensland. I have not experienced such a positive, friendly and supportive mood on a driving trip around Australia ever!
“The Commonwealth Games had a tremendous atmosphere and friendly banter but this is something different. It’s more than just a celebration of an event. It’s a journey of hope. The delight and comfort in knowing there are so many others on this journey. Others who feel like you do. They aren’t strange.
“They yell support, they honk horns, they wave flags, and they stop and lend a hand to those stopped on the roadside.
“These people are giving life and hope to people who have been locked up, isolated, beaten down and treated as lesser citizens.
“The mood is changing. You can feel it. You can see it in the eyes of those in the convoy. You can certainly hear it; the hearts being kick-started and a throbbing of expectancy.
“I don’t know what the days ahead will hold but if this gathering of souls on the road to Canberra is any indication this is the birth of something very special.
“History is being made.”
Reporting from Ground Zero, so to speak, Matthew Gray wrote: “I have been saying for a while, that we all been surfing an incoming wave of tyranny, well what we are now is the first rise of another wave, a growing tsunami of people, Australian’s wanting what people all over the world crave, freedom.
“Even as I write this, people are coming up to me and introducing themselves. They have come from everywhere. Two women who just arrived had driven down from Townsville. Two days of solid driving.
“This park is the line in the sand. You can feel it. We all can.
“Will we be the agents of change? Will our wave wash away their tyranny? Or will we be the last stand of everything that was beloved about our country? A fort crushed by officers trying to pay their mortgages; officers who, if that happens, will have to try to live in a house built upon and haunted by our ghosts.”
***
I lost my job in disability support because I won’t get vaccinated but before I did I witnessed the company manipulating clients that could speak by telling them they wouldn’t be able to go anywhere or socialise with others and also the ones with no voice were just given the jab, it was bloody heartbreaking.
Janice Johnston. Source Café Lockdown.
***
My son’s story: Wish you had of gone into one of the surf clubs and asked them about mandates on their volunteers. Our 16 year old son forced to say goodbye to something he has been so passionate about. Last year Cameron received awards for Junior Lifesaver of the year also accumulated almost 300 hrs volunteering in 1 season. All his life I have taught him to make the right choices in life and you will be ok. Now he makes a choice to not put a trial drug in his body and he is punished for it. All he wants to do is serve his community, keep them safe
I’m so proud of him.
Shame on you NSW Surf Life Saving For Not standing up for your volunteers.
How do we explain the logic to our kids that they can sit in a classroom with in Cameron’s case 100 students but he can’t be on the beach serving his community? Kylie Buxton. Source Café Lockdown.
***
“You came for our Children. Now we’re coming for You.”
END ALL MANDATES
END ALL COVID VACCINATIONS
END ALL MASK MANDATES
END ALL QR CODES
END MEDICAL APARTHEID
REMOVE ALL COVID STICKERS & POSTERS
REMOVE ALL PLEXIGLASS
REMOVE ALL BORDER RESTRICTIONS
Trucks, Buses, Motorhomes, Cars, Motorbikes, Pushbikes, Scooters and by Foot.
Aussies are demanding our Freedom be restored.
OzTrucks to Canberra.
***
With the government in election mode and the extreme discontent of the public on full display, the Convoy to Canberra became the biggest story in the country. By Day Three there were escalating confrontations; and the by now familiar scene in Australia of police gathering en masse to disband protestors.
“God help you, pieces of shit,” one protestor yells at police as the pepper spraying, brutality and arrests began all over again.
One piece of footage shows two policemen, moving in on protestors, jubilantly clinking their pepper spray cans together as if they were beers; a collapse of moral authority within the police forces of which the many senior police quitting their posts had been warning for months.
This is what Australia had descended to. Nothing could have been more emblematic of this disgusting period of governance gone awry; of the tragedy which had consumed the nation, making it unrecognisable from the country it was only two years before.
Three people were arrested that third day, after officers, who had been patrolling the area all day, went to the campsite at the National Library of Australia at around 4pm to provide written information to demonstrators that they were parking and camping illegally, and might be fined if they remained.
Footage shows some 100 police massing for the confrontation.
A woman was charged with assaulting the police and two men were charged with obstruction for interfering in the woman’s arrest.
Observers reported that the violent scenes which erupted around the campsite were as a direct result of the antagonising presence of the police; not of the protestors, who were almost universally peaceful.
It didn’t matter what the authorities, the henchmen of the nation’s politicians, did; people kept arriving on foot, by train, bus and plane, the cars, the trucks, the caravans, the convoys large and small just kept pouring in. Australians had had more than enough.
SIX
JOY AND CALAMITY, BRUTALITY AND KINDNESS
Events accelerated.
Australia was producing what looked very much like a national uprising.
Daily thousands upon thousands of people, all sorts of people from all walks of life, continued to stream into the capital.
The stills and footage from that first week of February show joyous signs of communality and good cheer among the protestors; while the fierce brutality of the crackdowns by police on the campers fully exemplified a deeper scandal.
By Saturday the 5th of February there were already massive crowds in Canberra, all the more remarkable as protests had been effectively banned during the era of government generated Covid hysteria.
The march on Old Parliament House that day in itself made history, and while it acted in a sense as a precursor to the even more massive demonstration the following weekend was completely remarkable within itself.
The dismantling of the impromptu camp in the parliamentary precincts had begun in earnest the previous day, the 4th of February.
Authorities appeared early in the morning with warnings they would move camp equipment and ‘illegally parked’ vehicles in the area, after issuing repeating similar warnings on the previous days.
Police located in a boat on Lake Burley Griffin issued warnings, through a loudspeaker darkly: “It is an offence for a person to camp on this land without a permit. It is an offence for persons to park a vehicle on this land without a permit. You are required to remove all vehicles, camping structures, tents and associated equipment from this location. You have one hour to comply with this request before police begin removing and taking custody of these items. Any person attempting to interfere with police in the course of their duties may be subject to arrest.”
On social media, ACT Police issued a statement at 8am local time warning the campers of the operation.
Soon after, a large force descended on the park.
As one unfortunate tow truck driver hitches up a car multiple cameras showed a police officer aggressively pushing a woman to the ground; the same style of aggressive misconduct which had soiled the Force’s reputation so badly over the previous two years.
Heavily armed police faced completely unarmed mums, dads, children and the elderly.
The atmosphere was fiery and increasingly outraged.
David Oneeg: “Tactical response teams, Dog squads, Riot police and the rubber bullet boys, all for people and families who just want to say no to the death jabs and go back to work.
“This is the battle of the ages, not just here but all over the world. Choose your side carefully. Satan and God are playing for keeps.”
Sid, 73, travelled more than 1000 kilometres from Queensland whilst he was standing alone in the protesters camp with his dog,
He was ‘charged on’ by police, who pepper sprayed his eyes causing temporary blindness, just for being in the camp. He also got a cut above the eye from the shoving the police gave him that sent him to the ground – where they then sprayed him.
Oneeg: “Police brutality is standard operating procedure now, and The People are no longer threatened by it – they become more determined and those who are injured like Sid – who returned to camp and vowed to fight on.”
He became a source of inspiration for everyone to keep standing strong.
“It is not a democratic society when you are not only denied your freedom of expression including protesting but you are attacked and injured just for wanting to do it.”
Cars began complying, while some remained confused as to what was taking place.
At least with an alternative campsite now organised at the Epic Showgrounds in the city’s north, there was an alternative.
Extremely heavily armed police and kitted out in full military gear, guns and gas canisters at the ready, dismantled camp gear and removed property of those who refused to move.
One former military officer among the protestors said the rubber bullets the police were armed with could kill if they hit in the wrong spot. Australians may once have been unfamiliar with the damage rubber bullets can do, but now anyone with a social media account could view the devastating injuries these bullets had caused to protestors during prior demonstrations.
“And they have canisters of CS gas. Anyone who has been exposed to CS gas will tell you, don’t do it today. It’s not teargas and it’s not capsicum spray. It burns everywhere. It is complete overkill. It is an absolute travesty of justice that this has been allowed to happen. I can’t believe they can stand there in conscience facing women and children with those weapons.”
One piece of footage, further damaging the already sullied reputations of the authorities, shows a police officer aggressively shoving a woman to the ground in front of her children.
The next day, Saturday the 5th of February, was an entirely different story; not of police brutality but of triumph.
While there were no reliable estimates of crowd numbers, footage shows tens of thousands of people turning up to protest.
There is a sea of flags along the bridges and boulevards leading up to Parliament House.
Former service men are well represented.
One woman holds up a large placard: “Breathing Working Travelling Hugging Loved Ones. Extremists?” Other messages include: “Vaccine Injuries Not Fake” and “Jesus Wins”.
The crowd, jubilant, defiant, in very good cheer, sings, yet again:
We are one, but we are many
And from all the lands on earth we come
We’ll share a dream and sing with one voice
I am, you are, we are Australian
The time was upon us all, the time when Australia finally stood up to tyranny and confronted the dark forces which had consumed the country for far too long. These were the people the government was meant to serve, and had instead attempted to crush. They weren’t putting up with Australia’s filthy descent into totalitarianism a second longer. These were the days when Australia changed forever, and a remote and ever more ludicrously out of touch government could pretend no longer.
The mainstream and social media platforms had utterly disgraced themselves over the previous two years; but what the authorities, the politicians, academics and media personnel, directly or indirectly beholden to their vaccine funding sources, failed to appreciate was that in this era of hyper-connectivity, the military mindset of command and control no longer worked.
One of Australia’s new breed of young, passionate citizen journalists, Joel Gilmour, streamed just short of six hours of raw footage of the protests in Canberra, Australia’s capital, straight to Facebook, with thousands of comments, shares and likes.
He and his fellow streamers easily outstripped the influence of traditional media outlets.
It was a day straight out of the history books; destined to resonate in the country’s increasingly troubled history. There was strong participation from the indigenous and the nation’s veterans, along with thousands of sacked nurses, teachers and police who, amongst so many others, having lost their jobs as a direct result of vaccine mandates had gotten in their trucks and cars and driven to Canberra.
With triumphant shouts, tooting horns and waving flags, assemble behind a giant banner condemning Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates, thousands of protestors assembled in central Canberra.
Numerous people were pushing their children in prams, attesting to the peaceful nature of the event.
“Sack them all. Sack them all. No more mandates.”
“The turnout out here is absolutely incredible,” Joel says to camera. “Wow! There’s still more coming.”
Yes, there were.
SEVEN
THE MEEK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH
Exhibition Park in Canberra, otherwise known as Epic, lies on the northern outskirts of Canberra and is the site of the annual Canberra Show, which like other shows around the country exhibits the produce and achievements of local farmers, craftspeople and others, a festive occasion to delight the nation’s children and the public at large.
It features a network of showgrounds and a racecourse, variously intended for horses, dogs, cattle and other events, and is equipped to deal with large numbers of people.
Which was just as well.
As the week progressed, numbers rose from the thousands into the tens of thousands, culminating in an estimated 200,000 people on this one campsite alone. Hotels, campsites and other forms of accommodation were full across Canberra.
With numbers rising daily, the atmosphere at the heart of Australia’s Camp Freedom and the epicenter for the Convoy to Canberra was chaotic and glorious, jubilant, exultant; tinged with both exhilaration and fear.
There were plenty of smiles, music performances, hugs were for free and kids played in between the tents or in organised activities; fire twirlers, opera singers, and impromptu artists added to the dizzying, joyful atmosphere, a kind of Woodstock without the drugs or the mud.
All participants said one thing: “This is history in the making.”
Crowds lined the streets of the campsite cheering the arrival of every new truck and car. “Welcome, welcome,” they shouted, whistling and cheering every last newcomer.
Country music celebrity Dusty Star roamed the pavilions with his trusty guitar singing:
Now we’re from the right
And we’re shaking to the left
We close our eyes
Open wide
And take the test
We do a lock down turn around
Jump up and scream.
We’re just waking up to Corona 19
There were no QR codes, no masks, absolutely no social distancing and lots of tears. There were signs everywhere calling for freedom and “Hands Off Our Kids”.
There were no mainstream journalists at the centre of the Epic Showgrounds, none daring to show their faces at one of the most singularly historic gatherings in the nation’s history.
The role of Australia’s heavily manipulated and controlled media in promoting panic and marginalising those who did not want to comply with government mandated vaccines would be the subject of introspection and reflection for years to come. But that is an argument for another time.
Nothing, no amount of whitewashing or rewriting of history by the authorities, could change the chaotic and glorious scenes which overwhelmed the nation’s capital. More often described by outsiders as a “soulless shit box”, joy and outrage overtook Canberra.
While in the centre of the city the nation’s spoilt public servants, all masked up and socially distanced, added to the bizarre Stepford Wives feel of this artificially created city; at the campsite itself there were no masks, absolutely no social distancing, with complete strangers embracing each other, and certainly no QR codes.
This was myth busting at its best.
The hysteria visited upon the nation’s capital over a virus and cures heavily promoted by the most ruthless pharmaceutical companies on Earth, in league with local governments, was blown apart as hundreds of thousands of people joyously celebrated a freedom that had been denied them through the previous two terrible years.
If large gatherings really were “superspreader events” the authorities had been claiming they were as justification for shutting down everything from concerts to churches, then this was a superspreader event extraordinaire.
However there were no reports of Covid outbreaks as a result of the Convoy to Canberra.
As people celebrated their God given right to be themselves and common humanity won out at last, the high minded dictatorial lunacy of federal and state governments finally came to look exactly as it was: a criminal assault on the freedoms, the jobs and the bodily integrity of the populace.
There could be no going back.
There could be no going back to the days of house arrest and claims that gatherings of more than two people were a threat to public health, the days when if two people were talking outside their own home and a third person joined them that was regarded as a criminal offence and the neighbours encouraged to report them.
The game was up; the government perpetrated farce was over.
***
In the jubilant atmosphere, people would repeatedly start singing:
We are one, but we are many
And from all the lands on earth we come
We’ll share a dream and sing with one voice
“I am, you are, we are Australian.”
It was one of the greatest stirrings of national pride anyone had ever seen.
Daniel, 45, a farmer from Kempsey on the NSW mid-North Coast, described it all thus: “Just the sheer magnitude of the gathering of the people, the smiles, the loves, the togetherness of everybody. Everyone helping each other.
“I came here; I just saw the inequality in everything around me and just knew in my soul that something was wrong and needed to be brought to light. That everyone needed to gather to put light on this.
“Everybody here wants freedom from the medical tyranny and segregation. They want to have elections that are untainted. And they need stop jabbing kids, because of their level of natural immunity they don’t need to be jabbed.”
“You come together, and people are able to sit down and talk without the fear of being alienated, vilified, outcast from the group, because everybody is accepted.”
***
Janaya Markwell, 25, Gold Coast, a very lively young woman who, armed with nothing but a smart phone and boundless energy, became one of the most significant documenters of the Freedom movement. She said: “To find the words to describe what I’m experiencing is quite difficult but I’ll try my best. I’ve cried the most joyful tears from being so overwhelmed in the best way possible, the love and the energy is so beautifully electric. I feel at home here surrounded by like minded souls who have now become family, the community we’ve created continues to blow my mind as I’ve watched it all organically grow and come together.
“This is what they fear the most, from strategically dividing us for many many years to now we the people bringing everyone back together, restoring the love, compassion, empathy, connection, we the people have the power to create a new world for our generations to come.”
***
Alison, 49, a former café manager from Brisbane, said she had left her job three months before, unable and unwilling to deal with or enforce the endless health diktats of masks, QR codes, social distancing, the final straw being vaccine mandates. She particularly objected to the idea that she was supposed to push vaccines onto her teenage staff. She now travels the country in her Woke Folk Coffee Van.
“We had the police come every other day,” she said. “Each time they came they were inconsistent with their rules and said different things. Eventually I knew this wasn’t the place for me to be.
“All the doors shut behind me, and another door opened.
“The people here at this campsite have been chosen to be here at the end of days. This is spiritual warfare. This is heavy stuff. I have three children. All non-vaxxed. I have been fighting this since my first was born.
“The Woke Folk Coffee Van came into my life and allows me to go places and talk to people. It belongs in the people’s army. We need to push back. I aim to stay on the frontline, where all Australia needs to be right now.”
***
Simon, from rural Australia, says he wants to live in Camp Freedom forever with his pig called “Dude”.
“I drove in here and I couldn’t hold back the tears. I can truly now understand the meaning of the term ‘tears of joy’. It’s so beautiful. It’s home. I don’t want to go back.
“It’s overwhelming. It’s hard to put into words. I have never experienced anything like this. It’s very healing.
“Dude brings so much joy, especially to the kids.”
***
Guya from Bellingen, a small town on the mid-North Coast of NSW, said: “I am here to support freedom and a return to sovereignty.”
***
One young man told his story: “I had a franchise but because I refused to get jabbed I lost the whole business.
“My girlfriend is from the Philippines and she went back to her country, she was having trouble getting a visa here. She was pregnant.
“The $16,000 it was going to cost to have the baby here, we decided to put it into the business and I was going to go back to the Philippines for the birth.
“The lockdowns happened. 2020. I made no money from the business.
“Then they told me get the jab or lose my business.
“I just want to get back to my Baby Girl. And I want to see my girlfriend, I want to marry her.”
And then he started to cry.
***
Brent, 34, who owns a construction business from Western Australia, describes himself as a “vaccine survivor”.
“I spent 20 days in hospital and I was told the whole time it was anxiety,” he says. “My wife and children are at home in WA.
“I want to go home as soon as possible. And that’s when we achieve our goal.
“At this point time I can’t legally get home. I’m doing this for my kids, and if I didn’t have the adverse reaction I wouldn’t have woken up and my children would be vaccinated.
“When I left WA I was eligible to return because I was double vaxxed. As soon as you are due for your booster, you have to have it, which was the day I arrived in Canberra.
“My children will only be vaccinated over my dead-vaxxed body.”
When last spotted, Brent was camping with a group of some 350 cars from WA, none of whom could return to their home state.
***
Peter, 50, a support disability worker who lost his job after being accused of talking “negatively” about Covid, said: “I am single dad. I have to pay the mortgage. As soon as the people in my workplace discovered I was not double vaccinated, even though I had a medical exemption, they turned on me and went to management.
“I went to one of the large protests, and asked one of my fellow employees if they would cover me for an hour to allow me time to get back to work. I was accused of talking about Covid again, because I replied honestly when she asked if I was going to a rally.
“I was given a first and final warning; and after some bull dust had a fellow employee turn on me. That’s what I’m dealing with. I was suspended. When I went to the Australian Services Union they told me to fall on my knees and beg for my job.
“It has been therapy for me, coming to Canberra, sharing my stories with people in the same situation. It’s been very sad meeting with other fathers, our role is to protect our children, and every father I have spoken to here have had children turn against them over this.
“It is heart breaking for all of us.”
***
The government dismissed these people at their peril.
One participant passionately argued that we should all learn from nature and Australia’s stunning landscapes, that we should return the nation to its ancient spirits and rename the Constitution “The Land of Magnificent Trees”.
There was a lot of that sort of thing. And it was very sincerely felt.
Entire suburbs of tents spread out from the showground’s central pavilion, neatly lined in rows, with barbeques and beds and chairs. The atmosphere was invariably joyful.
Australians love of camping and the outdoors was now serving them well.
For some it was an intensely spiritual event; as if an Imperial Warship inhabited by supranatural beings existing outside of time, those entities the humans call Gods, had settled in the sky above the campground; an airborne megalopolis, a giant and extraordinary swirl of out-of-this-world intelligences; as if there had been nothing like it since the Sermon on the Mount and the story of the Loaves and Fishes.
However various inflamed imaginations may have interpreted it; on the ground there was certainly a fair bit of loaves and fishes going on, as makeshift kitchens staffed with volunteers sprang up to feed thousands of people every day.
As if out of nowhere, the right people appeared at the right time, from chefs to dishwashers, kitchen assistants to food servers, while at the same time carload after carload appeared delivering supplies and donations, some travelling many miles to do so.
While Canberra’s taxpayer funded elites sniffed and condemned the members of the working class now on their doorsteps as “bogans”; many others found it in their hearts to deliver supplies, rolling up with boxes of fruit and vegetables, trays of sausages and steaks, steaks and legs of ham; and massive numbers of supplies, including shampoo, soap, toothbrushes and toilet paper.
Michael Griffith of Café Lockdown wrote: “I stood at the front gates of Epic Park as vehicles kept arriving from all over Australia. These vehicles were flying Australian flags, both red and blue and many of these flags were upside down, and or their vehicles’ windows were covered in slogans. Hands off our kids. End the mandates. Freedom.
“The day before the big march, this constant arrival of Australians became a tsunami. All day Epic Park’s main winding road was a traffic jam of cars full of people who had come here, from every corner of the country, to demand that the government return their freedoms and leave their children alone.
“As soon as they passed through the gate, a crowd lining the avenues of Epic showground cheered and then the vehicle’s occupants cheered back. They had made it. They were here, the Anti Vax Capital of Australia. The long, long drive had been well and truly worth it.
“Everyone who was here, these witnesses, kept stating that they had never experienced anything like this before. Many of them old people, and many of these were teary with joy, assured us that nothing like this had ever happened before. Not in Australia.
“This was a Gathering of Guardians, the defenders of freedom. This organic, nationwide, communal protest was the birth of a new nation.”
***
Kim Ward, 59, a former aged care worker from Redcliffe in Brisbane, had been at the camp since the first of the Convoy.
“It started about 10am. I just travelled down in a car with my girlfriend. There were about 60 of us outside the front of Parliament House, where we camped overnight.
“I thought, we’re going to be screwed here. There’s just not enough of us.
“Then they just started pouring in. We stayed in the car park the first night; the police moved a lot of us on. They weren’t violent; but they were arrogant. You wouldn’t want to approach them.
“The mood was great, even though there weren’t many of us. There were people from all over.
“Now, there’s probably more than 200,000 in this camp alone. It gives you hope. You don’t feel so alone now, when you see how many people are fighting. I am amazed by the whole lot of it, these people fighting for their children. To be honest, I am so happy because we’ve made them nervous. We haven’t seen much light.”
***
Maria Pilar, 67, from Byron Bay in northern NSW, was part of the Convoy to Canberra since the very first day. She spent much of her time working out of a temporary office helping others.
“I am deeply concerned for the children,” she said in her exuberant, heavy accent. “I come from an original sovereign tribe, the Mapuche from central Chile.
“We have never given away our sovereignty and our freedom.
“I was amazed from the beginning at the quality of the people I was with, the clarity and their skills. How well and how quickly we self organised. It is a spontaneous community.
“Now my heart is just full of joy to see so many people coming together in unity and cooperation.”
***
Perry Thorp, 20, from Melbourne, the world’s most locked down city, a Bible College student, found a purpose for his computer expertise helping with the social media campaign for Reignite Democracy Australia.
“Unity for a cause has brought me here,” he said. “I feel deeply passionate to stand up for my generation and the ones to follow.
“I feel people my age aren’t brave enough to step up, because they’ve been taught to respect society.
“That society has now betrayed them and their futures.
“I feel God is doing something here, in this nation, in the here and now.”
***
Once inside Camp Freedom new arrivals set up their swags and tents, parked their caravans or set up beds in their cars. And they did this without anyone telling them where to park. Together they just figured it out, and then, instead of awkwardly talking about the footy or the weather, they vigorously shook hands with each other then went, ‘fuck it,’ before fitfully embracing.
Then they asked each other if they needed anything. They shared food, beer and dope, and they laughed as much as they cried.
As the new arrivals told the cheering groups lining the roads of the showgrounds where they were from, everyone cheered, in this new city where there were no QR codes, no social distancing, and no masks.
“The victory of this day was that we had answered the great question: ‘What sort of future do Australians want?
“The answer was clear. The people want Freedom.”
The Government, and its propaganda machine the mainstream media could never have compelled this many people to make their way, out of their own pocket, to the Country’s Capitol, chanting “I really want to take the booster.”
“It appears, as always, courage is finally trumping fear.
“Sadly, we will probably have to play out the rest of the game, which could take a while, but it is only for show, for like I said, and somewhere in the halls of power they have figured this out too, that in this war, that was brought to the people, we, the people have already won.”
EIGHT
THE GREAT MARCH
“We should call this Australia Day,” said one indigenous woman.
They came with their dogs. They came with their kids. They came with their hearts.
There were an estimated 200,000 protestors on the Epic campsite alone.
The 12th of February, 2022, was the Ground Zero of days; when the nation stood up and said no to the authoritarian derangement which had overtaken the country.
In one telling incident, in the early hours of the morning as hundreds of cars every hour continued to pour in, with queues backed up for miles, the police declared the Epic camp site on the outskirts of Canberra to be full and blocked the entrance.
A crowd instantly gathered, chanting “Let them in, let them in”.
An opera singer boomed out the national anthem from the chaos: “Australian sons let us rejoice, for we are young and free. Our land abounds in Nature’s gifts, Of beauty rich and rare.”
Within the hour, the police were forced into an ignominious retreat, and once again the cars, trucks and caravans, estimated at some 350 an hour, continued to arrive throughout the night.
The atmosphere was absolutely electric; some said “spirit drenched”.
One protestor said: “You will be telling your grandchildren you were here. They cannot take our freedom.”
“This is a big victorious day, a great day,” declared another.
***
Kath, 53, a delivery truck driver who lost her job due to the vaccine mandates, drove nearly 4000 kilometres from Darwin to be part of today’s rally.
“We’ve been protesting in Darwin for months, the group is called Free in the NT,” she said. “It’s for the children, basically. I am a new grandmother. I don’t want the kids to grow up in this horrible world.
“We are standing up for human rights. And for choice. I’ve been made an alien in my own country. I can’t work.
“Today was great. We are staying. Whatever it takes to change this rotten system. I’ve got nothing else to go back to; no job, no house. I was living in a Salvation Hostel before I came here.
“I just knew I had to come and stand up.”
***
Charles, 59, from Gerringong, a teacher suspended without pay under the vaccine mandate regime, worked as a cameraman at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on the day parliament house opened, and can be clearly seen in historic footage as he films the Queen.
“I was there at the opening, and now I’m trying to close it down. It was great to see so many familiar faces as well as to meet so many new ones. The people are speaking with their feet against government overreach!!
“We the people are rewriting Australian history.”
***
Billy Arnold, 42, from Wollongong was one of the many people travelled from all over Australia to attend today’s extraordinary events.
And like so many others, his life has been entirely disrupted by Covid restrictions and mandates.
“It’s the single largest collective event in Australian history of people coming together,” he said. “Regardless of whether you are vaxxed or unvaxxed, there is not a single judgement from anyone. Everybody is equal no matter what demographic you are from.
“I arrived at Commonwealth Park, one kilometre from Parliament House, at 9am. I started filming while rollerblading on the main road as protestors arrived. Within one hour, of the top of my head I would say there was easily half a million people there.
“As the protest started to make its way from the park to Parliament House people were 20 wide on each side of the road and one kilometre long at least by the time they reached the House. And for two hours they were still making their way in droves.
“Never ever have I felt so alive and so welcomed by complete strangers. Words could not explain how I feel, except for the fact that everybody made comments about how great my smile was as I passed them, because it was from ear to ear the whole time.”
***
Claire, 64, a finance broker from New South Wales, said: “I came because I wanted to take a stance for my grandchildren’s right to choose their futures. I was actually crying. I was extremely moved. I couldn’t believe how many people came together in one body for one common cause; to unite Australia for all our freedoms.”
***
Nancy, 75, a natural therapist from Queensland, had been at Camp Freedom for the past seven days.
“I drove down my little car on my own. I got told by God I had to be here. I pushed against it for a couple of days, and then just got in the car with a mattress so I could sleep in the back.
“I felt compelled to be here. Many, many people are saying the same thing, they had a voice in their head, they just had to go.
“For me it was the mandates, because I didn’t have a choice anymore. My three kids and two grandkids have all been vaxxed because of coercion for their jobs. I am absolutely frantic about babies being vaccinated. My stepson got inflammation of the heart and ended up in hospital after his vaccination. I have heard heaps of similar stories, particularly with young men. It is absolutely terrifying.
“That’s what the grandparents I meet all say, what about our grandkids? We’re old, we’re going to be gone, but they’ve got a life to live.”
***
Skeeta, 55, a home maker from South Australia, one of the many people who would never normally be found anywhere near a demonstration, said she had been waiting for just this moment.
“I fight for the rights of all Australians,” she said.
“I came by plane yesterday. There were no police at the airport. I saw the camp from the air, and it amazed me how full it was.
“My husband has an auto-immune compromised system and is continuing to deteriorate. He has been mandated for his essential service job. He’s not allowed back into Western Australia, where he flies month on month off.
“He’s at home in South Australia. He’s tired of fighting. And I’ve taken his role.”
***
One of the warriors of that day called himself Spartan. He was a 30-year truck driver and a former ex-military officer.
He had been arrested at protests several times over the previous two years.
He calls it “catch and release”.
“I am here to reclaim freedom. I am here for the children. What made me fight now? I became a dad.
“I was one of the 300 Spartans against the Persians, and I am the Spartan against tyranny.”
***
Louise, from North Queensland, is an immunisation nurse, the mother of seven and the grandmother of eight.
She has received a number of awards, including the National Medal of Australia for her volunteering with the State Emergency Service.
“I didn’t do it for medals, it was to help people. I am here to help humanity.
“As an immunisation nurse we were taught you need informed consent, not to coerce, and that you must know the ingredients of what you are injecting. With all my years of service, for everything I have done and everything I can contribute, I have lost it all because I will not be jabbed.”
***
Susan Pavan, a former journalist with the national broadcaster fully occupied taking care of four young children, nonetheless found time to play her role, interviewing and photographing participants.
“People were upset. They expected something to change. There was a tsunami of freedom. People don’t want to go back to their old lives. They want to stay. They want to start a new way, a new life.
“Everywhere you go people are smiling at you, hugging each other. After the last two years separated from normal society, people have found a new Australia here. They can’t believe how wonderful it is.
“Everyone says they are doing it for the children. I can’t believe the energy. I was walking around at 1.30am, and people were still pouring in. It hasn’t stopped.
***
One dad piggybacking with his daughter on his shoulders wore a t-shirt with the message: “There’s a future version of me who’s proud. We are strong enough!”
Other members of the family, from Coffs Harbour in NSW, all wore messages blazoned on their outfits: “Mandate Medical Freedom”, “Freedom Over Fear” and “My body, My choice, My Children.”
“I have never seen anything like this, this is outstanding, it takes your breath away. The energy is just incredible. It just blows you away. There are so many people thinking the same way.”
And then he, too, started crying.
***
Julie from Queensland was in a wheelchair with a t-shirt blazoned “Be Kind”. She has attended many of the rallies in Brisbane and on the Sunshine Coast.
“This is so big, amazing,” she said. “I’m here for my grandchildren. I want their future to be free from the government telling them what to do.
“I want this country to be totally different to the way it’s become.”
***
A group of former police officers, wearing signs and carried banners read: “Police for Freedom: We are human beings serving and protecting other human beings.”
Pavan observed: “I believe these are the frontline workers for freedom.”
One placard for the activist group Cops for Covid Truth, which had played a telling role in changing the public narrative from the blizzard of deceptive conduct by the mainstream media, read: “Police are speaking out across Australia. Is Covid really about public health? On what side of history do you want to be?”
A former policeman of 41 years, “Mitchell”, said: “I served in the police for four decades. We had a really good police force. I am really disgusted in how Victorian Police and the Union at the brutality with which they showed towards the police. I am here to support my Australian brothers and sisters in their quest for freedom. I am not non-vaxxed. I want everyone to have a choice. I’m so glad I’m out of the police force.”
Editor’s Note: Pics available of both Pavan and police officers.
***
Behind the human stories, there were also political ones, of course.
With the atmosphere absolutely electric, among the speakers was Monica Smit, one of the founders of and the public face for the group Reignite Democracy Australia. She went to prison after being charged with incitement for allegedly encouraging people to attend demonstrations after Melbourne went into its sixth lockdown.
At the time the clashes between police and protestors on the streets of Melbourne were attracting worldwide condemnation for the extremely repressive and often violent behaviour of police. Smit had been one of the most indefatigable citizen journalists in the thick of the action, and one of the most prolific activists.
She was charged with two counts of incitement for protests in August of 2021 and three counts of breaching the Chief Health Medical Officer’s orders in September; and spent 22 days in jail after refusing to accede to strict bail conditions, including not posting to social media.
Police presented evidence to the court, including one of her posts in August of 2021 which read: “The more they lock us up, the more people will have nothing left to lose … and that’s when Australia stands up!”
Fast forward to February, 2022 and she declared their message was straight forward: “We are coming. It’s really simple, give us the rights that we already had, which by the way weren’t yours to take away in the first place, give them back to us and we’ll leave. It’s that simple. If you don’t give our rights back to us we’re gonna keep coming.
“The message that we are sending to them is, we are absolutely determined. They have created us because of how badly they’ve treated us and they have created a monster. We will never ever go back to sleep.
“We have all been working tirelessly at home for the last two years but today we have all driven hours and days to come to our capital city and fight; not only fight but also celebrate our freedoms together.
“This is one of the most memorable days of all of our lives.
“On that note I want to give a massive, massive shout out to all the people that wish they were here that couldn’t be here. We are your voice today.
“Look at us. Look around you. Two years ago we were running around like headless chickens trying to find a protest and now we have driven days to come to our capital city and stand up for our rights.
“It’s just crazy. Could you imagine two years ago that you would be this person? Could you imagine that you would be the type of person that would never ever give up and never ever lay down and never ever get trampled on?
“That is you now; supporting each other.
“It takes effort but we’ve just got to do it because now whether you like it or not, we are family. And families never give up on each other and they always have each other’s backs.
“It is far from over guys but remember we are all fighting for the same thing. We just want the God-given rights that were already ours given back to us. We will get those rights back because good always prevails, truth always wins.”
***
Jasmine, from Sydney, who took her dog to mingle with the demonstrators, said: “I’m here for the future generation. I am here for my children. I want to see all the systems crumble down.”
Jared from the agricultural centre of Taree on the NSW Central Coast had just one strong message: “The mainstream media are liars.”
***
Mark White, 69, from Ayr in North Queensland, rode a motorbike 2448ks down the inland route to Canberra.
“I came because I am furious and disgusted that the Australian government wants to kill me with the ‘death injection’.”
“That’s why I’m here. My agenda is to help dissolve the Australian government and have a fair society.
“The rally was absolutely magnificent, to be with so many people feeling the same way. I want to get behind a leader to help resolve this situation. I hope to stay in Canberra for as long as it takes.
“Many of the people I have met absolutely feel the same way. We are disgusted and furious. Join us or stand aside and watch. People think it can’t be done, but it can. All we get is lies, day after day after day.”
***
Lisa, 53, a sales assistant from Kingaroy in Queensland, wore t-shirt blazoned with the words: “My body, My Choice, No Vaccine Mandate.”
She has been attending an event held every Sunday in Kingaroy called A Stand in the Park.
“We stand for freedom, that’s what it’s about. But I’m not normally a person who would demonstrate. I have never been to a rally anything like what has happened in Canberra. It was inspirational, amazing, emotional, epic. It’s just been brilliant, I love it. I came here to stand for freedom and to save the children, because what they’re doing is wrong.
“My friend had the Astra Zeneca and now she can’t walk because she has blood clots and is in hospital. She can’t work. She is a nurse and had to have it for work. What is happening is absolutely criminal.
“Another person I know had a heart attack after the jab.
“You hear horror stories all the time. It’s absolutely criminal, wicked what they’re doing, evil.
“And they just get away with it. They haven’t lost a day’s pay, and they’ve decimated millions. People have nowhere to live; they’re living in their cars.
“I had a friend who crossed the Queensland/NSW border to visit his dying mother and couldn’t back. They were stuck in their car for three months.
“I had to be here. I came straight from work on Friday, and I had to come. It was in my heart, it’s a 16 hour drive, but I just had to be here. I think this government is criminal and should be held accountable for what they are doing. Personally, I don’t think they deserve to breathe the air we breathe.”
***
Louise, 57, an admin assistant from NSW, said: “I felt overwhelming pride to be taking part in an activity that can’t be ignored by those in power. Without action nothing changes. Every person here today was doing their part in making a difference to stopping mandatory vaccinations. I came here for the opportunity to do something, rather than just watching it on the alternative news platforms. Just the opportunity to participate was motivation to get here.”
***
Lyn, 67, a self-funded retiree from Melbourne, the world’s most locked down city, said: “I have three married children, two of them who are teachers. I have six grandchildren.
“They were forced to have the third jab to go back to work and they jabbed my nine year old and a seven year old grandchildren to go to school.
“My daughter said they basically jabbed them at the school on the first day it was available.
“I asked my daughter how it was at school and she said: ‘Busy, because a lot of teachers are sick.
“It’s devastating for me because I know what’s going on. I knew what was coming, the people have been coerced, lied to, brainwashed, we all know that.
“I was greatly encouraged at the rally by how many people came from all over Australia, and how passionate they were. Even the people who couldn’t come, how encouraging they have been.
“I know I’m meant to be here. My first thought, I shouldn’t go. Then I asked God, and I got the strong message to go. I don’t mind camping even though I have a nice home.
“How wonderful it is that many of us have lost family and friends, but how supportive of each other everyone here is. We are all hurting. We have compassion and understanding for each other, we have found a new family.”
***
Jim, 50, a chef from Canberra: “I say to the people of Australia. The people here are mothers, fathers, grandparents, doctors, lawyers, truck drivers and people from all walks of life. We are here with a sense of community, with only one aim: to make the government legislate against vaccine mandates and end lockdowns so that the people of Australia can go about their lives without the current division and hatred.”
***
Julianne, 55, a retired police officer from Gladstone in Queensland, said: “I’m not able to articulate. I was just called to be here. Things reveal themselves after the fact. It’s a spiritual thing. I feel like I am in the right place at the right time. My three adult daughters are watching me, and they are proud of me.”
***
Marcus, 52, a builder from Sydney, said: “It was heart warming and heart breaking. Is this the new Australia Day? That’s what it felt like.”
***
Antony Pond, 44, an IT engineer from NSW, said: “Today was the beginning of the beginning of the creation of a new democratic Constitution, written by the people for the people. The atmosphere was compassionate, respectful and joyful.”
***
Mother of five Elizabeth, 45, from NSW, said: “It is very personal for me. We need no politicians. We need some way of looking and solving issues from a new perspective; people who are dedicated members of society and have the ability to interact with other countries amicably to work together for our children for a better future.
“I felt compelled to come here. I am very moved. This is for our children’s future. That’s all there is to it.”
NINE
THE SAD AND BRUTAL FINAL HOURS OF CAMP FREEDOM AND THE CONVOY TO CANBERRA
Notices went up around the Epic Showgrounds telling campers they must depart midday of Sunday 13 February, 2022, that is, less than 24 hours after the march on Parliament House.
The notices claimed that the Canberra Show had been pre-booked 12 months ahead and the date could not be re-scheduled. As almost every major event in the country had been cancelled for the previous two years, even church gatherings being raided, the excuse was difficult to believe.
It was signed by the ACT Government, one of the worst perpetrators of Covid tyranny in the country.
That both the Epic showground administrators and the Show people themselves were reportedly supportive of the protestors and did not want them moved on was irrelevant to the authorities, who were determined to bust the demonstrators out of Canberra.
The protestors were a political embarrassment to the nation’s leaders and the political establishment who had foisted this disaster on their fellow Australians.
The authorities should not have betrayed the public in order to oblige the will of their political masters, the overlords who had created this disaster in the first place, forging a protest movement which was not going to go away at their convenience. The protestors should have been allowed to stay until their grievances were addressed; instead of being pushed out of the camp in the most brutal, authoritarian and deceptive manner possible.
This protest was a direct response to political and government overreach, a terrible and tragically demented tyranny which had lasted two long years, and the authorities had no right to attempt to destroy the voices of the people they were meant to serve.
Instead of protecting the corporate thugs, political incompetents and grotesquely overpaid time serving bureaucrats infesting the halls of power, they should have moved to protect the public.
But to their eternal shame, they did not.
Twenty four hours after a jubilant atmosphere gripped Canberra, with one of the largest protest gatherings in Australian history, a deep anxiety afflicted the camps of protestors.
The putative and publicly squabbling leadership of the movement at Camp Epic did nothing to dispel tensions. And all of them disappeared on the penultimate day, leading to yet more fear and confusion amongst the thousands who remained on the site itself, including many with children who had no jobs and no homes to return to.
All the rhetoric from various members of the movement that they were there “until the job is done”, or “until this is over”, proved as substantial as smoke; leaving the diehards to face down the authorities on their own or roam the city streets, homeless and disorientated.
The personal crises, the internal and social chaos wrought by the blizzard of government diktats and authoritarian overreach over the previous two years were now clearly evident.
Tensions rose throughout the day; with many protestors either leaving after the rally, while others, lured out of Camp Freedom at the Epic Showgrounds to a rural property 40 kilometres outside by the promises they could set up their tents there, now had nowhere to go after police blocked entrance to the alternate camping site.
Orders were broadcast by police ringing the site that protestors must leave the campsite by midnight or face arrest for trespassing.
The atmosphere was intensely chaotic; with many protestors having no idea where they could go or what to do. There were reports that hundreds of groups were now camping along the sides of Canberra roads.
The grounds fell spookily empty, and many of those who remained were frightened, confused and anxious. Of those, many were families with children.
Significant numbers of the people we interviewed said they had nothing to go home for, they had lost their jobs and their homes and been made to feel like aliens in their own country. They wanted to stay in Camp Freedom, where they had found a new family and a new home. Some declared tearfully they wanted to stay there forever.
“Oh My God, this is a War,” exclaimed one protestor amid the increasingly confused circumstance.
At an incendiary meeting of confused campers near Gate Seven of the showgrounds various speakers put their points of view.
Faced with imminent arrest, many were disappointed at the departed leadership.
One speaker shouted through the microphone: “If you care so much about your country and your people, where are you? We are the people holding the line. They are not believers. We are the people holding the ground here and now. We are the heroes.”
Another speaker said: “People, do not be scared. I was there at the last eviction. Get your popcorn ready.”
One speaker, wearing a t-shirt blazoned with the words I Do Not Comply, said: “If we walk away we might as well not have come here in the first place. The demons have done their work and 75% have left. But we are staying.”
Another agitated camper declared: “They are all a fraud. The people are the authority.”
Yet another declared: “The sheep have left, we are the fighters. We are going to win.”
Another passionate speaker declared: “I was a builder earning $4000 a week. I lost my job to come down here. I have five kids. I am staying until this is done.”
There were signs littering the increasingly sad and fraught site, along with messages blazoned on cars and t-shirts.
On cars: “We don’t need no vaccination, we don’t need no forced control.”
On signage: “Protect The Children.” “Leave My Kids Alone.”
On t-shirts: “Unvaxxed Untested Unafraid.” “After the Tribulation Let No Man Deceive You.”
After the initial authoritarian abuses witnessed at the first camp site in the parliamentary precinct, the hands off policing approach which characterised Camp Epic for much of the week had been remarkably successful.
The crowd was essentially self-policing, and there were no reports of violence, rapes, vandalism or all the other behaviours one might fairly expect with such a wildly diverse and yes, angry crowd.
That all ended on the 14th of February, 2022, two days after so many had marched on Parliament House in jubilant unity.
Camp Epic was already rapidly emptying on the final day when police moved in and aggressively moved every last protestor off the site.
In the inflammatory lead up, sowing yet more tension and confusion, protestors were initially told that they would have to move on by midnight.
One woman with two young children said people had come to her tent early in the evening and told her she would be bashed and arrested if she did not move on. The woman did not have a car and had no way of complying.
The next rumour in this evolving drama was that campers had until 8am to comply.
As it turned out the police arrived in force at around 11am, repeatedly broadcasting the message: “Leave Now. You are trespassing. Leave immediately. If you do not leave you will be arrested.”
Police, tolerating no resistance, worked their way through from the showgrounds from the top camping ground until every last protestor had been evicted.
The irony of police aggressively moving demonstrators from the nation’s capital, ostensibly the heart of Australian democracy, was lost on nobody.
As more than 98% percent of protestors had already left, and of the holdouts most were already packing up to leave, it was a largely pointless show of force.
In one of those all too human moments, one protestor pleaded with the police: “Don’t vax your kids.”
One sign, emblematic of the passionate sincerity of protestors, read: “Touch Our Kids & It’s War.”
While from a policing point of view the dissolving of Camp Freedom may well be deemed a success and end up as a textbook model for policing in highly volatile crowd control situations, it has also left many questions over its inhumanity and deceptive nature.
Every last protestor moved on had received the message: “The government is my enemy. I have no right to protest. This government would prefer I didn’t exist at all.”
Campers were told multiple conflicting stories.
One of those was that they could move to a large conference and adventure centre Caloola Farm, an hour outside of Canberra, provided free of charge by the sympathetic owner, also proved false.
Police blockaded the roads and refused to let protestors enter.
Owner Ralph Hurst-Meyers, known for his community generosity, said: “After consultation with the authorities, Caloola Farm and the Hurst-Meyers Charity Limited will allow vulnerable people affected by recent events such as the elderly, the disabled, and the indigenous community, single mothers with children, vulnerable families with children to temporarily stay at Caloola Farm free of charge while they make preparations to return home.”
The problem with that, of course, is that many of the remaining protestors had no home to return to. The other issue was, these people didn’t come to Canberra to set up a commune or a new Nimbin, they came to change the country and to restore their freedoms, most particularly the freedom to work.
The “hotheads”, that is the politically active, outspoken driven to action by the destruction of their lives, were not welcome.
Another rumour was that they were welcome to move to another Council controlled camping ground at Cotter Creek half an hour away. That also proved false, with police aggressively moving protestors on, despite the fact that they had already made bookings and paid for their visit.
Then final lie was that protestors that they would be safe and were welcome to stay on Ground Seven, at the top of the Epic showgrounds, because it was privately owned land.
In the dramatic unravelling, none of these stories, or deliberate falsehoods, turned out to be true.
The hundreds of people who moved up to Ground Seven on the understanding that as it was private property they would be safe to stay were easily kettled, or corralled, given no choice but to leave after more than 50 police entered the grounds with backup forces clearly evident behind them. The protestations of the farmer who owned the land over the police action were ignored.
While many wore the standard uniforms of local police, there were other heavily armed special operatives wearing masks and holding leashed dogs, adding to the fear and panic already spreading through the crowd.
Amid these surreal and frightening scenes, it was obvious that a few of the officers were enjoying their role perhaps “a little too much”; but that many others were unhappy about the duties they were being asked to perform.
In the midst of this chaos, some of the younger officers in particular, were exceptionally polite, thanking the protestors for their cooperation.
The massive numbers of ordinary Australians on their doorstep upset the smug disdain displayed towards the largely working class protestors by Canberra’s insular, well paid public servants and their political overlords.
But as the many Australians refusing to accede to the government’s vaccine mandates burn through their savings and resources, the social chaos inflicted on Australia’s working and middle classes by the Canberra elites can only intensify. As will the response.
Next time round they are more likely to blockade the capital than politely march.
The authorities succeeded in moving the protestors on this time around, but this was a story going nowhere but straight into the history books.
TEN
AFTERSHOCKS
The saying, “as so often in Australian public life, we’d all have been better off if the government had done absolutely nothing”, attracted outrage in the first few months of the “Pandemic”.
Despite the blizzard of blatant falsehoods, grandstanding, nonsensical rules and words of caution from leading intellectuals around the world, bizarrely in that early Covid period polls showed faith in government and the media went up.
Two years later, in February of 2022, the expression rang all too horribly true.
And by then it was no longer an outlier sentiment.
The country was a smoking ruin; deeply socially divided along class, employment and vaccination status lines.
Western Australian was cut off from the rest of the country, thousands of businesses had been demolished and would never recover, the massive transfer of wealth from the working and middle classes to the nation’s oligarchs was an open sewer of a scandal, and the authoritarian abuses visited upon the population by the politicians and their henchmen in the police forces and the military were now seared into the collective record of the fledgling nation’s history.
The personal tragedies, the elderly who passed away unable to see their grandchildren, the families divided, the millions of children whose education was disrupted, the tens of thousands of nurses, teachers and police who resigned either out of a sense of moral repugnance or for refusing to get “the jab”, the millions who had been injected with a vaccine for which the long term consequences were entirely unknown, the list only lengthened with time as the full history of this shocking period of Australian governance emerged.
The government is your enemy is an easy message to take out when you are being bashed, fined, pepper sprayed and imprisoned by police; when the army is on the street and military helicopters are flying overhead; and trust in government was unlikely to return any time soon.
What drilled home the reality of the totalitarian state which Australia had become was the controversy over the use of hi-tech weapons against a crowd of peaceful protestors, including the highly controversial LRADs, Long Range Acoustic Devices.
The truth of their use, or the use of similar devices, was difficult to establish, with the head of the Australian Federal Police Reece Kershaw, under questioning on the subject, telling a parliamentary committee: “That would be something that is with our police methodology which we would have to look at some type of public interest immunity claim.”
There was ample photographic evidence of their presence in the precincts of both the Epic Showgrounds and at the National Parliament. There were also audio recordings which appeared to confirm their use.
With their science fiction look and surrounded by heavily armed police, the presence alone of such weaponry and crowd control technology added to the heightened fear and confusion used by the authorities to disorient and move protestors on from their campsites.
There was also ample anecdotal evidence that “extra-curricular” if you like crowd control methods were used against the protestors, who, to re-emphasise, alongside many passionate professionals of all ages were also made up of many ordinary working class adults and children, elderly people, and both physically and mentally challenged Australians.
Many thousands of people, including the editor of this book, reported symptoms which included unusually high levels of fatigue, mental clouding, disorientation, exhaustion, anxiety and nausea.
Others reported severe headaches and provided photographic evidence of extensive skin burns.
That the authorities were even contemplating the use of sonic and microwave weaponry against peaceful protestors, and making an overt display of doing so, marked a step into the abyss; the crossing of a line in the sand which should have been drawn long before the Australian polity descended into a quagmire of authoritarian abuses.
The vaccines were used by the nation’s politicians as their “get out of jail free” card to cover the serial incompetence and absolute lack of justification for their use of extremely destructive measures of disease control, including most particularly masks, lockdowns and curfews.
But the mandating of vaccines and the subsequent destruction of thousands of people’s careers and working lives was a line in the sand which should never have been crossed; and was done without any proper discussion or appropriate medical advice.
That the vaccines proved to be a false promise, yet another false step on the highway to hell, was now everywhere evident. You had to be illiterate, deliberately blind or totally dishonest to pretend otherwise; as the internet crowded with stories of vaccine injuries and deaths, and study after study from around the world confirmed that in many jurisdictions the vaccines were demonstrating negative efficacy. The reputation of the vaccine manufacturers was everywhere in ruins; as were their share prices.
Having an intelligent debate on the subject, with most Australians already having chosen their “hill to die on” might have become impossible. But what was clear was that Australia, as much as anywhere on Earth, suffered from the phenomenon of regulatory capture, where purportedly independent academics and institutions peddled the message of their funding sources; in this case vaccine manufacturers and their allies and beneficiaries.
That Australian governments state and federal and the large corporations with which they were so closely aligned were persisting in vaccine mandates for their workers and flying in the face of all the international evidence, and by doing so wrought such extensive harm on both individuals and the social fabric, was in a sense a scandal for another day.
It was also a scandal front and centre of the administrative and social debacle enveloping Australia, as every arena from aged care to retail outlets ground slowly to a stop. And it was a scandal which was not going to go away; whatever amount of government and media denial or distraction.
As photographer John Napper wrote: “In July 2021 Prime Minister Morrison was asked by a reporter to comment on the deaths of two people directly associated with the ‘vaccine’ rollout. His response was both telling and disturbing.
“We are all responsible for our own health. People make their own decisions about their own health and their own bodies. That’s why we don’t have mandatory vaccinations because people make their own decisions.”
“Disturbing, because his response was an outright lie or at best a manipulation of the truth. How can you get informed information from your GP?
“Medical professionals are under threat of deregistration if they fail to follow the directives given by your brother Alan Morrison as head of the Australian Health Practitioners Regulation Authority.
“Many doctors have resigned rather than follow these gag orders.
“It’s not our fault Mr. Morrison! It’s not our fault people are dying. It’s not our fault people are having massive numbers of adverse reactions to your jab. It’s not our fault children are being coerced into the jab. You have hidden behind your no jab, no work, no play policy.
“Well the people of Australia have had enough as was recently seen in the huge rally in Canberra. Your dismissal of the largest gathering of its kind ever seen in Australia is reprehensible. If you think that’s the last you have seen of this type of rally, think again.
“As more and more countries abandon the mandates, you are still pushing with religious fervour. But the people of Australia are waking up.”
Not one person in power, not one of the perpetrators of the humanitarian catastrophe which had overtaken Australia, apologised.
Not one of them.
Many people would never recover the loss of their jobs and livelihoods; would never regain trust in the media or their government.
What was only slowly coming to be understood by the general public was the scale of corporate rorting which took place under the cover of Covid, with tens of billions of dollars being dished out by Scott Morrison to his corporate cronies.
This was a scandal which would unravel the reputation of the conservatives for years to come.
Equally, a scandal for another day would be the secret contracts the government signed with vaccine manufacturers, even as there were warning signs everywhere.
What was easier to understand was that the Prime Minister and his colleagues had more than quadrupled the national debt, from $270 billion to more than a trillion dollars, staggering sums of money which would either bankrupt the country, or have to be paid off over generations; a curse visited on the future and paid for not by the politicians who wrecked this insane level of damage and fiscal irresponsibility on the country, but by the children of the toiling classes who had just marched on the Canberra elites.
Those of a spiritual bent declared: “Humanity has faced an ancient evil.”
The shock of it all was that this ancient evil lay within the hearts and minds of their fellow Australians, the ones they had once trusted to lead them.
If there is one enduring lesson to be learnt from the chaos that was visited upon Australia and its peoples for two long years it is: “This must never happen again.”
We have all endured the biggest medical fraud in history, a fraud perpetrated not just by some of the most corrupt individuals and corporations on the globe, but aided and abetted by the people we elected to serve and protect us.
The ruling elites have been utterly discredited.
It is time for common humanity to triumph once again. It is time for us to write our own histories once again; and to ignore the despicable story the powerful would wish to write on the backs of working people.
And as the many so-called “ordinary” people who travelled to Canberra so amply demonstrated, there’s nothing ordinary about them. Every last person, from the disabled and mentally fragile to the successful business people, from the frail and elderly to the bright and attractive youth, from the rough and ready members of Australia’s working class to the professionally and socially accomplished, every last one of them helped to make a history that changed Australia forever.
In the end, despite all the weaponry unleashed against them, it was the people who triumphed.
ENDS
CONTRIBUTORS
Many people helped to make this project possible and we would like to thank them all.
And for all the people who remain anonymous, who donated food, money, toiletries, good will, hard work, time and passion, who cared for each other in the greatest display of common humanity modern Australia has ever seen, who leant a hand and helped out at every opportunity they could, the nation itself owes you an enormous thank you.
We would specifically like to thank the following people, and apologise to anyone we have overlooked.
In terms of text, we have used the words of a variety of writers, broadcasters, bloggers, poets and singers and merged them together into a single coherent narrative.
If anybody feels they have not been sufficiently credited we hereby apologise and thank you for your contribution nonetheless.
The following writers specifically contributed to this project: Michael Gray Griffith of Café Lockdown who provided thoughtful “in the thick of it” analyses, journalist Susan Pavan, who brought her four children to the protest and provided insightful interviews with various protestors; and life coach David Nieuwenhoven a summation of the event.
We would also like to thank Bill Massie for his poetry and Dusty Starr for his lyrics.
There were a significant number of streamers and citizen journalists whose coverage of the Convoy to Canberra contributed in a major way to the documentation of this unique period of Australian history.
They include but are by no means limited to the The Real Rukshan, Melbourne Ground, Café Lockdown, True Arrow, Convoy Roller Girl, David Oneeg, Joel Gilmour and the ever controversial Avi Yemini. Drain the Billabong helped us all laugh.
TOTT News, one of the few news outlets in Australia to be sceptical of the authoritarian overreach under the cover of Covid from the very beginning, provided an important perspective.
We would also like to thank Perry Thorp, technical assistant for Reignite Democracy Australia.
While not contributing specifically to this book, its intellectual background if you will was helped along by Professor Ramesh Thakur, Dr Guy Campbell and prolific columnist Paul Collits, all of whom have written penetratingly about Australia’s dive into totalitarianism.
John Napper of Focus in Action Photography provided a large number of the images.
Professional photographer “Damo” of Minco Photography also provided a significant number of images.
Janaya Markwell also provided several photographs, leant assistance on the media desk at the centre of the Epic campground, and has proved herself to be one of the most significant documentors of Australia’s Freedom Movement.
Veteran journalist and author of Unfolding Catastrophe: Australia John Stapleton wrote the text and acted as project editor and publisher.