Convoy to Canberra : Part 2 – The March to Parliament

I was awake at the crack of dawn. Not because I’d set an alarm, but because I struggled to sleep at all. I did get a few hours sleep though and had planned to get an early start anyway so I was still in pretty good spirits and was optimistic even if I was a little anxious about the day ahead of me. By the time I’d gotten myself organised the camp was already abuzz and with no hope of getting to the front of the line at the toilet block any time soon I left the camp and headed off for breakfast and a McPoo at the suburb of Dickson. From there I headed down to Reid to find a park in suburbia that wasn’t too far off the rendezvous point, threw on my backpack and set off on foot.

By the time I got to Commonwealth Park there was already a decent crowd building. They were lining the streets, cheering and waving flags to the honking cars driving past and you could feel the excitement in the air. I was still shaking off my morning dreary so found a quiet spot to just chill out in the morning sun and soak it all up. I was sitting by the Captain Cook memorial and realised if I stayed back I could get a good photo of the bridge as the march got underway. The wind was just right to capture the flags. (NOTE : I’ve left the resolution a bit higher on the above photo so you can see what I mean) I gave the front of the march a good head start on me and headed over to catch the tail of it, but even though I took my sweet time to get to the road – when I got there I saw there was still a LOT more people coming!

There was the usual banging of drums and chanting, but what I really appreciated was the diversity of the crowd and all the different flags. In particular it was really good to see the Indigenous flag flying alongside the official Australian flag (blue ensign), the Peoples Australian flag (red ensign) and the Eureka flag which is an important part of our history. There were a lot of other flags flying that day but those 4 would have been the most common. The mainstream media has been trying to portray the freedom protesters as right-wing extremists but you’ve only got to take one look at the diversity of the crowd and the flags being flown to realise that this is just not the case.

The march was totally peaceful. There were lots of families and I had to navigate prams a couple of times when the crowd got tight. Some people even brought their dogs along. I was trying to get a good photo to show just how big the crowd was but it was hard to see from ground level. A couple of people had drones up, which surprised me a bit because I wasn’t expecting that to be allowed. Of all the photos I took on the day though this one of the crowd heading up the hill toward new parliament house is probably my favourite.

We marched past the new parliament house and headed down to the old parliament house where I thought the main rally and speakers would be. I figured that being near the back I wouldn’t be able to see anything anyway so I went off to the side and sat under the trees where I could chill out in the shade and just listen while the crowd continued to build up. I wasn’t alone. It was getting hot now so a lot of us had the same idea and the speaker system for the main stage was good enough that we could still hear proceedings crystal clear. I had heard a lot of the speakers before so I could recognise most of the names and voices anyway.

Most of the crowd was down there in front of the old parliament house and the general vibe was again pretty positive. Some of the speakers dropped the odd f-bomb and tried to energise the crowd but in many ways it was a bit like a concert gig. There was a bit of music and singing of course plus the usual crowd chants of “Sack Them All” (the politicians) but it was totally peaceful. Again I lost track of time and my phone was dead but eventually I decided to retrace my steps and headed back up toward the new parliament house. I was a bit surprised to see that there was a 2nd stage set up which I hadn't noticed before and there were other speakers talking at the same time as the main stage. I felt the vibe up there was a little bit different and I noticed a bit of a huddle on the left where it looked like there was some rabble rousing going on. I’ll put the next two photos together because they were taken within metres of each other and they show the two houses of parliament looking in opposite directions.

I won’t go too much into it because I don’t want to speculate, but in the past there has been some division within the freedom movement in Australia. Some of the messaging from speakers can be a bit different at times and (of course) people have different ideas about which strategies we need to take to fix things. As I got closer to the new parliament house I could sense the vibe amongst the crowd there becoming a bit more adversarial and confrontational. There was police lines in place there and I noticed a big black truck in a weird spot (I later learnt that truck was involved in an “incident”) but I instinctively grabbed a photo anyway.

I wasn’t feeling that comfortable with the energy around me so I did not linger and began the trek back to my car in Reid. I was pretty spent and had to have several rest stops on the drive back home, but I eventually got home in one piece before dark so I’m calling that a success. I didn’t get that perfect photo to capture the crowd that I wanted, but I have since seen a few drone shots and the best one going around is the one below. My estimate is about 200K people which would make it possibly the biggest protest Canberra has seen, if not the entire country. Of course the media is reporting it as just a few thousand. You be the judge. Photos don’t lie.

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