Chapter Fourteen: Australia Breaks Apart. Convoy to Canberra. Extract. Out This Week. A Sense of Place Magazine, 19 June, 2023.
The humanitarian crimes committed by Australian authorities against their own citizens, beginning in
early 2020, would live on in infamy, but it is the people themselves who create a nation’s history.
On the 12th of February 2022, one of the largest gatherings 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. At the very least it’s fair to say, and
demonstrably correct, that many hundreds of thousands of Australians, having lost all faith in their
government, descended on the national capital.
Whatever the exact 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.
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 rough and ready working classes to a very strong indigenous presence.
For everyone who showed up in person in Canberra, there were thousands of others lending their
support.
Australians are a phlegmatic people; it takes a lot to make them protest.
The country’s youth may be drawn to convenient government generated narratives such as climate
change or racism; but a genuine uprising 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 a 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.”
Australia’s democracy proved virus thin.
A nation which once prided itself on its laissez faire approach to life 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 of all the universities, with their filthy hordes of snake oil peddlers and intellectual traitors loyal to their government and vaccine
manufacturer funding sources.
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, getting pissed
with their mates.
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
numbers of participants believed the divine was at hand.
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. A large number of people, whether of religious bent or
not, spoke of the spiritual nature of the event.
Many of the individuals the author interviewed 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.”
It was at this very juncture in history that citizen journalists and independent outlets displaced “legacy”
media as a primary source of information for millions of Australians.
Streamers, bloggers, essentially anyone with a smartphone, pumped out stories and footage in a
tsunami of alternative information which well and truly dwarfed the legacy media’s
David Oneegs, an impassioned singlet wearing Australian with an enthusiastic following the size of 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 then 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 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.”
Australia’s Freedom 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
disparate backgrounds.
While political infighting, personality conflicts and conflicting views on the way forward were on clear
display among 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. There were frictions and personality clashes; but there were 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 signs read: “Make Australia Average Again”.
And what a joyful celebration it was.
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 barrelling down country roads. Everywhere was the same; blaring horns, waving flags, triumphal shouts.
As the convoy gathered strength on the many roads leading to Canberra, crowds of locals assembled on
overpasses and roadsides, waving flags and cheering them on.
These scenes and the rising tide of excitement were utterly unprecedented in the Australian experience.
Day after day, images and footage of cheerful scenes at truck stops and campsites across Australia
flooded across social media streams.
One participant, with an Instagram feed labelled Drain the Billabong, described himself as just a dude
who loved everything to do with sport and worked his ass off. At one of the impromptu roadside
gatherings, this one at Wyong on the NSW Central Coast, he said: “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.”
The Convoy to Canberra marked one of the greatest stirrings of national pride the country had ever
witnessed.
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!”
Daniel, 45, a farmer from Kempsey on the NSW mid-North Coast, expressed it thus: “Just the sheer
magnitude of the gathering of the people, the smiles, the love, 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.
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.
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.
“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, said he wanted 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.
“I have never experienced anything like this. It’s very healing. Dude brings so much joy, especially to the
kids.”
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 girl friend, I want to marry her.”
And then he started to cry.
Like so many others.
Images By Minco Photography
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