From 17 to 31 March 2021 Peacebus captain, Graeme DunstanSilver Wattle Quaker Centre near Bungendore, NSW. There he had shelter from the rain and he used the opportunity to spread his work tables and make up new set of flags for the #FreeAssange campaign.
There they are arrayed for the first time in sunlight with Shahnaz Martin, my apprenctice and able assistant standing beside.
The job involved many hours of heads down brushwork. Design was courtesy of Somerset Bean.
Expect to see them arrayed in the Nimbin Mardi Grass Parade of Sunday 2 May. And in other advovacy actions for Julian Assange, true Australian hero.
Graeme was blessed to share morning Meeting for Worship sessions, with "weighty Quaker", David Johnson, who was also in residence. David is an age mate of Graeme's. He sports a beard of similar length and dignity and he is also prominent and exemplar peace activist.
Graeme salutes him as the moving force (should that me the "moved force"?) behind the successful Australian campaign to ban land mines. Here is 2005 Backhouse Lecture on the subject, Peace is a Struggle.
Here is video of his teaching on Quaker Prayer.
So said the Buddha: "Uplifting friendship is the whole of the Holy life."
Peacebus journeys for justice, protests for peace and speaks out for a sustaining Earth.
Long time social activist and cultural entrepreneur, Graeme Dunstan, is its captain, the East coast of Australia is its migratory zone.
After a long career as an events organiser Graeme, at 78, is an old age pensioner and just keeps at it, organising as a skilful means for engaging his Vajrayana Buddhist practice in the suffering of the world.
A crowd funded 2007 Toyota Hiace serves as a mobile kuti = meditation hut). He travels about with laptop and WiFi, horn speakers, work tables and bamboo poles on the roof racks, a makeshift kitchen under the tailgate and under his bunk, a 24V PA amp plus crates of flags, banners and tools, clothes and stuff.
Sometimes the rig includes a dog, sometimes a woman, sometimes both. Various and wide ranging are the landscapes of his daily meditation and yoga practice. He watches no Tv, listens to no radio.
Best he can, he occupies public place with acts of witness arising from his passion for justice. He likes best to help out at other people's events, rigging flags and banners to add a bit of colour and presence.
For him occupations of public place are an artform and the activist path is a spiritual one.
From 27 February to 15 March 2021 Graeme was part of a convoy supporting John Shipton, father of Julian Assange, in an eight city public speaking tour which started in Melbourne outside the State Library of Victoria and went via Broadford, Castlemaine, Bendigo, Albury, Wagga, Goulburn, Bathurst, Katoomba, Hazelbrook, Parramatta and Sydney to Canberra.
It was a four, and for part of the way, a five vehicle convoy bearing John Shipton, in his muralised VW LT35 camper van, Graeme in his Peacebus, Jacob Grech in his Toyota Coaster, Raine Cilicia in her dual cab Hillux and Shahnaz Martin in her Hiace fridge van.
A noble company on a noble mission.
We didn't get huge crowds but we were generously and warmly received where ever we travelled. We were reported in local radio and newspapers and we generated content for social media advocacy that went global.
Graeme was bearing witness for Julian Assange when the Australian Parliament assembled on 2 February for the first sitting day of 2021. That's PM Morrison rushing by in the white limo.
Did he notice? Would he care? Nah! This man, Scotty from Marketing, is a craven liar by profession and being a craven puppet of the Empire of Lies, his abandonment of truth telling Australian citizen, Julian Assange, is reflex.
But Julian's truth is not diminished by his presecution or his much muted media. The longer he suffers, the greater the moral force which gathers behind him, the bigger the fall for the craven and depraved stooges of the US Empire.
The photo above was taken by Graeme of Peacebus friends, Roxy Foley and Shahnaz Martin, at the back of the crowd at the Invasion Day rally in the forecourt of the Australian Parliament on 26 January 2010.
Maybe 3000 gathered. The biggest Invasion Day crowd in Canberra to date and all the more extraordinary because the notification of the rally, in these Covid cautious times, had been late in coming - just 2 days out a post on FaceBook.
Gratitude to the organisers who got it moving. Not that there was a lot to organise for clearly this was an event urging to happen. Also extraordinary were the people still streaming up Capital Hill an hour after the notified start time. Clearly people rallied the family into the car after confirming on social media that Invasion Day 2021 was a happening thing.
This was very gratifying for old man Graeme because he had been supporting Invasion Day rallies in Garema Place and marches across Commonwealth Bridge to the Aboriginal Tent Embassy with flags and mobile PA since the first one in 2004. These had been promoted by Winiata Puru and his hand drawn flyers. The first engaged less than 20 marchers.
This year Invasion Day rally assembled adjacent but not on the Tent Embassy. But Graeme, staying clear of the toxic management there, didn't put out flags. Winata, who has been much abused over the years by the toxic Coe family for his initiating role in so many Tent Embassy events, held his ground and took a party of Koori flag bearers to the front. They were the only flags rallied for the event.
Salute to Winiata. Graeme was humbled and proud that he could, that day, offer him Peacebus poles for that show of magnificence.
And Roxley too at the back of the crowd. He had been a one time keynote speaker at Invasion Day rallies. Also driven off Embassy by the toxic Coes with threats of bashings.
But so it goes with social movements. When times are achanging, the leaders now will late be last.
How vast the cultural shift we have witnessed on 26 January 2021. From Reconciliation Place, Graeme watched the official Australia Day commemoration across the Lak.e. He heard the military bands, witnessed the RAAF fly pasts, was boomed by the 21 gun salute and saw how small the participating crowd. Pathetic.
In Canberra Australia Day 2021 was a fizzer. The People had voted with their feet.
The 26 January as a red, white and blue event is no longer acceptable. Indeed celebrating Invasion Day with cannon, marching bands and military aircraft has become deeply distasteful. Success!
Graeme hung about Alice Springs during July, August and September 2020. Above he is animated by lantern light and camp fire during one of those cold desert nights of that winter.
He came with a bunch of Aboriginal Tent Embassy associates to help our Arrernte friend, Chris Peltherre Tomlins, run as The Greens candidate for the seat of Braitling in the NT elections 22 August.
He and crew did best they could but made very little difference. The Greens maintained their primary vote at 10% but the fracking ALP held government on Greens preferences. The Nats and their splinter were of course pro fracking too. In the face of massive popular opposition, democracy in the NT delivered gas and blantant corruption.
Gunner Labor now reckons it has a mandate to fund gas exploitation in the NT, as part of a "gas led recovery" which will pay back the $8 billion debt created in their first term of office. The logic is dodgy but the gas miners and their spin doctors are jubilant.
Graeme's best memory of campaign in Alice was cruising the suburbs with a candidate in the passenger seat of Peacebus and their voices or/and iPhone play lists on the PA. Particularly when it was the town camps he cruised through with a local band singing in language. Among the manifest poverty, smiles and affirmations!
The roof rack speakers and #FreeAssange mural have made Peacebus prominent around Alice but in truth Graeme has been reclusive, camping out of town on a mate's place, minimising social interactions, avoiding public events, soaking up desert solitude.
Every morning before dawn it has been his practice to go to the nearby Ilparpa claypans and do his meditation and yoga practce, his mat on the dust, the new sun in his face, his dog at his knees, red fur, red earth, golden light. Pierced by a single butcher bird call.
Perfect. Selfless, empty and free from conceptual elaboration.
Peacebus was called to action to support the Warlpiri family of Kumanjayi Walker when they gathered to bear witness at the commital hearing (1-3 September) of Constable Zachary Rolf, police officer charged with the murder of the 19 yo Walker in his grand mother's home at Yuendumu November 2019.
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That's Uncle Ned Hargrave, a mate from the Tent Embassy, calling for Justice for Walker, in particular he wanted a review of Rolfe's bail conditions which allowed Rolfe to be a liberty in Canberra on full pay, attending court by video link! Note the Redtail cockie flags.
There was much grief and sensitivity so Peacebus' approach had been tentative. But the event organiser, Dr Lisa Watt, needed help to set up and Graeme and his mate Tbags, the ancient roadies both, were pressed into action to rig banners and get sausages cooked in the park across the road from the Alice courthouse
When the hired PA failed, the Peacebus PA was rallied and saved the day. Much gratitude was expressed and fuel vouchers were gratefully accepted.
Here is not the place speak of the killing and the court case. For the latter i recommend the court reporting of Kieran Finnane of Alice Springs News on Line.
Kieran Finnane is also the author of Pine Gap - Pine Gap, National Security and Dissent which was launched when Peacebus first arrived in Alice in July. Graeme was pleased to open a copy and see his name on the first page. Excellent research, lively writing and highly recommended.
On Monday 7 September 2020 the extradition hearings for Julian Assange began in the Old Bailly, London. Peacebus was again called to action to bear witness at the gates of Joint Defence Facility, Pine Gap, the top secret US spy and drone base 16 km south of Alice.
This led to an interesting meeting which Graeme blogged about here Peacebus @ Pine Gap.
On Saturday 26 July 2020 Peacebus supported an anti fracking rally organised by the Central Australian Frack Free Alliance by the Stuart Highway in Alice Springs.
That's the new Peacebus banner painted for the occasion and that's Chris Peltherre Tomlins standing by it. "Kwayte" is Arrernte fo water.
Chris is the Greens candidate for the seat of Brailting in the upcoming NT elections 22 August. It is Greens' policy to ban fracking. No ifs no buts.
Peacebus is part of a crew of six who have journeyed 2,500 km from Canberra to help Chris with his campaign. We are associated via the Aboriginal Tent Embassy there. We had arrived in Alice only three days before and the action was an opportunity to meet up with local activists.
That roadside galleon was the improvisation of local artist, Al Bethune. The structure rests on a box trailer which was towed to the site by a 1964 Holden EH Station Sedan. The 8m mast and sails were erected on site to create an eye catching, billowing banner.
The news on NT fracking was grim.
Last year Morrison government threatened to withhold the NT's share of the GST unless it revoked the Territory wide moratorium on fracking. Black mail and the ALP Gunner government complied.
Various surveys and inquiries make plain that over 80% of Territorians oppose fracking and that includes near 100% of first nations people.
But the ALP reckons it can regulate the industry and has climbed on board for the Scomo post Covid, gas-led economic recovery. What dodos they are!
The issue has split the conservatives and a new coalition, the Territory Alliance, has emerged to campaign against fracking. But why would one trust ex Country Liberal Party members any more than the ALP dodos?
Locals like Al reckon the shale gas mining industry has the infrastructure for NT gas exploitation in place and ready to go.
Just waiting for the opportune time to ignore "social licence" concerns and flick the go switch. Spin doctors at the ready!
Only a direct action campaign will save the ground water of the NT then.
Interesting times ahead for the NT.
Peacebus captain, Graeme Dunstan, was on the road 27 June to 4 July 2020 campaigning in the Eden Monaro by election for his Nimbin friend, Michael Balderstone, the candidate for the Hemp Party.
So loved is Michael in the Northern Rivers of NSW had was given front page photo story of one of the last editions of the local daily newspaper, the Northern Star. Eden Monaro is more than 1000km south but the headline chortled "Balderstone to leave Nimbin!" then in smaller type "if he wins by election."
That was never likely. But Michael wanted to register a protest vote for cannabis law reform. Michael and his partner Caroline Todd went south with a station wagon full of Vote 1 Hemp corflutes and how to vote forms. They allowed themselves a week of on the ground campaigning.
Coming the mild winter of the Northern Rivers Graeme and the Peacebus joined them at the Mid City Motor Inn in the biting cold of Queanbeyan on Saturday 27 July. How to get noticed?
Though most of the voters live in Queanbeyan, the electorate is far flung - a land of burnt out forests left by the fires of January, surf side suburbs, old dairy towns, snow resorts and cattle grazing.
The area as many cannabis users and produces a significant cannabis crop. But unlike Nimbin,, cannabis culture is almost invisble there. People don't want to attract police attention, may be targeted, maybe busted by a roadside spit test and maybe lose their driving license.
Michael had in mind corflutes hung high in trees by roadsides and highways. But "we soon learned local government rangers were confiscating them. Seems they wanted electioning to be invisible everywhere except on screens and pre-polling places.
What worked best for Hemp Party team was a "Honk 4 Hemp" campaign with Peacebus dressed up with Vote 1 Hemp corflutes and Redtail Black Cockie flags set up by the roadside.
Peacebus attracted lots of honks and salutes. many from tradie utes. Also drivers pulled over to speak with us, introduce themselves, exchange information on medical cannabis, take placards to put on ther fences and generally taking and giving good cheer.
The Hemp Party message and the Peacebus art seemed to make people happy. Lots of smiles.
This was particulary so, when on election day, when Peacebus cruised around the polling places of Queanbeyan, with the candidate, Michael Balderstone, on board and spruiking for Hemp on the Peacebus PA.
Far and away Peacebus, its flags, its signage and spruiking, were the most interesting thing happening in Queanbeyan on election day. The national Sky News report on the polling in Quenbeyan included shots of Peacebus and the clear sound of the Michael's voice.
Even the Sky news presenters smiled and made jokes about Hemp. They may have been snide words, but hey? we got noticed.
The Hemp Party scored 2.3% of the first preferences over all over 5% at polling places in Quenbeyan.
Gratitude to Michael Balderstone for nominating, taking on the bother and putting in the effort to get the Hemp Party agenda noticed in a federal by election. Thanks to Shahnaz Martin of Batemans Bay for dressing up her van with Corflute hemp leaves and being visible for cannabis law reform.
On Friday 7 June, Graeme supported a Black Lives Solidarity in Lismore, NSW, organised by his Witabul friends from Nimbin. That's Gilbert Laurie speaking under the Redtail Black Cockie flags in Spinx Park that day.
The event was organised with minimum notice and yet attracted the biggest rally crowd Graeme had ever seen in Lismore. There were no cops present when the crowd first assembled. The crowd soon spilled out onto Moleworth street and blocked traffic. After a bit police showed up in force and closed the street officially.
The crowd seemed gathered more in sadness than anger and the mood was extraordinary for its mellowness. Solidarity in opposition to racism, love in the air, it was a deeply moving event for many including the three coppers pictured, kneeling and sharing the black salute.
Graeme had the sense that it being a mass enchantment. The first post Covid-19 crowd in Lismore and it seemed that folk were happy to be out, about and mingling in public place. There were many wearing masks and ostentatiously practicing social distancing protocols. But many more were not. Covid-19 and its restrictions now a thing of the past for them.
The crowd and flags ambled down Molesworth Street to the police station and assembled in front in quiet witness. There were more speeches from Gilbert, friends and family, gentle words of friend ship and gratitude. Graeme watched Inspector Nicole Bruce of Lismore Area Command as she stood with her back to the front door of her Lismore police station. Before her was a crowd of maybe a thousand people plus a bunch of beautiful flags, all bearing peaceful witness for justice and a fair go. He swears that he witnessed tears.
The Covid-19 restrictions on public gatherings did not stop Peacebus captain Graeme Dunstan from commemorating Anzac. These pix are of the lantern display he set up at the Vietnam War Memorial in Batemans Bay, NSW on Anzac eve.
That's his floral activist friend Hazel Davies fussing over the magnificent Desert Pea "Lest We Forget the Frontier Wars" wreath which she had made. His activist friend and lantern apprentice, Shahnaz Martin, is behind the camera.
The lanterns were there to evoke the annual lantern lit Anzac eve Peace Vigil which Graeme had produced these past 10 years. The Vigil usually assembles at sunset on top of Mt Ainslie, Canberra, for a lantern li lamentation led by Canberra's A Chorus of Women. The ceremony also includes a lantern lit journey into darkness of grief, down the bush track to the Australian War Memorial.
A beautiful event, over the years it has accumulated a devoted following and also a trove of lovely songs, images and recordings from past Vigils, which Graeme's Chorus friends were able to draw together to produce a virtual Vigil which included live and pre recorded interviews and songs.
Graeme's war memorial set up at Batemans Bay served as a station in that Zoomed commemoration. That's Graeme following the Zoom on his IPhone. Here is a Dropbox MP3 of the Virtual Vigil.
Hazel had that afternoon come from Canberra bearing the Desrrt Pea wreath. In Canberra she and Shahnaz had posed the wreath, consecrated it as it were, at the Tent Embassy and also the Australian War Memorial.
That night we were also participated in a Zoomed commemoration of the Frontier Wars coordinated from Brisbane by Margaret Pestorius of Wage Peace. It drew forth many Gimuy (Cairns) voices. Still pinned at Wage Peace FaceBook at time of writing.
Anzac and remembrance of the Frontier Wars got linked 10 years ago when Ghillar Michael Anderson led the first Anzac Day Lest We Forget the Frontier Wars March to the Australian War Memorial. We got turned away then as we have been turned away every year since.
But the story grows. Graeme's post Anzac FB news feed was full of Frontier War commemoraition stories. See Ellie Gilbert's collation of her movie footage of Anzac Day Lest We Forget the Frontier Wars marches past here.
By 8 pm the Zooms were over and we were just kicking back, Graeme with wine and joint in hand, when a police patrol car arrived. The event had been produced with the agreement of the local Vietnam Veterans Association. But it seems Graeme's efforts at local police liaison had failed.
Two edgy and sceptical young coppers threatened the crew with a Covid ticket and moved them on. Time to go and well past Graeme's bed time anyway.
Peacebus captain Graeme Dunstan supported a solidarity action for Julian Assange which took place outside the British High Commission in Canberra on 24 February 2020.
It was the first day of the proceedings against Julian on the US extradition order in the far away Woolwich Court in London. Just one of hundreds of acts of solidarity actions globally.
We were few but we did not go unnoticed, attracting lots of solidaity honks in the passing traffic. Practicing free speech in defence of an Australian citizen being denied free speech, locked up and tootured in maximum security prison on the behest of the Empire of Lies.
Not the presence of the Eureka Southern Cross flag, there to evoke the Oath of the Eureka Rebellion of 1854 - "We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties."
On Sunday 9 February 2020, Graeme supported a West Papuan Independence solidarity rally outside the Hyatt Hotel Canberra when Jokowi, the President of Indonesia came to stay there on a State visit to Oz.
Ronny Kareni organised it and that's him strumming ukele and singing over the Peacebus PA with a couple of his mates. The music made it a joyous feel good rally.
The next day President Jokowi adressed the Parliament Ronny was in the visitors Gallery to witness it. After he joined the Greens leaders, Adam Bandt, Richard di Natali and Larissa Waters, in a press conference which featured the Morning Star flag. Go Greens!
Here the report Graeme posted to FaceBook:
"Beautiful West Papuan solidarity action outside the front of the Canberra Hyatt today. It had rained, the fiery summer had ended and the wind was blustery and cold.
The AFP were most friendly, welcoming and helpful. Treated us like celebrities. Welcomed us to set up in plain view of the Hyatt front door and visible to the traffic in Commonwealth Avenue.
Peacebus flags and banner looked glorious. Ronny Kareni played ukele and sang along with his West Papuan mates on the Peacebus PA.
Such a positive vibe. The changed season wind was elation blowing our hair.
A couple of Indonesian photographers came out and took pix from a safe distance. A group of young people in red and white costumes came out and held up an Indonesia flag for a photo on the steps of the Hyatt.
An Indonesian troll whom the AFP had warned us of, lurked about. He told me that Joseph Rumbiak, the Foreign Minister of the West Papuan Republican government in Exile, was a hoax.
We were there because of rumours rather than reports of Jokowi's movements. We went to the front door and gave him plenty of time to arrive.
And when, after 2 hours, that time had passed we took a group shot, packed up and went our different ways.
Peacebus went away via the Hyatt backdoor and just in time to see Jokowi and entourage arrive.
There were motorcycle cops with flashing blue lights, the VIPs all lined up to greet him, and the Jojowi motorcade of maybe 10 vehicles paraded past the providential Peacebus whch was startled into stillness as it passed, cops waving it on, the West Papuan flags flags all bundled on the roof racks and its horn speakers pointing to the sky.
"Told you he would use the back door," said Bec Horridge, a longtime Canberra bred activist.
Graeme wrote a memo to himself: "Listen to Bec."
From 2 to 5 February 2020 Graeme participated in the People's Climate Assembly in Federation Mall, the patch of grass outside the Parliament and 150 m back. Four days on the sparsely shaded lawns in hot sun, blustery winds, smoke and even some rain, it was an ambiitous plan, a big organising effort, high expectations given the Summer of fires and, in the end, it disappointed.
Graeme was invited to write a report for the Byron Echo. Here.
The big day was 4 February, the first sitting day of the year. Maybe 2500 people and a day of lots of fiery speeches concluding with a walk around the Parliament. For some people the walk was a deeply moving symbolic event. But not for Graeme who was outraged when the organisers announced a ban on carrying of flags and placards.
This, they said, was the rule. No political signage in the Parliament or in the grounds without.
A parliament without the politics of the people is not a People's Parliament. The organisers turned back the giant Koori flag as Graeme scrambled to get flag bearers with courage enough to defy the ruling. He got some of his XR flags out and, as expected, the AFP on duty let them pass because they too regard the rule as bullshit, needlessy antagonistic towards protesters there.
Graeme and his Wage Peace comrade, Cate Adams, wanted to put military spending on the Climate Change agenda and made a 2D submarine out of plywood for the event. Bec Horridge insisted on giving the sub its water trials in Lake Burley Griffin.
Graeme supported the annual Invasion Day Rally and March in Canberra on 26 January 2020 as he has done for the past 10 years or more. This year the event was renamed Survival Day and organised by a new entity - the United Ngunnawal Youth Council.
Congratulations to the organising group Bradley Mapiva Brown, Justine Brown, and Jahmarl Towney. Their FaceBook event went up just three days before and despite the late notice, they drew a crowd of 600 people to assemble in Veterans Park, Civic, and march across Commonwealth Bridge to the Parliament.
There had been bigger turn outs in Canberra in the past and the 26 January Invasion Day rallies and marches elsewhere were bigger than ever - 100,000 in Melbourne and 30,000 in Brisbane. There's pic of the Bribane Parade with one of Graeme's "Lest We Forget the Frontier Wars" banner in the crowd.
Good to see a new generation taking up the event organising.
But it was apparent that they had no sense of history of the event. Although there is a lot of talk about respect for elders past and present, when Graeme introduced Bradley to Winiata Puru, the one who initiated the Canberra Invasion Day March 15 years before and so inspired other 26 January Invasion Day Marches in other Australian cities, there was no recognition.
Graeme recalled putting out flags to support Winiata when there were fewer that 20 Invasion Day marchers. But Winiata kept at it and over the years the participation grew and grew and this with no help or participation from those describing themselves as Ngunnawal.
Winiata's success in creating the event (and inspiring others like it elsewhere) did not bring him gratitude from Aboriginal leaders. To the contrary it brought jealousy and threats of violence. In 1997 with 800 people assembled in Garema Place for the march, the event for which had been the principle organiser was hijacked and Winata forced off stage under the threat of death by a posse of deluded Tent Embassy wannbes.
All that invisible to the new organising mob who were too busy taking selfies to acknowledge or thank the pioneer. That's him sitting quietly under the Treaty sign in Veterans Park. And that big Koori flag flying before the Parliament is the one Winata had brought and flown on Invasion Day for so many years past.
On Friday 10 January 2020, Graeme supported an Extinction Rebellion rally in Sydney Town Hall Square. Attendance estimates were as high as 40,000 and the crowd was feisty. "Hey, hey! Hey Ho! Scott Morrison has got to go!".
In preparation, on 9 February Graeme's daughter Softly Dunstan, hosted a making workshop at her home in Marrickville. A group of ten adults set to work making placards on corflute off-cuts from Reverse Garbage, cutting letters from self adhesive vinyl film.
Graeme sewed up the four XR flags to be seen in the pic above, the design being provided by Softly. The Climate Emergency banner was on board Peacebus, painted up in Cairns last October, but also from a Softly Dunstan design.
So it was that the design work of Graeme's talented daughter got to make a huge visual impact on this huge Extinction Rebellion event. Looks splendid, what?
From 29 December through 4 January 2020 Graeme participated in an End of Year Retreat at the Silver Wattle Quaker Centre on the shore of Lake George near Bungendore, NSW.
Sue and David Woods, directors of the Campfire in the Heart Retreat and Conference Centre in Alice Springs, led the Retreat which was contemplative in style, embracing communal prayer and meditations on scripture and poetry., each day with an elemental themes - Land, Water, Incarnation, Fire, and Air.
This as the worst and most extensive bush fires ever raged in NSW and Victoria. Although Silver Wattle was not threatened by any wild fires, the smoke haze from them hung over Lake George and Silver Wattle the entire retreat. The elements were making their point.
Over a billion animals dead. Dozens of people killed. Thousand of lost homes. Millions of hectares of beautiful forest and ecosystems incinerated. Millions breathing on toxic smoke.
The only good news is that the climate denialism, so long promoted by corporate liar, the coal industry propaganda and corrupt politicians is now dead and the Extinction Rebellion voices are a clamour of undeniable credibility.
On 3 December 2019 Graeme commemorated the 165th anniversary of the Eureka Rebellion by supporting the Reclaim the Radical Spirit of the Eureka Rebellion program of events organised by Dr Joe Toscano.
It's an 18 hour immersion in the Eureka story and Eureka Spirit camaradie for those who stay the course. Starting with a 4 am Dawn Service at the Eureka Stockade Memorial in Ballarat, Victoria, and culminating at 10pm with the annual Eureka Dinner. Program here.
It was the eighteenth year of Graeme's collaboration with Dr Joe on Eureka commemoration. Graeme provides flags, banners and lanterns to dress the event. For the past 11 years, as part of the Eureka Dawn Service, Graeme has burned as a cardboard effigy of the season's face of tyranny.
This year it was Prime Minister, Scott Morrison. See media release.
It was a splendid burn and the media release drew the attention of ABC Radio Ballarat. Dr Joe got a call at 9am on Eureka Day to be interviewed live to air on the Gavin McGrath's Mornings program.
At the time we Eurekaphiles were about to depart on our annual parade to Bakery Hill, so we stood about with our flags and banners and cheered Dr Joe, a longtime master of the radio interview, as he used the opportunity to promote the Reclaim commemoration program, defend the burning of the ScoMo effigy and tell the story of Rebellion and its radical outcomes.
Check it out: Radicals burn 'PM' to mark Eureka anniversary.
For a week from 29 September Graeme was at Camp Binbee, the Frontline Action on Coal base camp, 50 km west of Bowen in North Queensland.
When he arrived there were 71 people in camp of which 40 were engaged in meeting planning an action for the next day. The photos above are of that action, a lock on to at the level crossing of the coal rail line into the Abbotts Point coal terminal.
Graeme was mighty impressed with the Camp and its morale. In the week he was there three separate lock on actions took place, one of those was at the Adani workers camp 300 km north west which required the transport convoy to depart Binbee at 2 am in the morning to be there by first light.
On 20 September 2019 Graeme supported the global School Strike 4 Climate in Cairns, a rally which was huge by Cairns expectations with upwards of 1200 school kids, parents and grandparents participating and feisty.
Lots of rally speakers on an inadequate PA, then a parade through Cairns CBD on a route that took us past the offices of GHD, the corporation proposing to build the rail for Adani's Carmichael mine. Much chanting, hooting and hollering there.
Lots of banners and placards and an excellent street band with trumpet, tuber and drums had us dancing. Well some of us that is, because the parade extended over three blocks.
Here a pic of the Climate Emergency banner which Graeme painted for the Strike, leaving the assembly area by the Lagoon on the Cairns Esplanade.
Design courtesy of my daughter Softly Dunstan whose graphic design studio, Mighty Nice, closed for the day in support of SS4C.
That other pic is grand daughter, Pepper Price, with her father, animation master Darren Price at the Sydney SS4C. More quality design, hey.
Mighty Nice also produced a promotional animation video for the event. Check it out.
What a proud grandpa i am.
Anticipating the School Srike for Climate, Graeme made up a banner for it on the deck at Peace by Peace House in Manunda, Cairns, Far North Queensland.
His daughter Softly of Mighty Nice gave him the design and Patrica Gates helped with the painting.
On 9 September 2019 Graeme supported a West Papua solidarity rally outside the Australian Federal Police HQ in Cairns. At the time the indonessian police and armed forces were suppressing large scale rioting in West Papua against Indonesian rule. Many arrests had been made.
The AFP were targetted for their complicity in the training of Indonesian police and military.
There is local WP expat, George Dimara, spruiking and his wife Irene and daughters singing. The action concluded with a ripping up of the Lombok Treaty, the treaty between Indonesian which restrains Australian intervention in West Papua in regard to human rights.
Graeme served as a default MC for the rally with Peacebus providing the PA and flags. The banner was a local one and so shamefully scrappy, Graeme resolved to paint another of better design and craftsmanship. His gift to #FreeWestPapua.
Here a video beginning with the welcome to country by local elder Gudju Gudju.
On 1 September 2019 Graeme supported at a Wage Peace action which disrupted a meeting in the Cairns Civic Centre which urged local businesses to get a share of the military spending our LIbLab governments has been so lavish in splashing about.
Although promoted as a public meeting, it became private one when Graeme got up to speak. He was dragged out by a police officer. The story of the disruption was followed up by the Cairns Post. Here is Graeme's report of the action.
Here is the Cairns Post on line report. It includes a link to Bec Horridge's video of the action.
On 16 August Graeme organised at Whistleblower SpeakOut at the gates of Lavarack Barracks in Townsville, north Quensland. Lavarack Barracks is a major Australian military base, home to two infantry brigades (3rd and 11th) plus support groups, 15,000 service people.
Julian Assange is a Townsville boy and Graeme reckoned the military ought to know what the significance of former SAS Major David McBride and the Afghan Files which he leaked. He proposed the SpeakOut to his Townsville TI mate, John Paiwan, who embraced ther idea with enthusiasm.
Peacebus hurrying north to Cairns, Graeme had just two days to negotiate and promote the action. Here the media release. Alas the army affairs writer for the Townsville Daily Bulletin, a Murdoch newspaper was not interested.
Just four of us at the gate. Graeme put up an eye catching flag display and the eyes in the base traffic going by were watching us. We got noticed. But not hugely.
While set up for banner painting at Havachat, Graeme noticed a post on 7 August 2019 from Front Line Action on Coal announcing a Red Alert on the start up of Adani's Carmichael mine. Here is Graeme's Fb report on what followed:
It was a quiet day in Havachat, the arts warehouse in Rockhampton's CBD, but the proprietor, Chris Hooper, was agitated.
Extinction Rebellion was on his mind. The previous day he had painted up some placards and the news of the Brisbane blockades and arrests had stirred him up.
"Let's do an action outside Canavan's office," he declared. That's Senator Matt Canavan, Qld LNP senator and vociferous, promoter of coal, whose electoral office is few doors away.
There were four of us at hand plus Sunny dog and we were more or less bundled out the door grabbing what props as were at hand.
Local environmental defender, Chris Horton, stripped to his budgie smugglers and grabbed his "Don't Crucify the Reef" cross.
The reluctant Bec, who is decidedly ambivalent about associating with a Jesus in budgie smugglers, reached for Sunny dog and a stuffed gorilla.
Chris Hooper grabbed his new placards and i took the Adani puppet head which was hanging about from previous #StopAdani actions.
There was no rhyme of reason in the imagery. All the rules of messaging ignored, we were propelled by pure enthusiasm.
On the way out the door i called the editor of the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin and left a message to say that if he wanted a local lead on the Brisbane Extinction Rebellion story and the Red Alert Adani mobilisation call by Frontline Action on Coal (FLAC), here was an opportunity.
He rang back at once to say he too had seen the story of the FLAC #StopAdani lock-on and asked me to send pix of our action and expect a follow up call.
We assembled outside Canavan's office and a very disgruntled Bec arranged the dog and gorilla and took photos on her phone.
"I've been bullied into this," she complained as she stormed off. "It makes us and the #StopAdani campaign look stupid."
But for me it was all so zany and bizarre that i laughed out loud. We would have been less that 2 minutes outside Canavan's office. At most two people saw us there and neither was Canavan or a staffer.
Back in Havachat i got a call from the Bulletin's political correspondent, Leighton Smith. The FLAC mobilisation call was news to him.
"How about you write the story and i edit it?" he suggested. He sent me a list of questions as a prompt.
And so it was that the FLAC Red Alert call and their astonishing lock on - 17 pieces of land clearing plant tied up and immobilised - became amplified as news in Central Queensland.
Bec continued to grumble but we blokes marvelled at the serendipity of dissent.
Sometimes one gets noticed, sometimes not.
For Graeme the savour of the action was Yippee. It recalled for me the "DO IT!" attitude of the 60s resistance to the Vietnam War and conscription. Demo as lifestyle.
A few weeks before when we arrived in Rocky, activists had been shell shocked by the federal election result and the pro coal lobby was strutting. Not so now.
Go FLAC!
When in Rockhampton Graeme is the guest of Chris Hooper at Havachat, an arts warehouse in East Street, in Rocky's central business district. There Graeme hangs his banners and murals of campaigns past from the trusses, like old regimental colours in a cathedral. There Chris allows him to set up his work tables and make stuff.
Graeme had been following the whistle blower David McBride, who leaked what are known as the Afghan Files. The leaked douments revealed war crimes committed and covered up by Australian Special Forces if Afghistan in 2012. The Afghan Files were the cause of the raids by the Australian Federal Police on the offices and homes of journalists .
Somerset Bean designed the banner and Graeme completed painting and sewing on 7 August 2019 and mailed it to Cate Adams, Wage Peace's Canberra based organiser of support for whistleblowers. There's a pic of it outside the ACT Supreeme Court 22 August 2019.
Cate was later to report that when McBride saw the banner outside the ACT Supreme Court he wept in gratitude. There to fore he had been feeling alone and suicidal about his stand. Solidarity!
Two Churches is a property outside of Emu Park, a beachside suburb about 40 km from Rockhampton. The two chuches are nineteenth century wooden buildings moved there as part of a project to preserve artefacts of colonial heritage. The owner, a Peacebus fan, offered it as a venue for a fund raising event for Peacebus.
Graeme decided 4 August 2019, his 77th birthday party would be the date and, that he would combine it with a burning in effigy of Gautam Adani, the Indian billionaire who is angling to be subsidised by Australian taxpayers to build the Carmicahel mega coal mine in the Galilee basin.
This was thought too provocative by my host, a driver of 400 tonne coal dump trucks. "I have to live here afterwards," he said. "How about you burn the US Alliance instead?" And since 2019 Talisman Sabre war rehearsals were winding up, it seemed appropriate.
Here the Fb event page. Here the media release.
Graeme created a FaceBook conversation about the design. How to visualise the US Alliance? "Trump driving off a cliff" came the reply. Graeme set to work cutting cardboard in Havachat. There's a photo of the result.
The High Tea began in the afternoon with Graeme's mate Paul Bambrick, the Greens candidate for Capricorn, and his Celtic Faeries playing reels set up outside under the frangipani. Two Churches overlooks Keppel Bay and the island view is magnificent.
There Graeme was - stoned to the gills and maybe a liitle drunk for our host was tending a free bar and providing organic wine and spirits - on top of the world, surrounded by loving friends, being serendaded with the sweetness of music, among art and making art.
Bec Horridge was Graeme's companion and accomplice in the making of this event, not only organised the catering but also put together with a couple of local women friends, Extinction Rebellion Red Brigade costumes. When dark, they appeared wailing at an upper story church window. Very dramatic.
The burn was chaotic, or at least the recording of it was. And there are no "Take Twos" to be had in the effigy burning business. Here a video of Graeme speaking before the burn.
The Soiree was attended by about 30 people. $1500 was received in donations including $1000 from the Shoal Water Action Group. Thank you SWAG!
On 12 July 2019 Graeme dressed the Rockhampton NAIDOC Parade with Murri and TI flags. Rocky Naidoc Parade is the biggest in Queensland and this would make it the biggest in Australia.
The bulk of the flags are the product of a flag making project Graeme did in 2014 with his friend and former Rocky NAIDOC director, Auntie Jeanette Yeoweh. The rest are flags from the Peacebus on board trove - a set of flags for every occasion and bamboo poles on the roof racks.
There are many reasons for the spectacular success of the Rocky Naidoc and the colour and dignity which the mass of tall flags brought to the parade is one of them.
The present director, Krissy Hatfield, continues the good work and the local Darumbil and TI kids love the flags.
Folk, children and adults, help rig the flags on bamboo poles and pile them up on the lawn outside the Civic Centre. Peacebus is draped with the season's Naidoc banner and its PA used for rallying the crowd.
Come the invitation, there is a rush by children and adults to take up a flag.
About 30 flags are on parade. Graeme dreams of there being hundreds.
On 4 July 2019 Graeme celebrated Independence from America Day with a Peacebus SpeakOut outside the gates of Western Barracks in Rockhampton. The event was promoted by a Fb event post and a report in the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin headed "Peace Pilgrim celebrates Independence Day from US troops".
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Graeme is somewhat notorious in Rockhampton and this was not the first Independence From America Day to be celebrated in association with Talisman Sabre, the huge US-Australian war rehearsals which happen biennially at the nearby Shoalwater Bay Military Training Area.
The event attracted a crowd of ten, a lot of cops and a lot of attention. The Peacebus PA projected the sound 100m across the busy Western Barracks which is beside the Rockhampton Airport serves as a supply base and transport hub for Talisman Sabre.
The event did not go unnoticed in Central Queensland. Here the Morning Bulletin report.
On 3 July 2019 Graeme supported a Julian Assange birthday celebration on the Esplanade by the Fitzroy River in Rockhampton, Central Queensland. It was a globally networked #FreeAssange campaign event and this was the first action to be organised by #FreeAssange Central Queensland.
Here's Graeme's report to Fb friends:
"We were few - just nine of us by the Fitzroy River in Rockhampton celebrating Julian Assange's birthday on 3 July.
A stiff breeze blew and it made lighting candles difficult. But we persevered and we made art.
We also had a brazier and after we sat about it for warmth. We recalled Julian had one time been an alumni of Central Queensland University and sang our "Happy Birthday to You" Stevie Wonder style.
Bec was inspired to ask what Julian's call "We must resist!" meant for each us and so we did a go around, listening and taking turns to speak.
Being visible in public place, listening to each other and collaborating certainly enriched and strengthened the bonds of friendship between us.
Bec declared it was the first time since the federal election she had felt like singing.
We resist because we must and because it's good medicine, i say.
Resistance enlivens, emboldens and builds community.
Standing together truly and fighting to defend our rights and liberties.
Eureka Spirit! It has a noble pedigree."
The Nimbin HEMP Embassy helped Graeme with his funding raising for a replacement his ailing Peacebus by presenting a High Tea at the Hemp Bar. Here the media release.
It took place 21 June hosted by the HEMP Embassy. Maybe 30 friends from different parts of Graemer's life gathered. The event began quietly at 4:20 pm with the traditional sacrament and no particular plan.
Soon enough spontaneous testimonial speeches erupted all glowing with praise and love for the community service given and cultural changes wrought, for the campaigns prosecuted and the companionship shared.
Aquarian elders, HEMP elders, indigenous elders, age mate legends and new generations too.
A Magic Hat sat on the bar and waited with the promise that a new Peacebus was to be drawn from it. A steady trickle of coins, $5 and $50 bills was to be seen being slotted in the Hat.
At the end of the night when opened, it was found to be stuffed with wads of notes bound by rubber bands! An astounding $1730 counted!
To which the venerable Michael Balderstone added $70 so that the target of $1800 was reached and full benefit was made the offer to match donations dollar for dollar to that sum.
Which means $3600 was raised that evening and i got to feel much affirmed and loved.
Graeme's cup floweed over.
Graeme thanks all who shared their love and their cash.
Thanks to is old mate Michael Balderstone for his hosting and generosity.
Thanks in particular to the Bales brothers, Mick and Johnny.
There is a side story here. Before she died Graeme had been privileged to meet their mother, Maureen Watson when she came to Nimbin and I was honoured to receive from her a teaching about honourable eldership. (See the report on the Honourable Elders Camp 16-9 May 2008.)
It's a dialogue that continues between Mick, Johnny and Graeme. Honouring the memory of an honourable elder as it were.
Graeme affirms how good the heart feels when one is affirmed in community witness as an honourable elder. And how particularly so when it comes with Murri voices.
When Graeme arrived at the 2019 Nimbin Mardi Grass his Peacebus, a 1991 Mitsubishi Express desel, was without reverse gear. The previous year after Mardi Grass it had rolled into the creek and damaged its electrics. Now it was beyond worth repairing. Simply worn out.
So Graeme initiated crowd funding for its replacement. The campaign went on for 4 months and raised $12,000.
Meanwhile to keep Peacebus rolling, Graeme parked the "no going back" Peacebus (Peacebus2) on a friend's bush block at Kippenduff near Casino, NSW, went to Canberra on public transport, retrieved the still registered Peacebus1 from his friend, Bec Horridge, and refitted it for Peacebus duties.
This meant removing all the stuff and signage oin and on Peacebus2 and putting in Peacebus1 from whence it had come five years before. The job took four days. Graeme then headed north to Rockhampton leaving Peacebus2 parked on the bush block as dry storage of sorts for the stuff that was in excess.
On August 12, Graeme got a message that Peacebus2 had been destroyed in a bush fire propelled by 90kph winds. Vale Peacebus2.
Graeme was invited to present a lantern making workshop for the Nimbin Mardi Grass. That's a pic of the lanterns with his #FreeAssange banner in the Nimbin Mardi Grass Parade, 5 May 2019.
Mardi Grass policing was extra aggressive this year with Roadside Drug Testing road blocks on access roads and a raid on the Embassy Thursday 2 May. A bastard act. Not only was the stash of pot used to supply and fuel volunteers stolen, but the Embassy itself was shut down for 6 hours on a peak Mardi Grass preparation day.
The NSW Police are at war with festivals and events in NSW generally, and Mardi Grass in particular.
The bad news and aggressive policing cost the Mardi Grass in terms of reduced attendence numbers but not in spirit. It is and remains a uniquely beautiful, artful and funny event.
 to store
Graeme was Canberra during March and April preparing for the ninth annual Anzac eve Peace Vigil and the Anazc Day Lest We Forget the Fontier Wars March to the Australian War Memorial.
There he is with his daughter and grand daughter on top of Mt Ainslie on Anzac eve. And there he is with his lantern stash - 280 of them - at the Silver Wattle Quaker Centre near Bungendore.
Gratitude to the Friends. Without their support to store there would be no lantern lit 'journey into grief" down the bush track from the top of Mount Ainslie to the Australian War Memorial on Anzac eve. A beautiful event.
Face book event > Anzac eve Peace Vigil 2019. Here the media release.
At 7.30 am on Friday 12 April, the morning after the arrest of Julian Assange in the Ecadorian Embassy Graeme and his woman, Bec Horridge, were out protesting the injustice. Graeme blogged about the next day on FaceBook. Here is the post
During the last 2 weeks of March 2019 Graeme was inspired to paint another banner, a "Lest We Forget the Frontier Wars banner for the upcoming "Lest We Forget the Frontier Wars March" to the Australian War Memorial on Anzac Day, using the Desert Pea motif. Somerset Bean provided the design and Graeme set up his work tables and set to work in the garage of Professor Adrian Horridge in Yarralumla.
Above is the work in progress 12 March 2019. Graeme's technique is to print the design tiled as black outlines on A0 sized pape, lays the cloth over, traces with pencil and masks out the lettering. This makes painting to edges quicker. Marking, masking, taping and painting took three days.
Graeme also sews on a border with sleeves top and bottom to make rigging of the banner easier. Usually he purchases a printed cotton for the job but he could find nothing in SpotLight with a pattern dramatic enough for the banner so he set about hand painting the border fabric with stripes comprised of colours used on the banner - Permaset colours because they are so strong and bright. It took as long to paint the stripes as it did the rest of the banner, plus a day to cut and sew the borders on.
Here is the banner displayed for the first time at a friend's in Curtin 6 April. That's Hazel Davies holding up an end on the right. She the driver of the campaign to have the Desert Pea recognised as the blood for the Frontier Wars, in the same way as the Flanders Poppy is the blood flower for WW1 commemorations.
Hazel took the banner with her to display at the Easter Confest 2019 where she intended conduct Desert Pea wreath making workshop.
Peacebus captain Graeme Dunstan is presently in the Central Highlands of Victoria, grateful to have access to a bush block shed where he can do maintenance on Peacebus, put out his work tables and make more flags.
There's a pic of his apprentice, Leigh Rowe aka Toot the Clown, painting up a new set of West Papuan Morning Star flags.
The flags got their first public display at #FreeWestPapua action outside the Indonesian Consulate in Melbourne on 27 December. Story here.
Papua Merdeka!
Graeme participated in the rituals of commemoration presented by Dr Joe Toscano and his Reclaim the Radical Tradition of the Eureka Rebellion in Ballarat on Monday 3 December. He put out lanterns and a banner rig for the 4 am commencement at the Eureka Stockade Memorial and Peacebus provided a mobile PA for the various "Stations of the Southern Cross" events through out the day.
It was 20th anniversary of Graeme's first engagement with Eureka commemorations in Ballarat. Back then the Ballarat Art Gallery had sponsored him as a lantern maker in the creation of the Eureka Dawn Walk as an event which engaged hundreds. But that was asssociated with the preparation for the 150th anniversary of the Rebellion which came with state and local government money.
When that passed, both governments lost interest and Graeme transferred his talents to supporting Dr Joe's project, which, starting in 2002, commemorated the Eureka Rebellion on 3 December on the day and on the site where the Eureka Stockade was bloodily subjugated.
That was 2006 and twelve years on the fruit of the efforts is a deep network of friendship with the ageing activists (some not so old) of Victoria. Here is the program. A standard flyer, only minor changes are
made each year.
Few but valiant and, in a provincial city where the Eureka flag is the logo and the word "Eureka" appears in the name of every other small business, highly visible and much applauded. For the best Ballarat City Council, as a government agency, can do by way of commemoration for a successful rebellion is to rally redcoat re-enactors to raise the Union Jack raising at the grave of the soldiers. 164 years on and Eureka rebels are unforgiven and the Eureka flag yet to be raised over Ballarat Town Hall .
The Reclaim program has evolved and consolidated over the years. Here is a report by John Englart of Reclaim Eureka2018 which captures some of the sweetness of the event. "Not a cross word heard," said Dr Joe of the day. Everyone knows what to expect and everyone pitches in and helps out.
Part of the program is the so called Stump Orations under the statue of Queen Victoria outside the grand Victoriana architecture of Ballarat Town Hall. Dr Joe attributes the creation of this event to Graeme. It's a pause on the march from Bakery Hill to the mass grave of the diggers at the Old Ballarat Cemetery.
It's an opportunity to declaim and it's a salute to Peter Lalor, who in 1854, it is told, when the leadership of the Ballarat Reform League failed to show for a mass meeting after what was to be the last police License Hunt, rallied the crowd by leaping onto a tree stump, raising his rifle and shouting: "Liberty!" He was thereafter appointed Commander in Chief of the rebels.
Liberty for Julian Assange was Graeme's message.
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On 4 November accompanied by Janet Salisbury, singer/producer for A Chorus of Women, Graeme met with Dr Brendan Nelson AO, director of the Australian War Memorial. Graeme, Janet and friends have produced the annual Anzac eve Peace Vigil in the AMW for seven years and so have annual meetings with Dr Nelson and mutual goodwill and respect abounds.
This meeting had special significance because it preceded preparations for the centenary of Armistice Day and followed days after a controversial announcement that the Memorial would receive $500 million for renovations.
Graeme had proposed recording the meeting and to this end invited FaceBook friends to suggest questions to put to Dr Nelson. Come the day Dr Nelson refused the interview but Graeme put questions anyway and wrote this report which he posted to FaceBook.
Graeme Dunstan and his Peacebus companion, Bec Horridge, presented an Assange Picnic and SpeakOut at the gates of the US Embassy in Canberra on Sunday 4 November. Here the media release .
Graeme had had reports from Julian's father, John Shipton, that his son's situation in the Ecadorian Embassy in London was dire and felt compelled to act. He saw notice of an international day of solidarity actions on the web and signed up even though the notice was late and Sunday is a very quiet day in Canberra and at the US Embassy.
With the AFP, notified and happy, we set up a banner rig opposite the tradesmen's entrance in Arkana Street and the Peacebus folding chairs and table for a picnic in shade in the park behind. Three red AFP patrol cars kept watch on us, sometimes cruising by, sometimes parking in the shade on the far side of the park and yarning amongst themselves.
No one seemed to be at home in the US Embassy. Windows closed and blinds drawn, even the security guards were keeping out of sight. A few carloads of tourists cruising the embassies of Yarralumla came by and few local residents too, all regarded us with curiosity.
Our sole visitor was a woman who had organised ACT Friends of WikiLeaks in 2012. Before she burnt out and retired from protest life to secure her career in the public service, she and her friends had installed a beautiful display of candles on the lawns below Parliament House spelling out FREE JULIAN.
A car sticker with that image and the slogan "Time for the Australian Government toi Defend Assange" had been printed and she had a box of 500 or so left over.
She beheld a sticker and said wistfully. "I thought that such a beautiful image and elegant plea would make the media. But no. Nothing. Not one report." Now six years had passed and Julian Assange's situation is more dire and even further beyond the pale of corporate media.
But it was a balmy Canberra spring day and a lovely picnic and conversation none the less.
SpeakOut i did, though not to a crowd. Rather to an apparently empty Embassy imagining myself addressing the Charge Affaires, James Carouso, who was hiding in his bedroom watching from behind the curtains.
Mr Carouso is a career diplomat minding the office till President Trump appoints an ambassador from amongst his Republican mates and benefactors. Something he seems in no hurry to do.
For awhile there retired Admiral Harry Harris was set to be the US Ambassador to Australia.
Known as a war hawk, Admiral Harry had been commander of the US Pacific Fleet (2013) and was hot under the collar about Chinese bases in the South China Sea. He had also been Commander of Joint Taskforce Guantamo in 2003 when David Hicks was incarcerated there and prisoners had died under torture.
Graeme had been gearing up for a campaign to remind Harry Harris of that inconvenient truth when it was announced that the Admiral was to be the Ambassador to South Korea instead. So it goes.
Graeme spoke to his imagined James Carouso knowing that somehow in the wonders of surveillance his words would be recorded, assessed, preserved in silicon and filed somewhere forever more. To back this up Bec recorded his speech and posted it to YouTube here.
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H e r e a r e p i x o f B u n g a l u n g f r i e n d a n d s h a m a n , L e w i s W a l k e r , p a i n t i n g u p h i s 2.5 year old d a u g h t e r , L u n a r , f o r P o s s u m D r e a m i n g by the Clarence River at Tabulam, northern NSW Sunday 20 October .
C a p t u r i n g t h e m o m e n t i s l o n g t i m e f r i e n d a n d H e a l i n g C i r c l e s h a m a n , J a i D a e m i o n .
It was at a h e a l i n g c a m p c o n v e n e d b y L e w i s . I hadn't planned to be there but when my Byron Bay abiding friend, Jai, called to ask whom i might suggest as a subject for a portrait for the National Portrait Gallery, my thoughts flew to Lewis.
I connected Jai and Lewis and then felt compelled to be there too, began driving the next day from Canberra - 1 1 0 0 k m i n 3 6 h o u r s .
B e t w e e n L e w i s a n d i there i s a n o n g o i n g F r o n t i e r W a r s s t o r y t e l l i n g c o n v e r s a t i o n . It had paused for 18 months but it began again as if mid sentence as soon as i arrived, my mind still rolling and weary from the drive, hallucinating somewhat from the spliff ihad been offered.
L e w i s h a s b e e n r e s e a rc h i n g t h e s t o r i e s o f t h e m a s s a c r e s o f his people in t h e U p p e r C l a r e n c e t o t h e e x t e n t o f r e c o v e r i n g h u m a n b o n e s - some 1100 of them - f r o m t h e r i v e r bed j u s t b y w h e r e w e w e r e c a m p e d , a n d r e b u r y i n g t h e m w i t h d i g n i t y a n d c e r e m o n y in caves nearby .
L t G e n H a r r y C h a u v e l , a n A u s t r a l i a n L i g h t H o r s e c o m m a n d e r i n S o u t h A f r i c a , G a l l i p o l i a n d B e e r s h e b a , w a s b o r n n e a r b y too a n d around here l e a r n e d t o r i d e, shoot a n d w i e l d a s a b r e .
H i s s q u a t t e r f a t h e r , C a p t a i n C B E C h a u v e l l a t e o f t h e I n d i a n A r m y , c r e a t e d t h e U p p e r C l a r e n c e L i g h t H o r s e i n 1 8 8 6 w i t h h i m s e l f a s c o m m a n d e r a n d h i s s o n s a s l i e u t e n a n t s .
L e w i s s a y s t h a t C h a u v e l s b l o o d e d t h e i r r e c r u i t s w i t h b o o n g h u n t s . O n e t i m e a t E m b a s s y , L e w i s p a i n t e d u p a n d d a n c e d a s t o r y o f a m a n f l e e i n g a p u r s u i n g h o r s e m a n , h i s l i f e j e r k e d t o a s u d d e n e n d b y a n o o s e .
H e s a y s h i s g r e a t g r a n d f a t h e r , t a l l a n d f l e e t o f f o o t , w a s m a d e t o r u n a g a i n s t h o r s e s f o r s p o r t o n t h e v e r y l a n d w h i c h i s t h e T a b u l a m R a c e c o u r s e t o d a y a n d w h e r e w e r e c a m p e d .
H i s f a t h e r h e s a i d a n d p o i n t e d h a d b e e n b o r n o n t h e f a r b a n k a t t h e j u n c t i o n o f t h e T i m b a r r a R i v e r n e a r b y . S u c h c o n n e c t i o n t o c o u n t r y .
L e w i s r e k i n d l e d i n m e t h e c r e a t i o n s t o r y o f t h e U p p e r C l a r e n c e L i g h t H o r s e .
F o r i t i s a p a r t i c u l a r c r e a t i o n s t o r y w h i c h i l l u m i n a t e s t h e g e n e r a l c r e a t i o n s t o r y o f t h e A u s t r a l i a n m i l i t a r y w h i c h b e g i n s w i t h t h e c r e a t i o n o f v a r i o u s c o l o n i a l L i g h t H o r s e r e g i m e n t s - t h i n k o f a b u n c h o f m e n w i t h r i f l e s o n l i g h t h o r s e s . Aldo called Mounted Rifles.
M y m o t h e r ' s f a t h e r h a d e n l i s t e d f o r t h e B o e r W a r i n t h e V i c t o r i a n M o u n t e d R i f l e s s o I h a v e a f a m i l y i n t e r e s t i n t h i s . T h e d r a m a t i c f r a m e d p o r t r a i t o f h i m i n B o e r W a r u n i f o r m i n m y g r a n d m a ' s p a l o u r w a s w h a t i n s p i r e d m e t o b e a c o n s c i e n t i o u s s c h o o l c a d e t a n d l a t e r a c o n s c i e n t i o u s s t a f f c a d e t a t R o y a l M i l i t a r y C o l l e g e , D u n t r o o n .
L o o k i n g f r o m B u n d j a l u n g v i e w , i u n d e r s t o o d t h e c r e a t i o n o f t h e U p p e r C l a r e n c e L i g h t H o r s e a s a m e r e f o r m a l i s a t i o n o f w h a t h a d e v o l v e d f r o m t h e p r a c t i c e o f d i s p e r s i n g n a t i v e s f r o m s q u a t t e r r u n s - t h e C h a u v e l s h a d been 5 0 , 0 0 0 h a in a land grant in 1 8 4 0 - b y N a t i v e M o u n t e d P o l i c e u n i t s a n d v a r i o u s v o l u n t e e r a n d v i g i l a n t e c i t i z e n m i l i t i a s .
T h a t i s t o s a y , t h e c r e a t i o n s t o r y o f t h e A D F i s f o u n d e d i n t h e s l a u g h t e r o f n a t i v e s i n t h e i r n a t i v e l a n d s . T h e A u s t r a l i a n L i g h t H o r s e w e r e r a c i s t , m u r d e r i n g b a s t a r d s i n P a l e s t i n e j u s t a s t h e y w e r e a t h o m e . T h e A D F i s d o i n g i t t o d a y i n A f g h a n i s t a n , S y r i a a n d G o d k n o w s w h e r e e l s e .
S o t h i s i s h o w L e w i s h a d g o t m e t h i n k i n g . I t ' s a s t o r y w i t h l e g s , i r e c k o n . M a n y a n g l e s a n d r e v e l a t i o n s c o m i n g .
I w a s i n s p i r e d t o c a l l P a u l J D a l y , a w r i t e r o f F r o n t i e r W a r s s t o r i e s f o r T h e G u a r d i a n , a n d s e t u p a n i n t r o d u c t i o n f o r L e w i s . D a l y h a s a l s o p u b l i s h e d a b o o k o n t h e B a t t l e o f B e e r s h e b a a n d d e s c r i b e s t h e m a s s a c r e s o f A r a b s a n d B e d o i u n s by the Australia Lighthorse at the town of Surafend i n P a l e s t i n e, December 1918 . After the war's end.
G o o d c o n n e c t i o ns, what?.
L e w i s a n d i p a r t e d a g r e e i n g t h a t m o r e o f t h i s s t o r y w i l l b e t o l d a n d r o l l e d o u t a t t h e F r o n t i e r W a r s S t o r y C a m p a t t h e T e n t E m b a s s y A n z a c s e a s o n 2 0 1 9 . A n d w i t h P a u l D a l y i n t e r e s t e d t o a t t e n d .
S a i d L e w i s a s i p r e p a r e d t o d e p a r t : " D o y o u k n o w y o u r t r i b a l n a m e , w h a t w e B u n j a l u n g c a l l y o u ? " I w a s a l l e a r s .
" N g e a g e r r " h e s a i d, which means a R e d t a i l B l a c k C o c k a t o o and he pronounced like the cry of the Black Cockatoo . A l s o " W a a l a h " w h i c h also m e a n s B l a c k C o c k a t o o . And Readtail Black Cockatoo is a message bearer, he said.
" Y e s , w e s e e y o u r f l a g s o n N I T v a t E m b a s s y , P i n e G a p a n d e l s e w h e r e a n d s a y : "T h e r e ' s N g e a g e r r , t h a t R e d t a i l B l a c k c o c k i e m a n . "
H o w s a t i s f y i n g i s t h a t .?
Graeme and his Peacebus companion, Bec Horridge, participated in the Frontline Action on Coal camp on private land north of Newcastle 12-15 September 2018.
Above is a rare pic of the Camp, rare because FLAK are surveillence conscious organisers - no phones at meetings, no pics without permission. Such an elegant bush camp. A couple of marquees and tarps hung from trees as shelters for meeting spaces. Many years of experience was behind this rigging elegance, many, many years of forest blockades and now coal blockades. Peacebus added flags and banners for colour.
Maybe 150 people in camp, mostly young people in their twenties. As a group, it was a highly motivated and highly disciplined and focussed. Consensus decision making their style and nonviolent direct action their method - NVDA training was compulsory.
Our aim was to close the Newcastle coal port for a day and we did it.
Twenty six were arrested on the day action (Friday 14 Sep) in a plethora of concurrent actions. In the lead up rail lock ons actions of coal trains were used to build awareness. Here a summary report from the Newcastle Herald 15 Sep. Here a Frontline commentary.
With coral banners and flags, Peacebus' role was minor - support for the Knitting Nannas at witness action by an arterial road in the port district. Impressively many were the honks and waves of support from the passing traffic, likely they hearing radio reports of the actions as they drove by.
Here was courageous and determined action in the defence of the Earth. Here were the heroes who will inherit the Earth and Peacebus proud to be a witness.
Peacebus captain Graeme Dunstan and his Peacebus companion, Bec Horridge, are presently in Far North Queensland carrying #FreeAssange mural which was mounted at the back of Havachat, Rockhampton on 14 August.
In Townsville they called in on Peacebus friend of many seasons, John Paiwan. John loved the mural. He had been watching FaceBook posts about it. He urged them to take Peacebus to the Townsville Cultural Festival which was on that day.
And so it was that, thanks to John's enthusiasm Peacebus and crew were admitted to the Festival without charge or notice and given a plum position.
The director of the Festival, Favardin Daliri, came by to say it was Festival policy that no political signage was permitted but #FreeAssange was an exception.
"Julian is Townsville's most famous son," he said and spoke of raising a public memorial to him.
Go for it, Favardin! Bring him home!
Meanwhile to understand more about Julian Assange, his insights and his philosophy - what makes him such an object of fear and persecution by Deep State check out this YouTube interview recorded March 2018, the last recording before he was denied internet access at his asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy. https://youtu.be/P_m3eO3c5Uw
The final act of the 2018 Peacebus season at Havachat, Rockhampton was the painting of a new Peacebus mural designed by Graeme's daughter, Softly Dunstan. The production of the #FreeAssange mural took Graeme 6 x eight hour days of labour plus help from Peacebus friends, Bec Horridge, Chris Hooper and Michael Eckhart.
Mounted Tuesday 14 August Graeme wanted it to be the parting story of his season at Havachat and put out a media release.
But no media responded and Graeme and Bec rode out of town happy to be on the road again. There is a shot of Peacebus at Clairview, 250km north of Rocky on the evening of its launch from Havachat. Nice hey!
And here is a parting gift of that Havachat season. A Year 12 student from The Cathederal School, Kai Odgen, impressed by the art he saw interviewed both Chris Hooper and Graeme and compiled a 8 minute YouTube tribute which finishes with a grand salute to Bryan Law. https://youtu.be/-gmXogOCrFI
Graeme was watching the plight of Julian Assange from afar and decided that #FreeAssange messaging would be a priority for Peacebus. He asked Somerset Bean for a banner design and set to work sewing and painting it in Havachat.
With the help of Bec and Havachat friends he launched the banner by announcing it with a media release and rigging it outside Rockhampton Courthouse. The Rockhampton Morning Bulletin sent a journalist and photographer.
And so the #FreeAssange campaign got a page 2 story in the Bullie the next day.
Peacebus captain Graeme Dunstan and his Peacebus companion, Bec Horridge spent 6 weeks in residence at Havachat, the junk/arts drop-in warehouse in downtown Rockhampton, Central Queensland. Graeme and Bec are attracted both by Rockhampton's balmy winter and the opportunity Havachat offers for Graeme to set up his worktables and make stuff.
They also have lots of activist friends there. and as they approached Rockhampton, they had a call from the local 350.org group asking help with a #StopAdani action in association with the Adani Rockhampton River Festival.
Adani it seems had purchased the naming rights for $30K. It was a good deal for Adani because Rocky Mayor, "Dame" Margaret Strelow, was offering $15.5 mill in return, a deal where by local rates revenue would subsidise the building of a FIFO airport at the proposed and much contested Carmichael coal mine 600 km away.
On Saturday 14 July 2018 he helped produce a piece of daring street theatre for RiverFest - a funeral procession for dead coral with Mr Adani and Dame Maragret attending and walking hand in hand.
At hand was a puppet head of Mr Adani, made by Erin Messenger for a #StopAdani action the year previous. Graeme set to work to make a matching puppet head for "Queen" Margaret. For three days Graeme was frentic cutting and hotmelt gluing cardboard.
There had been trepidation amongst the 350.org folk in the planning - fear that their theatre might be obstructed by event security or the cops. Not so in the execution. Indeed the action was backed by both cops and security and it was very well received by the crowd of maybe 50,000 people. Lots of smiles and affirmations, even spontaneous applause.
Riverfest stretches 4 blocks along the Fitzroy riverside of the old river port area and we wended through the initially mystifed and bemused crowd. Bec in role began explaining is short pithy sentences. "This is your mayor. This is Mr Adani, the billionire. And this is a funeral for the Barrier Reef". Soon she was singing it and then we all were, finding harmonies in repetition.
Here is the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin Report. Check out the Bullie's photo gallery for more pix.
On 13 July 2018 Graeme helped get flags rigged at the Rockhampton NAIDOC Parade and Expo. Peacebus also provided the PA at the assembly of the Parade outside the Rockhampton Council Chambers.
Above is photo of Darumbul elder Auntie Nikki Hatfield at the fire making opening ceremony. This year the theme of NAIDOC was an honouring of women elders, "Because of her, we can." If anyone deserved that honour in Rockhampton, it is Auntie Nikki. Also a photo of the Member for Keppel, Brittany Lauga MP on the Peacebus mike revving up the crowd, another honourable elder in the making.
With about 800 people participating, Rockhampton NAIDOC is far and away ther biggest NAIDOC parade in Queensland. Graeme has had a nine year long association with Rocky NAIDOC and he was responsible for getting koori and Torres Strait Island flags made up for the Parade.
This year Graeme got carried away sculpting cardboard and had to be stirred to action by an early morning call from Rocky NAIDOC organiser Krissy Hatfield. "Help!" She needed poles for the flags. Graeme hurried to the assembly area with Peacebus flags poles on the roof racks.
There Krissy thrust an official NAIDOC volunteer Tshirt at him and, dressed in it, he set about setting up. This was made easy by familiarity. Many hands, experienced from previous years, helping.
What an excellent way to be welcomed to country! Above are pix of Krissy and Graeme at the end of the Parade where tree seedlings, which were carried in the Parade, were planted in a reserve opposite the Expo. A lovely event. Lots of kids involved. Morning Bulletin video here.
Rockhampton NAIDOC gets bigger and better each year. Kids who helped paint flags 9 years ago, now young adults, proud and splendid. Graeme is proud his long association with the Darumbul.
Graeme was at The Channon Market on 13 May 2018 to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the Nimbin Aquarius Festival. Here he is speaking at stage by the Rainbow Chai Tent and sitting with his friend Uncle Boney after.
Organised by Harsha Prabhu and Binna Powell, it was a great day at the Market. Lots of colour for Benny Zable adorned the event with flags. Lots of dance with Benny contributing to that too. The Byron Bollywood dancers were funny and gorgeous to behold.
Best of all was catching up with old Aquarians. Age mates of course. and these included an ex wife, Annabelle Sinclair.
But for the rest, the anniversary drew little interest and served mainly to show that the memory of the Nimbin Aquarius Festival and its consequences is fading fast into oblivion. Aquarians are dropping off perches at an alarming rate.
But if you are interested to know more, check out this 1991 ABC Tv Couchman episode and hear the shaved headed Peacebus captain attempt to explain the Festival 18 years after the event.
On the night of 7 May 2018, Peacebus took itself for a joyride into the creek on the east side of the village, in the night and with Graeme and his Peacebus companion, Bec Horridge, on board.
Peacebus had been parked behind the Green Bank in Nimbin. Seems Graeme had left it out of gear and hand brake off some hours before. Stealthy in starting, Peacebus had rolled, backed up, turned and plunged down hill to the creek, kamikaze style, bursting through barriers, flattening fencing, swerving to miss a tree, and coming to rest with its nose on a far bank.
Along the way, Bec had bailed out naked onto the gravel of a carpark. Graeme's MacBook Pro also bailed out choosing to risk a hard surface fall than the watery depths. Inside he lay on the bunk clinging to the cross rail, watching through the windscreen as the landscape rushed by.
Not out of control - it was steering somehow - but certainly out of Graeme's control, Peacebus had rushed like a machine possessed to the creek where once Aquarians had camped.
For lo! it was also the 45th anniversary of the transformative Nimbin Aquarius Festival of which Graeme had been the director all those years ago.
Clinging to the crossbar, Graeme took the impact on the bridge of his nose and bent the bar. Lots blood and also other bumps on the head. Bec sustained bruises gravel rashes to her back. Sunny dog was also on board but unharmed. She pranced and raced about happy and celebratory when the three reunited on the creek bank alive.
It took two days to extract Peacebus from the creek (soon to be named Lucky Dunstan Creek, ho ho!) and another ten days in the yard of Nimbin Motors before the more battered Peacebus was judged driveable.
Here is a re-enactment videoed by Peacebus webmaster, Max Stone.
Graeme was in Canberra during March - April where he was busy organising events aimed at reimagining Anzac in this age of rampart militarism. These were:
¥ the fourth annual Frontier Wars Story Camp at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy 9 - 25 April
¥ the seventh annual Anzac eve Peace Vigil which assembled at sunset on Mt Ainslie and wound down the mountain by lantern light to gather in a circle of lament in the Australian War Memorial forecourt.
¥ the seventh annual Anzac Day Lest We Forget the Frontier Wars March to the Australian War Memorial which assembled in Anzac parade, tacked onto the end of the RSL organised Anzac Day march and although well received by the spectators, was turned away bny a police line at the Memorial Vimeo here.
Not to be missed.
Peacebus was a presence at the annual Confest, 28 March - 2 April. Some 6000 participants in a graceful and spacious camp on the banks of the Edward River near Moullamien, NSW. Confest is 42 years old and there Graeme is revered as an honourable elder for it was the 1973 Nimbin Aquarius Festival which inspired the orm Confest takes today.
Peacebus was part of "Frontier Wars camp" which morphed, under the influence of elders Uncles Ned Hargraves and Marbuck, into a Reconciliation Camp, a long standing dream of the Confest organisers.
Uncle Ned, a Walpiri man from Yuendamu, NT, who had brought ceremonial ochre and feathers (fluff from three roadkill Wedgetail eagles. He made ceremonial conical hats from carefully selected gumtips and wool and painted up a group of men, Aboriginal and other, and rehearsed them in a Reconcilaition Dance which was performed by fire light on the second night. Powerful!
For the third night Marbuck's niece Electra had painted up a bunch of women and rehearsed them in three dances. On the fourth night it was men and women together. And the eagle dreaming took flight. Such powerful speech around the fire that night.
Sitting by Uncle Marbuck in the photo above are Shahnaz Martin (left) and Hazel Davies. All three are wearing Desert Peas which Hazel had made at a Desert Pea workshop which she presented during Confest.
Hazel is florist activist who is following a dream. She aims to have the Desert Pea recognised as the indigenous blood flower akin to the Red Poppy. A Desert Pea Frontier Wars wreath on every Australian War Memorial within five years is her goal. A the Confest Opening Ceremony, Uncle Marbuck custodian of the Desert Pea Dreaming story in his country, invited Hazel to speak and gave his permission and blessing to the project.
Here is a video that will give the reader some insight into what happened. More photos here.
Graeme supported a #StopAdani rally outside Parliament on the first sitting day of 2018, 5 February.
The rally began at 7 am with activists and signage gathered in Melbourne Avenue to welcome the politicians arriving at the Parliament from the airport, It adjoined to the lawns of Federation Mall for the major rally at 10 am.
In the lead up, Graeme led a flag painting project to prepare the coral motif flags one can see in the top photo. Designed by Somerset Bean, the flags took 10 days of sewing and painting (both sides) to make six of them. Beautiful Permaset Glow colours, yellow, orange, violet and magenta. Lots of people engaged. $400 raised to cover costs.
About 300 people came to the Rally. The mood was optimistic and the speakers spoke of the campaign successes to date such as preventing the Adani Carmichael mine and rail project in Far North Queensland's Galilee Basin from getting loans from national and international banks and causing major contractors to back away. The end of the Big Coal era may be in sight.
The other protest on the Parliamentry lawns that day was presented by mates from the Nimbin HEMP Embassy. Only a twelve of them, they set up their giant inflatable
Medical Marijuana Tincture bottle and banners up against the boundary fence and at the centre of the lawns.
After setting up the Coral Flags, Graeme went visiting and was offered a loaded vaporiser similar in shape and size to a writing pen. The stone left him somewhat legless so he went sit on the Canberra Commemoration Stone and listened to the speeches from the back of the crowd. From there he marvelled at the glory of the banner rig.
The #StopAdani campaign is distinguished by its signage art and the rally had lots of it, big and small. What an excellent PM Turnbull puppet! The "Reef Jobs NOT Coal Jobs" banner and the coral flags were luminous and framed the rest with meaning. It was as if coral, the largest living organism on Earth, had been given voice there.
In 2017, a new tradition was established at the Abotriginal Tent Embassy to follow Invasion Day (26 January) with a solidarity action for the Free West Papua movement.
Above is Roxley Foley (son of Gary) with Ronny Ato Buai Kareni and his daughter Zara, Shahnaz "Black Diamond" Martin and Chris Tomlins outside the entrance to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, London Circuit, Civic, on 29 January 2018. Below is Vince Duruax expressing is rage at the injustice served upon the West Papuans via the Peacebus PA to the public servants inside.
Peacebus had jumped the curb and parked outside the front door. Roxley treated the action as street radio, questioning Ronny on DFAT's performance in regard to its "17 operating principles" and judged that DFAT failed to deliver for the West Papuans on all counts.
By default, Graeme became the principle organiser for Canberra's 2018 Invasion Day Rally and March. Here the media release. Report in the Canberra Times here.
The "Change the Date" campaign had created a national debate about the future of Australia Day. The Tent Embassy position was to keep the date as a public holiday and change the name to Invasion Day, a national day of mourning. Graeme has been supporting 26 January Invasion Day rallies and marches in Canberra for over 12 years. He recalled with satisfaction when there were only 20 or so turned out. Ah yes! Perseverance furthers.
Some 500 people rallied in Garema Place on 26 Jan 2018. Kumba and his son Stanley painted up and dance there. Shane Rattenbury, leader of the ACT Greens spoke and Roxley Foley gave a "sitting down" speech. The March across Commonwealth Bridge was led by Graeme's Sunny dog and Savannah Tomlins from Alice Springs. Her father, Chris Tomlins, was the convenor of the Rally.
Crossing Commonwealth Bridge heading towards the Pariament, the flags looked great and the chanting "Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land!" was feisty. Below the crowd at the Smoking Ceremony at the Tent Embassy. Nakari Thorpe covered the event for SBS.
Graeme journeyed far during 2017 bearing a Dump Trump mural on Peacebus which was designed by his graphically endowed daughter, Softly Dunstan, and painted up by friends and he in Linton, Victoria, that February.
After it journeyed over 8,000 km - a circuit which included Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane, Rockhampton, Bowen, Cairns, Alice Springs, and back again to Ballarat.
Viewed by many thousands of random strangers, Graeme can attest from the response that this mural and its message has provoked - lots of salutes as Peacebus goes by, lots of selfies when stationary. -that it is far and away the most popular mural Peacebus has ever carried.
Primary school children in particular seem to love it, love to read it out loud to their parents and chorus "Dump Trump" in union when Peacebus cruises by a school crossing.
The right wing commentariat and their opinion manipulating institutes like to suggest that approval ratings for the US alliance are ever up. The Lowy Institute for example claimed it was at the time of the US Marines occupied Darwin with a base in 2012. Graeme knows from direct experience, that Lowy is lying.
The shocking bigotry of President Trump has done a great favour to those Australians opposed to engagement of the ADF in the endless wars of the US empire. Never before in its life time has the US - Oz military alliance been so unpopular.
Arriving back in Canberra Graeme was wanting to take the mural for a showing at the US Embassy. He rang the AFP to speak of my intention and they suggested that i link up with the Solidarity for Jerusalem rally there on Friday 15 December.
The Palestinian organisers loved the mural and were pleased to have Peacebus and its PA lead the march from the Canberra mosque to front gates of the US Embassy. Only a block butwhat a triumphal procession for Peacebus!
Say it loud and say it often: "Dump Trump! No war with China. End the US Alliance!"
Each year Graeme journeys to Ballarat to commemorate the Eureka Rebellion of 1854. Here are pix of the valiant few who commemorated the 163rd anniversary of the Eureka Rebellion in Ballarat, Sunday 3 December 2017.
They are participating in Dr Joe Toscano's Reclaim the Radical Spirit of the Eureka Rebellion program of events. This was the only commemoration in the City which references the Rebellion in its local government logo, in its tourism promotion and in the name of a plethora of local businesses.
It's as if this pivotal event in the history of liberal democratic reform in this land, when men and women took up arms to defend themselves from the terrorism of the British colonial government, has become an embarrassment.
But not for old anarchist activist Graeme. It speaks to him of courage in the face of tyranny and for him it's an inspiration.
For 19 years now he has been rigging lanterns and flags in remembrance of that Eureka Spirit.
Each year he stands at the mass grave of the slaughtered diggers in the old Ballarat General Cemetery and weeps. Lament for the ancestors brave, tears for his own fraility.
Graeme journeyed to Alice Springs to support the six Pine Gap Peace Pilgrims in their trials in the Supreme Court there 16 and 23 November 2017.
The Peace Pilgrims - Pauli Christi, Maragret Pestorius, Jim Dowling, Franz Dowling, Tim Webb, Pauli Christie and Andy Paine - entered into the Prohibited Area of the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap during the #ClosePineGap Peace Convergence in Alice during September - October 2016.
Graeme supported his friends with banners and flags outside court each day and with solidarity event organising. In preparation he painted a new Peacebus mural, another striking design from the genius of Somerset Bean. This, together with the "Dump Trump / End the U.S. Alliance" mural on the other Peacebus, was a highly visible presence in Alice where some 800 CIA, NSA and US corporate contractors and their familes reside and keep a low profile.
There were two spearate trials. Pauli Christie defended himself in his trial 12-13 November. Graeme was honored to be invited be his McKenzie friend in court.
The Peace Pilgrims knew they were facing up to 7 years jail under the draconian laws that protect Pine Gap spy base from citizen's inspections. They went there to pray and lament the death and suffering that Pine Gap satellite signals facilitate for the US Empire and its global war of terror.
They were promptly arrested and they plead not guilty to the charges and defended themselves in the court before a jury so as to create a publicity vehicle for raising awareness of the murder and mayhem being executed from Arrentre land, killing natives in their far away native lands, countries in which Australia is not at war.
The Pilgrims were wonderfully successful in creating an ongoing narrative and getting daily coverage and the secret wars of Pine Gap noticed.
On Radio National Late Night Live for example. And daily reporting in Alice Springs News Online. See here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
The Pilgrims were all found guilty. Justice John Reeves deferred sentencing to the 4 December in the Brisbane Supreme Court wih Cairns Pilgrims Margie and Pauli linked by video from the Cairns Supreme Court. No jail, ruled Justice Reeves lest martrys be created. Fines ranging from $1500 to $5000 were imposed, $15K in all. Reeves chastised Margie Pestorius and Jim Dowling for setting a bad example!!!
Their collective victory was to have their witness reported nationally on ABC 7.30 Report and internationally in the New York Times - the first ever report in a US newspaper on the US spy base Pine Gap.
Graeme participated in the Front Line Action on Coal Action Camp near Bowen, North Queensland, 16 -23 September and while there he painted up a "Reef Jobs Not Coal Jobs" as a Peacebus mural to augment the message of the banner of the same slogan.
Above is a photo of the banner in action at the road blockade of the Adani owned Abbot Point Coal Loader on 18 September. Ten people volunteered to be arrested that day to emphasise the opposition to Adani.
About 80 people participated in the Action Camp which combined non violent direct action training with a series of direct actions locally and culminating with an occupation of the Adani HQ in Townsville on 22 September. The organisers described themselves thus:
"We are a diverse group of people with a common goal: to end coal and move to a #cleanenergy economy.
We are from all parts of Australia, and we are networked with the #climatejustice movement all over the world.
Peace and equality, social and economic justice, government for the billions not for the billionaires.
We are old and young, we are from all ethnicities and genders, we work across many industrial sectors, we come from diverse cultural and religious traditions.
Here we all are, together, united to #StopAdani."
Graeme was peripheral to the organising, staying in the background but totally in awe and admiration of this new generation of activist organisers.
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Graeme was a guest at Havachat, the drop in lounge cum arts warehouse in East Street Rockhampton during July and August 2017. Activist artist in residence.
In the first place doing he was there doing best he could to resist the militarism of Talisman Sabre US-Oz war rehearsals at the nearby Shoalwater Bay Military Exercise Area with art and counter narrative. Then hip replacement surgery.
Here he is on 24 August 2017 protesting on crutches outside the Capricorn Regional Enterprises office on East Street, Rockhampton, with his host and friend, Chris Hooper, proprietor of Havachat. Inside was the local NLP member for Capricornia and Adani spruiker, Michelle Landry.
It was a spontaneous action, born of Chris seeing the media assembling across the road from Havachat and Graeme feeling somewhat restless. He was painting a new #StopAdani banner at the tiime and assumed the media conference was another jobs, jobs, jobs spruik for the the mega mine.
But no, this time Ms Landry was spruiking jobs, jobs, jobs from military tourism. Specifically for the Singaporean military land grab north of Shoalwater Bay. She had just returned from a trade delegation junket there, stars in her eyes, delusions in her mind.
And there he was, grumpy old man on crutches singing "#StopAdani". Chris and he got noticed - the tubby Michelle came out to the street followed by media cameras and fronted them. But alas for the wrong issue. Ooophs. Post op mental confusion maybe. A pity because Graeme has lots of questions about that particular job, job, jobs folly.
He had recently had a letter published in the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin withg this question. "Who do you call when one invites an invasion force to come practice invasion in Shoalwater Bay Military Training Area and, after, it decides to stay? The Council Rangers, maybe."
What would the Singaporeans be wanting to be practicing invasion for in any case? And why would we be wanting to support them?
There was a time when the Liberal and National Party conservatives were clamorous in their alarm about Yellow Peril invading from the north. But now an actual invasion of an actual military force is happening and the family of Han moves to up residence on a proposed one million hectares (about the size of the ACT) north of the Shoalwater Bay Military Training Area, the Liberals National Party dress it up as a mutual prosperity pact.
Before leaving Havachat Graeme painted a "Reef Jobs not Coal Jobs" banner to design suppled by the admirable Graphic designer, Somerset Bean. He unveiled the banner outside the office of the dodgy, former LNP Senator and full time coal advocate, Matt Canavan, which is a few doors from Havachat. Nice banner, hey?
On 8 August, Graeme underwent total (left) hip replacement surgery at HillCrest Private Hospital, Rockhampton. His companion, Bec Horridge, launched a Chuffed.org crowd funding campaign to cover the costs of surgery. She raised $14K and provided the rest herself. Greater love has no woman ...
The campaign was a massive affirmation for Graeme and his Peacebus campaigning. Old friends and new sending cash in amounts big and small and much love. Even the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin weighed in with this statement.
Graeme described it as being enfolded within "a great Buddha field of love and appreciation - the most favourable conditions for the surgery and recovery".
Graeme thanks all who contributed and sent healing prayers. The surgery went well. He was out of hospital the next day and in the care of Bec at Havachat. Pain decreasing, mobility increasing, he is on the road again.
On Friday 22 July 2017 Graeme was part of an interoperability inspection by the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Army and Navy, President Donald Trump and his family, of the Western Street Barracks, the supply base for Talisman Sabre in Rockhampton. This was Graeme's last action for the 2017 Talisman Sabre season in Rockhampton.
Art, concept and production courtesy of Jason Freddi and Lisa Freddi and children, Elijah, Rubin and Ali. Here the YouTube of the event.
Graeme Dunstan and his Peacebus companion, Bec Horridge, were in residence at Waru Community Gardens, Yeppoon, conducting a Peace Camp, 8-16 July 2017.
Waru Gardens is adjacent to the Tanby Road roundabout about which thousands of cars pass daily. Graeme made good use of the exposure to mount a banner display.
There they entertained local peace activists while Graeme sculpted a cardboard effigy of President Trump which was ceremonially burned on the evening of Sunday 16 July. Though a mere 20 were brave enough to attend the event, it was widely noticed.
Here a YouTube. Here a FaceBook album.
Talisman Sabre began on Saturday 8 July with a Talisman Sabre Open Day at the Rockhampton Showground hosted by the Rockhampton Regional Council for whom militarism and the preparation for war means jobs. In fact it is a recruitment exercise aimed at children. We peace activists will be at the gates bearing witness to the contrary.
Police liaison arranged for Peacebus and banners to be set up across (the closed) road from the entry point which means that we dissenters could address the families lining up for entry. Here is Bec spruiking. Crowd estimate was 8,000.
Robin Taubenfeld, Treena Lenthall and their children Moonie and Omaha clowned up and offered peace balloons to the entering families. Omaha Bradbury was dressed as a bunch of grapes. We were there to say war is not family entertainment.
Our opening act for the Talisman Sabre 2017 resistance was a 4 July celebration of Independence for the USA Day with a SpeakOut at the gates of Western Street Barracks in Rockhampton which is a major supply base for the war rehearsals.
Graeme set up a banner display opposite the gates and used the Peacebus PA to spruik to the military police and soldiers. Documenatry maker, David Bradbury was there with camera.
But the star act of the day was the arrival of Grannie Smith (aka Robin Taubenfeld of Brisbane FoE), the hard of hearing but devoted Trumpist ("Health care is for sissies"), who came bearing hot dogs and apple pie and cream to celebrate making "America grate again".
Graeme arrived in Rockhampton arrived in Rockhampton to prepare resistance to the Talisman Sabre war rehearsals on the 8 June and was welcomed back to Havachat, the drop in and centre and junk art gallery at 20 East Street by the proprietor, Chris Hooper, as an artist in residence of sorts.
Knowing peace activists gathering for Talisman Sabre resistance would be few, Graeme worked to get noticed and build anticiaption of protest. The Rockhampton Morning Bulletine were kind. Here an online video and here a feature article.
Graeme was a quiet-cornered elder guest of the 25th annual Nimbin Mardigrass 5-7 May. Which coincided with the 44th anniversary of the culture transforming Nimbin Aquarius Festival.
Graeme was once a major organising influence on both. But now he limps along old man at the margins in Nimbin, nowhere formally or officially acknowledged and everywhere embraced as an old friend and culture hero, the spliff toast of the Hemp Bar.
Mardigrass is a marvel of cannabis culture resistance. During Mardigrass, all roads in and out of the Nimbin village road were blocked by tongue swabbing cops. Roadside Breath Testing is a caluclated assault on cannnabis culture. And still the crowd came and the pot smoking party went on.
Is cannabis law reform any nearer for 25 years of Mardigrass?
Graeme doesn't know and doesn't care. He loves the ever renewing creative resistance of it all.
From all about comes news of the death of friends. Sadness mists like slow rain. Mud on the gumboots and the parade grows tawdry. Yet ever renewing and intensely fertile is Nimbin magic. Every season new visitors, new generations of hearts opened. New belly laughs.
An old Hempsters in the crowd screeches: "Free the weed!" But maybe it is the weed that is doing the freeing in Nimbin. Freeing us of the fearfulness cultivated by prohibition policies. Maybe this rite of gathering to smoke the weed and share our arfulness is grounding us in people power both ancient and much deeper. A kind of earth between the toes groundedness.
"Overgrow the Government!" indeed.
Graeme was in and around Canberra for six weeks in the lead up to the 2017 Anzac season. On 19 April he supported a rally in Garema Place hosted by the Canberra branch of Independent and Peaceful Australia Network. That's a pic of Kathryn Kelly speaking at the Peacebus mike.
About 50 people gathered for the rally. All the Canberra peace groups were there with stalls.
The next day Graeme took the protest to Defence HQ where Bec Horridge recorded posted this video of Graeme spruiking to Air Cheif Marshal Mark Binskin, Chief of the Australian Defence Force, about the embarassing afilure of the F35.
Graeme participated in the direct action dissent for the arms fair which is now associated with the Avalon Airshow 26 Feb to 4 March 3017.
Lockheed Martin's F35 Winged Lemon was there making its debut in Australian skies. Graeme had a calling to ploughshare one, as in make a hole in its multi million dollar stealth skin with a garden mattock.
Here is his report of the action.
Graeme was in camp at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy for the annual 26 January commemorations which this year maybe called Unity Day. The theme was "No to Recognition / Yes to Treaty".
For the occasion he prepared some new signage for the Sacred Fire - 1 meter tall letters cut from plywood which spelled out T R E A T Y ! and erected them behind the plywood letters that spell out S O V E R E I G N T Y. He was prompted to do this by his friend and former keeper of the Sacred Fire, Glen "Longie" Longbottom. He also prepared and rigged banners.
A lovely relaxed camp of kooris and their friends. That's Hannah, Destiny and Valetin sitting in the shade by the Rose Garden.
As part of Graeme's annual migratory activist pattern, participates in the commemoration of the suppression of the Eureka Rebellion in Ballarat 1854. Blood on the wattle. Courage in the face of tyranny. A battle lost but a victory won for the people, a victory that has echo-ed down the years. The spirit of Eureka stirs us still. Gratitude to the ancestors.
In particular he assists Radio 3CR broadcaster, Dr Joe Toscano, produce the Reclaim the Radical Spirit of the Eureka Rebellion program by bringing lanterns and flags to it and also the PA of Peacebus. He also adds to it by making an effigy of a holder of public office judged to be "this season's face of tyranny."
For the 162 anniversary it was an effigy of Senator Pauline Hanson that was burnt on Eureka dawn.
Graeme spent 8 weeks in Alice Springs preparing for and participating the #ClosePineGap Alice Springs Peace Convergence which took place 19 Sep - 3 October.
The event included two camps, a Tribal Healing and Unity Camp at the Claypans, followed by a Disarm hosted activist camp in the road to the US spy and drone base, many direct actions to disrupt the base functioning, Quaker Grannies obstructing the base gate with an offer of breakfast for shift changing spooks Peace Pilgrim incursion, a national conference hosted by the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) and a Lamentation on Anzac Hill, Alice's principle war memorial.
About 150 people were creatively engaged. We worked well together, got noticed and the peace movement was made stronger by it. Police liaison was a big success - both AFP and NT Police affirming our right to protest. No arrests were made apart from those who trespassed onto the base and these charges were subsequently dropped.
Graeme was is in Rockhampton, Central Queensland, during June and July 2016. There he worked to put endless war and escalating military spending on the federal election agenda in resistance to the Lib-Lab candidates lockstep advocacy for both an Army base and the increased use of the Shoal Water Bay military exercise area by foreign troops, US, Japanese and others. Good for the local economy, they say, will be 14,000 Singaporean troops training there for 3 months annually.
Yikes! Graeme thought the purpose for having an army is to keep other armies out. The ADF now sees its role as bringing other armies in to practice invasion. Military tourism. Dodgy and dangerous.
The photos above courtesy of Chris Ison of the Morning Bulletin. Above Graeme graffities an anti asylum seeker sign put up by a Liberal National Party supporter. Below Graeme presents a SpeakOut on permanent war.
Rockhampton airport is where the Tiger Ploughshare action took place during the US-Oz war rehearsals in 2011 and the Rockhampton Court where the trial took place. David Bradbury has made a movie about it which wiill have its premiere screening in the State Theatre, Hobart, on 6 July and at the Workshop Rockhampton on 10 July.
That's Graeme with David Bradbury in Mullumbimby 12 May 2016.
Graeme has been travelling north talking up the mobilisation for the September-October campaign to Close Pine Gap, the US spy and drone base outside Alice Springs. The photo above is the Peacebus and its Pine Gap banner rig on display in Sibley Street, Nimbin.
Graeme is working with Arrernte elder, Chris "Peltharre" Tomlins who is the traveling ambassador making a national and international call to close Pine Gap. Below his call out statement. Note it well. It is and will be a document of huge historical and social significance.
Graeme attended the 2016 Nimbin Mardi Grass, the great Cannabis Law Reform rally. In its early days he had been integral to its production. Now he is an old man on the margins enjoying its creativitiy, humour, information sharing, camaraderie and its great smoko and medicine.
He had driven directly from Canberra and the pack up of the Anzac events which he organised there and so had arrived deeply fatigued. Lo, a good friend offered a cannabis oil chocolate and he found deep and refreshing sleep!
He maintained his interest in dressing the Mardi Grass Parade and he managed to get two banners which he had painted last year rigged and on parade. "Cops out of Health Care!", yeah! The cops and their Roadside Drug Testing were most oppressive with their Drug War units on all three roads into town. NSW Green MLA, David Shoebridge, was present and spoke out most eloquently about this.
During March and April Graeme was in Canberra organising and promoting three interconnected events: the Frontier Wars Story Camp 18-24 April, the Anzac eve Peace Vigil and the "Lest We Forget" the Frontier Wars March on Anzac Day.
These labours aimed at creating new narratives for Anzac Day and making it more inclusive now that Anzac has become the national day of the war dead. Not for nothing did the Lib-Labs cash up the Anzac centenary commemorations last year to the tune of $580 mill of our taxes. Their aim is no militarise our culture and normalise war.
We peace activist aim to confound their imperial narratives of glorious sacrifice in foreign wars by remembering the wars, hidden and denied, of the British conquest and the blood shed in this land resisting invaders of the kind Australian troops are at this time, engaged in endless war, killing native people in their native lands.
It was the second annual Frontier Wars Story Camp at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy and, though it attracted only a few participants, it was a wonderful event, a time of grace and and information sharing at the Embassy. The Camp also served as a base forpromoting the Anzac Day Frontier Wars March. Dr Libby Connors, author of the prize winning book, Warrior.
Graeme also served as master of lanterns for the sixth annual Anzac eve Peace Vigil at the Austral;ian War Memorial. This beautiful lamentation atracted about 200 people; 160 lanterns were deployed for the walk down Mt Ainslie to the AWM Forecourt. Canberra's A Chorus of Women sang most sweetly and the inspiring Dr Susanna Pain from the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture delivered a deeply moving litury for peace there. The event finishes with an all night peace vigil about a fire in Anzac Parade, there when the Dawn Service assembles.
The sixth annual "Lest We Forget" the Frontier Wars March on Anzac Day was the biggest yet and made splendid with banners and flags. For this year Ellie Gilbert made up a 20 metere long scroll of bright yellow fabric on which was listed all the recorded frontier War killings. The biggest crowd ever turned out in Canberra to see the parade and warmly applauded we marchers. An idea whose time has come.
Ghillar Michael Anderson led the March along with Chris Tomlins and others. That's Ghillar with Senior Sergeant Chris Meagher who smoothed the way to getting Frontier War wreaths laid at the AWM. Ellie Gilbert's vimeo of the event here. John Janson's photos here.
Over Easter 2016 Graeme,
was invited to the 40th anniversary of Confest. It took place on the property Confest owns near Moulamein about 80 km west of Deniliquin, NSW. He had been invited as a counter cultural festival elder. The 1973 Nimbin Aquarius Festival had been the inspiration for the first Confest on the Cotter River near Canberra and Graeme had been there.
He took along Arrernte elder, Uncle Chris "Peltharre" Tomlins, and together they used the occasion to talk up participation in the Close Pine Gap camp and action near Alice Springs later this year. For want of any others with a direct relation to country, Chris was recognised and respected as the Aboriginal elder in residence.
Confest is an amazing and enduring counter cultural phenomenon.
6000 in attendance in a far flung camp among ancient river gums along the Edward River. Minimalist infrastructure, no grid electricity, no phone reception, no amplifiers, no headlining performers. But plenty of participation, workshop sharing, art and spontaneity. The spirit and style of Cotter 1976 lives on and more so.
They set up camp and the Close Pine Gap banner and flag rig advertised their presence and their cause - the call of the Arrernte people to close the US spy base which occupies their land with neither consultation nor consent.
They spoke at large fire ceremonies, at workshop circles and through many a conversation at their camp, their's being the most overt political cause present.
Uncle Chris endeared himself to all when he led ceremony of healing for the river which, like long stretches of the Murray, is now livid green and toxic with blue-green algae.
They got noticed. Got heard. Commitments were made. The mobilisation for closing Pine Gap is rolling.
Graeme convened an open mike SpeakOut about endless wars and escalating spending of the Australian Defence Force outside Defence HQ, Canberra, on 18 March 2016. It was part of the Global Day of Action on Military Spending (GDAMS).
The event was intended to voice citizens' concern about the recently released Australian Defence White Paper which commits tax spending of a minimum of $195 billion over the next decade, and maybe a $1 trillion over two decades, the greatest expansion of the Australian armed forces since World War 2.
Alas the action was lashed by rain and buffetted by winds so strong, banner poles broke. When the PA failed we gave up. But we did not go unnoticed.
The big project for Peacebus captain, Graeme Dunstan, for 2016 is the campaign to close the U.S. spy base at Pine Gap, near Alice Springs, Northern Territory. This will include a national conference by the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) in Alice and also activist camps during September - October. FaceBook group here.
Graeme spent much of February preparing by painting flags and banners for the event.
Graeme supported a blockade of the military base at Swan Island on 25 February. This is (or was?) the training base for 4 Squadron Special Air Services Regiment and the Australian Secret intelligence Service. These are the front line assassins of Australian military's was of terror and the base is regarded as top secret; so secret that it cannot be named in Parliament.
The blockade was the seventh annual. This one was convened by Graeme's activist friend, Greg Rolles. He's the one holding the sign.
In September 2014 as part of Swan Island Peace Convergence, Greg had led seven others to invade the base at dawn. They had announced their presence on Radio 3AW talkback. Four were apprehended by military personnel, likely SAS, slam tackled to the ground, wrists cable tied behind backs, hooded, stripped and abused physically and verbally before being handed over to Vic Police.
The "rendition" was likely the very stuff in which the SAS were training state police counter terrorism units and Greg's witness had made it visible. The abuse has been the subject of an internal ADF inquiry though no guilt was acknowledged and no offenders named. Greg had also read his witness in the state record when pleading guilty to charges of trespass and had been treated leniently by the magistrate. But the action had cost him. He is now offically diagnosed has having Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
The blockade which included four other arrestees from 2014 - Sam Quinlan, Teigan Evans, AJ Tonder and Jasmine Pilbrow - assembled at the gate, the only vehicle entry to the Island, at 6.30 am. No notice had been given. The expectation was that we would block the morning base traffic. Three including Greg were willing to be arrested.
At once the duty security officer, making no complaint, closed and locked the gate. After about 45 minutes a police patrol car arrived. The officers made polite inquiries - "How long to you intend to stay?" - but made to objection to our presence. A man wearing a Commonwealth lanyard approached and asked if he could go to work. When denied he withdrew without rancour. Four other cars were later seen Uturning away. But as base traffic goes, that was it for the morning.
By 10 am it was obvious that our blockade would not be challenged. It was also obvious that Swan Island now longer hosted an operating military training base. 4 Sqd SASR and ASIS had decamped. Like bats they had fled from the light of our determined witness. Victory to the people!
Peacebus captain, Graeme Dunstan, begins his nomadic activism by participating in the annual Invasion Day/Sovereignty Day celebrations at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra.
Both the Invasion Day parade from Garema Place, Canberra, on 26 Jan and the corroboree which followed at the Tent Embassy were powerful. A glory of flags. Great spirit. Arrente elder Uncle Chris Tomlins (in lounge chair) and Graeme got to talk up the Pine Gap action next spring.
Maybe 500 people, including lots of young people, plugging in. They came from the Australian Student Environment Network national meeting in Victoria and also from a garden planter box project by folks associated through Canberra's Environment Collective. The Tent Embassy rang with the merry sound of hammers, idealism and young love.
Roxley Foley, son of Gary, is now established as caretaker there and he is supported and affirmed by all the local elders. Generational change.
By contrast the free Australia Day eve concert at Parliament House was a fizzer. Washed out by a quick passing thunder storm, but it lacked an audience before that; this a big contrast to former years when hunreds of Ozzie flag draped teenagers streamed through the Embassy enroute to binge on tricked up nationalism.
There were also big Invasion Day parades in Melbourne, Sydney and, first time ever, Brisbane.
Big grassroots cultural shift happening re Australia Day; this as the consequence of the widening spread of grassroots recognition of the Frontier Wars. The Cultural Wars launched by former PM Howard now utterly vanquished.
For the Christmas, New Year and summer holiday season, when activism and activists retreats, Graeme hangs out on the bush block of his Eureka mate, David "Frame" Robertson, near Linton which is about 35 km west of Ballarat, Victoria. There he communes with the birds, meditates on the rising sun, yogas with its warmth on his skin, does maintenance with the help of Frame on his van and occupies himself painting banners and flags.
He delights in the summer heat art making and spends long hours in Frame's spacious shed, head down, brush in hand, meditating on color and line and listening to audio books. Another season with Tolstoy's War and Peace read by Neville Jason.
The banners and flags are for the activist year ahead. This year the projects also included banners and flags made at the request of a Fijian friend for a Pacific Island Showcase and Oceanic Kava Collective lounge at Canberra's National Multicultural Festival 12-14 February.
Graeme's core activist art project was the painting of a banner for the 2016 Close Pine Gap campaign which will culminate in spring with an activist camp and a blockade of the U.S. spy and drone targeting base 18 km south of Alice Springs. Painbted as an act of reverence - broadwinged challenge to country of Langi Ghiran, Red Tail Black Cockatoo, my totem. All graphic design courtesy of the amazing Somerset Bean.
Graeme was in Ballarat for what he calls his Eureka season. Since 1998 it has been part of his annual east coast migratory pattern. Each year he selects, with a little help from his friends, the season's face of tyranny, makes up a cardboard effigy of it and burns it at dawn on 3 December at the Eureka Stockade Memorial. For the commemoration of the 161th anniversary of the Eureka rebellion he burnt an effigy of the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Peter Dutton. Report here. Media here.
Graeme presented an open mike SpeakOut @ Defence HQ, Russell, for Remembrance Day 11 November 2015 under the Australia-American Memorial.
A minibus of Sydney Syrians journeyed to the event but alas the weather was against us. It was a wash out. What's more disappointing the Peacebus PA failed and we departed the place sodden and unheard. Well not quite unheard. Bec Horridge was there with her mike recording interiews for broadcast on Radio 2XX. And the clear thinking, clear speaking Hanadi Assoud from Australian Students for Syria spoke well.
While in Canberra preparing for the event, Graeme attended a public presentation by the Australian Climate Security Panel on 28 October at the Australian Defence Force Academy. After he published this essay on Climate Change and Militarism .
Along with 3,500 others, Graeme participated in Burning Seed 2015, this a 5 day long temporary community in the Matong State Forest near Wagga, NSW.
It revealed itself to be an amazing counter cultural event; an evolution of the 1973 Nimbin Aquarius Festival via Confest, 90s bush doofs and Burning Man USA. The sixth annual, it sold out. Lots of young people, hipsters, 70% were Burn newbies.
Lots of creativity, costume and nakedness. Popular were LED lights by night and bare breasts and form hugging short shorts by day. No main stage. A big circle witness of an effigy burning was the central event. Lots of workshops offered. Great vibe. Happy campers. Sexy.
Most astonishing as a cultural phenomenon in this time of peak capitalism was the absence of vendor stalls - nothing for sale on site. Instead the event has a gifting economy. People bring stuff to give and share. Hugs were going for free, massage too. Some set up doof venues, others offer music jam workshops and sing along concerts; one brings home brewed beer and another sets up gin and tonic cocktail venue themed on green and mint.
Themed on "Revolution" the event was sybaritic to the core. Peacebus's colourful banners proclaiming "End the US Alliance" made the only overt political statement and were well received. Also well received was the affirmation generously given to the Peacebus captain as a "living legend".
Graeme, participated in the No Australia War on Syria Rally along without 80 others in Sydney Town Hall Square on Sunday 13 September 2015. Small and feisty it was organised by the Hands Off Syria crew . Graeme had been invited to speak and had intended to support the rally with the PA and banners of Peacebus. But that morning Peacebus, all loaded up for action, refused to start and Graeme was obliged to go by train and disappoint the rally organisers. Such lovely warm people these Australian Syrians! Forgiving and articulate.
Above the wonderful Reme Sakr addresses the rally. The graphic beneath is courtesy of the noble Somerset Bean.
Graeme chose not to speak at the rally for there were plenty of others naming the lies and making eloquent calls for peace and the crowd was weary. His satisfaction was to be honoured by the noble defender of Syria and bane of US propagandaists, Dr Tim Anderson, who had just returned from another visit to Syria. As Graeme sat resting his sore hip while the rally assembled, Tim greeted him and, without another word, knelt beside him and put a rubber bracelet on his wrist - red, white and black bands with green stars. A friend of Syria. Yeah!
Graeme was in the Rockhamptom, Central Queensland, for over six weeks in June -July preparing resistance to the 2015 Talisman Sabre US-Australian war rehearsals and activating at the nearby Shoalwater Military Training Area. Perversely peace activists welcome Talisman Sabre as an opportunity when, with all those US boots are on the ground and the media of militarism is focussed, to be visible in resistance and to speak up and speak out for peace.
This is done with a call to a national Peace Convergence at Rockhampton. The sixth bienniel, this was a mix of speak outs, debates, concerts, parades, blockades and non violent direct actions aimed at disrupting the war rehearsals, getting noticed and creating counter narratives.
We were few, no more than 50, but we worked well together, full of faith and courage and got noticed certainly locally and regionally; also nationally and internationally. Sixteen "Peace Pilgrims" (we had aspired to 100+) in six different groups trespassed into the training area seeking spiritual challenge, encounter and dialogue. They were arrested, held overnight in the Police watchhouse, fined $500 and had their possessions confiscated - all this for the opportunity to face the Rockhampton court and media cameras and bear witness for peace. They spoke so well. See and listen here and here.
Of the peace pilgrim teams far and away the most successful at getting noticed were three Quaker Grannies - Helen Bayes, Dawn Joyce and former WA Greens Senator, Jo Valentine - who entered the Training Area a mere 10 meters and, dressed in 18th century Quaker gear, set up a table and chairs and offered the ADF tea, scones, lamingtons and peace talks. David Bradbury recorded the encounter. The story captured the news and the photo below went virual on FaceBook.
The Rockhampton Peace Convergence also included a public lecture by the international president of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Professor Kozue Akibayashi, and the world premier screening of David Bradbury's latest movie, War on Trial. This documents the Ploughshare trial in Rockhampton court during August 2013 in which Graeme defended himself.
Building relationship with the local traditional owners, the Darumbal, is part of the action over the years. Rockhampton Peace Convergent activists are determined that, when they drive the military from the Shoalwater Bay Training Area (over a million hectares including coastal rain forest and coral marine parks), custodianship will be returned to the Darumbal. To this end Graeme helped out with Rockhampton NAIDOC Parade and Expo by painting a banner with the Gurridalla Dancers.
Peace Convergence 2015 began by celebrating Independence from the USA Day on Saturday 4 July with an open mike SpeakOut at the gates of Western Street Barracks in Rockhampton. This is a fun event. Crowds stay away in droves and so do the military and cops. But there is nowhere to hide in the Barracks, the assembling supply base for Talisman Sabre, from Peacebus' blasting, conscience challenging PA. All good training and rehearsals for street oratory. Here is Graeme talking to WIN Tv.
Here is Graeme's rant against the US alliance published in Brisbane's West Ender 29 May. Here it is as a Peacebus blog. Here the Peace Convergence most recent media alert.
Peace Convergence 2015 finished with a defence of Havachat, the drop in lounge warehouse/shop front space in East Street, old Rockhampton's premier shopping street. Courtesy of the proprietor Chris Hooper, Havachat served as an organising base for Peace Convergence 2015 and while we were there, Council Ordinace offices inspected and threatening letters had followed. Graeme published a persuasive letter in defence of Havachat to the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin and Mayor Strelow was moved to overrule the eviction threat.
In truth the peace activists were respectfully received by the Rockhampton local media, this being an the advantage of campaigning in provincial centres - the media outlets are much more accessible. Here is a letter which was drafted as Graeme's parting shot to the Morning Bulletin.
After his Anzac efforts, Graeme did some rest and recreation in the Rainbow Region. He hurried north to be there in time for Nimbin Mardi Grass, the 23rd annual. He had been there at the birth of the event and subsequently put a lot of time and energy into producing the Mardi Grasses of '94 - 98. Now he is an elder watching from the margins, amazed and delighted by how well the event works despite torrential rain and cop roadside tongue swab cannabis testing.
Anarchism at work. People make the MardiGrass their own and create art. Great vibe. That's the Big Joint bouncing at the 4:20 Rally on Saturday 2 May and below Graeme shares a bench with three other elders of resistance from left, Benny Zable, Ciaron O'Reilly and John Jiggens.
Graeme was based at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy February in Canberra through April preparing for the inaugural Frontier Wars Storytelling Camp, the fifth annual Anzac Peace Vigil @ the Australian War Memorial 24 April and the Lest We Forget the Frontier Wars March to the AWM on Saturday 25 April. The Storytelling Camp attracted about 30 participants and was revealed shameful horror and cover up. The Anzac Peace Vigil attracted about 160 participants was beautiful and deeply moving.
The Frontier Wars March was frustrated by aggressive policing and poor leadership. That's Vince Duraux all painted up for the "Challenge to Country" at the Peace Vigil. Next day at the Frontier Wars March a racist cop tried to silence him with an attempted arrest and tasering. A report coming. Meanwhile here is a teaser from Fee Plumley of the Big Red Bus who interviewed me at the March.
Graeme put out flags for the 11th annual TJ Hickey Rally and March. Sixteen year old TJ Hickey died of police pursuit and ever since the NSW Police have been in denial and cover up mode. This year the NSW Police were particularly arrogant and aggressive, as if resentful that the Hickey family and their supporters had dared to persist in their call for justice even though the NSW Police were conceding no truth and no responsibility. The cops tried censoring the banners we had on display, no accusations of police murder permitted. Honorable elder Ray Jackson had been frustrated at every turn by the NSW Police and their courts. But he persists. And his supporters resist. There was a TJHickey March despite the court order denying it. And there will be another next year. And one year soon there will be justice. Photos: Robert Kennedy.
Graeme was a witness to Corroboree for Sovereignty at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy 25-27 January 2015. A hundred or so Aboriginals and whites gathered with catering provided by the Rainbow Chai Tent from Nimbin which included Benny Zable and his flags. The Sovereignty Day March from Civic to the Embassy was supported by maybe 800 Canberrans (Jeff Bagnall's pic above). By contrast the annual Australia Day concert outside Parliament House the evening before was poorly attended. The Corroborree made plain a new spirit is moving in the land of Aboriginal Affairs (National Indigenous Times story here) and Ghillar Michael Anderson is the man to watch.
Graeme was in Victoria during December 2014 and most of January 2015 preparing for his year of activism by getting a replacement van roadworthy and registed (another Happy Wheels, another Mitsubishi Express but with diesel engine and airconditioning) and painting up a new set of flags.
Graeme, celebrated the 160th anniversary of the subjugation of the Eureka rebellion with a Eureka Dawn burning of an effigy of ASIO boss, Duncan Lewis, at the Eureka Stockade Memorial in Ballarat on 3 December 2014. Media here. Report here. FaceBook album, Making a Cardboard Effigy, shows the effigy sculpture as it has evolved.
During November 2014 Graeme was in Canberra organising for 2015 Anzac Peace Vigil. He used the opportunity to SpeakOut against the new powers of arrest and detention recently given to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation in regard to public discussion of "security intelligence operations". Here Graeme's letter to the Director General of ASIO, Major General Duncan Lewis AO DSM CSC.. SpeakOut report here.
Graeme spoke at the Byron Forum of Saturday 18 October, with the terrorism of the Australian Special Air Service Regiment in his sights. Forum media here. Here his talk on BAY-FM's Elephant Room 14 Oct.
He was also invited to speak at the Byron Freedom Rally in Railway Park, the next day. Here is what he had to say:
'The treatment of peace activists by troopers of 4 Squadron SAS Regiment on their Swan Island training base has shown that the SAS have brought their wars home with them as normalised brutality. The recent changes to Australia's national security laws ensure that the conduct and operations of the SAS will be concealed with even more secrecy. This combination of brutality and unaccountability has opened the way to state-sponsored terrorism both abroad and at home.'
While PM Abbott was committing RAAF bombers and SAS troopers to another invasion of Iraq (and likely Syria too), Graeme was called to action along with forty others at the Swan Island Peace Convergence at Queenscliff, Victoria, 28 Sep - 3 October 2014. For two days the gate of the SAS base there was blockaded and all traffic base traffic stopped. On 2 October two "Citizen Inspection Teams" of four crossed the water in the early hours and entered the base.
After four hours of roaming, inspecting and SMSing, all were arrested, given notice of charges to come and released at the base gates where they were received with songs and cheers by the other witnesses.
The four apprehended by the Victoria Police reported that they had been treated civilly. The four detained by two "ADF" personnel (so described by police) reported that they had suffered a "coercive interrogation" also known in US military jargon as a "rendition". That is they had been assaulted, verbally abused, stripped, zip-tied, hooded and threatened with further assault.
Thus their witness had revealed what 13 years of war in Afghanistan has done to the Australian SAS Regiment. The SAS, taking their orders from US Special Operations Command, have brought the war home with them - the same violence and contempt for the rule of law here as practised there.
Nicola Paris' report When war comes home. Greg Rolle's Queenscliffe speech.
In mid August 2014 Graeme spent time in Rockhampton-Yeppoon, Queensland, talking up resistance to the Talisman Sabre military exercises which will take place again at nearby Shoalwater Bay July-August 2015, On Friday 22 August he was joined outside of Havachat, 20 East Street, Rockhampton, by peace activists, Greg Rolles and Jim Dowling, in a media event to launch the 100 Peace Pilgrims Project. Media statement here.
The media got picked up by Seven Regional News and the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin. And got a response from the Federal Member for Capricornia, Michelle Landry (National).
Our media event proved timely because on the same day the Queensland Premier was in Rockhampton urging the local mayors to encourage the Australian Defence Force, for jobs sake, to set up a permanent local military base. It was a beat up - no such base is likely - aimed at getting the mayors behind Talisman Sabre and to counter our dissent. Few we be but our truth does not go unnoticed.
On Sunday 3 August Graeme organised a commemoration of the cenetenary eve of the beginning of WW1 in Cairns. It was also marked the eve of the Australian government's $300 mill, 4 year propaganda campaign to militarise Australian history and culture and to normalise war. Report here. Media statement Lamenting the Militarisation of our History and Culture.
Graeme helped put out flags and banners for the NAIDOC Parade in Rockhampton, Queensland., on 11 July 2014. The flags were made up wotking with Darumbil reens in the weeks before.
This year's NAIDOC theme is "Serving Country: Centenary & Beyond" and it honours all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women who have fought in defence of country - from warriors in the Frontier Wars to the warriors who have served with honour and pride in Australia's military conflicts and engagements across the globe.
But on the day, the Frontier Wars got no official mention and NAIDOC became an alternative Anzac Day in which Aboriginal soldiers who had engaged in the Vietnam War and other wars of white imperialism were remembered and honoured. The militarisation of NAIDOC.
But Parade orgsaniser, Krisitina Hatfield had requested that Graeme's Frontier Wars March banners be included in the Parade and after one of them was rigged as a backdrop for the stage. Back lit by the sun, the message glimmered as the Last Post was played and an Aboriginal dancer died. Ancestor spirits grinning.
4 July and Independence from the USA Day was celebrated by Graeme and friends, Chris Hooper and Chris Coulter, at the gates of Rockhampton's Western Street Barracks, the supply base for military exercises at Shoalwater Bay. Media here.
Just three of us plus media crews. When we arrived to set up, the gates were at once locked and the gatekeeper together with all other base personell hid from view. Likewise the cops. Even our police liaison parked her unmarked car around the corner and out of sight. So there we were protesting militarism with a PA and a vivid bunch of banners, unopposed. The military in retreat.
'Twas timely because the Secretary to the Minister for Defence, Darren Chester, was in town the day before pushing for an upgrade of facilities and more military exercises there. Rockhampton Morning Bulletin report here.
At the behest of the local Darumbal NAIDOC organiser, Kristina Hatfield, Graeme helped to make up a bunch of Murri and Islander flags for the Rockhampton NAIDOC Parade 11 June working with teenagers of the Hatfield clan, sharing techniques.
That's the lovely Krissie under his arm and that's Jackie Mackay of ABC Capricornia Breakfast interviewing at a prepublicity media event which they organised.
Peacebus captain, Graeme spent to days in Nimbin during May catching up with Aquarian friends. He was planning to be present at the nearby Bentley CSG Blockade on 19 May when some 800 NSW police were to be marshalled to bust it. Didn't happen! The cops decided the task was too difficult and risky and the government decided to suspend the gas miner's license. Corporately corrupt government meets the rock of community resistance. On this fulcrum big changes will turn.
Above is the signage my daughter had designed for Peacebus but which was never displayed. Turned out to be inappropriate for the "gently Bentley" vibe. Check out this eloquent closure statement from local eco counsellor, Ruth Rosenhek.
The victory was in particular a victory and an affirmation for the old hippies who had laboured long through many campaigns to build this level of engagement and skill in community resistance in the Northern Rivers. Here are two of us, Paul Jospeh and I, original Aquarians in the Camp Liberty carpark on Sunday 18 April 2014. Stoned again.
Graeme spent most of March and all of April in Canberra organsing for the Canberra Peace Convergence 21-26 April 2014. FaceBook group here. Downloadable flyer here.
Above is a group photo from the assembly for the last event of the Convergence, the "Lest We Forget the Frontier Wars" Anzac Day March at the Australian War Memorial on 25 April. Great Peace Convergence and great culimation. Here Graeme's report. Here is Jasmine Pilbrow's account. Here that of Jim Dowling.
March in March, 15-21 March 2014 was an amazing anti PM Abbott social media protest phenomena and Peacebus was there to help out at MiM rallies in Wollongong (Stuart Park to the Lighthouse) and in Canberra (Old Parliament House to new Parliament House). About 2000 at each though the crowds soon dispersed after the speaking began. Above pic of Amelia, MiM organiser in the 'Gong, a total newbie to protest organising, at the Peacebus mike. At the Lighthouse organiser Nat, used it to lead the crowd in a wonderful impromptu rap or protest slogans. Great spirit. The Abbott government is doomed.
Graeme got the the date wrong and did his annual GDAMS SpeakOut @ Defence HQ, Canberra, a month early. All done at short noticed and in a mood of outrage that PM Abbott had given the greenlight to RAAF acquisition of the Lockheed Martin F35, the most expensive ever Oz armament procurement. He was happy to spruik alone and more than happy when four witnesses turned up, three of whom seized the opportunity of the open mike. Defence HQ is a great soundscape and our street oratory gets better and better. Consider it a dress rehearsal for 14 April. False alarm media here.
Graeme had an encounter with the demonic at the Sacred Fire at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra, on 22 January 2014. He had arrived there to install some art - 900 mm high letters which spelled out S O V E R E I G N T Y - for the Invasion Day celebrations 26 Jan. These he had made up with the help of Newtown friend, Bob Cooney. They are dedicated to the memory of the former matriarch of the Embassy, the late Auntie Isabel Coe. Photo above is of Jenny Munro, Isabel's sister, with the signage on the Block in Redfern on 21 December.
Intervening in an attack on a German tourist at the Sacred Fire, he became the object of an attack by a man claiming to be the Keeper of the Fire and his Bull Mastiff cross. He suffered extensive lacerations to forearms, left calf and scalp. Here the police news report.
Lots of stitches, staples, an ocean condolences and seven days in hospital followed. Although he was unable to participate in the Invasion Day commemorations personally, friends installed the art about the Sacred Fire and there it is much appreciated. The crazy Keeper was charged with assault and actual bodily harm and moved on. True friendships have been deepened.
On 28 December Graeme was in Melbourne and part of the Holy Innocents Procession organised by the Reverend Simon Moyle of the GraceTree Community in Coburg.
Holy Innocents alludes to the babies slaughtered by tyrant King Herod and the flight of Mary, Joseph and the new born Jesus as refugees. Our Procession remembered, lamented and vowed to resist the deaths of today's innocents killed in war and persecuted as refugees. We assembled at Victoria Barracks, paraded along St Kilda Road to Federation Square and then back to the Shrine of Remembrance where we attempted to lay a wreath and pray. Here is Simon Moyle's report.
Graeme collaborated with Dr Joe Toscano to produce the Reclaim the Radical Tradition of the Eureka rebellion celebrations in Ballarat on 3 December 2013. Above is the effigy of Maurice Newman, chair of PM Abbott's Business Advisory Council, which burned at dawn at the Eureka Stockade Memorial. Report here. Media here. Other photos by Takver here.
The Good Weekend, the colour supplement of the Fairfax newspapers published 23-4 November, carried a report on the Rockhampton Ploughshare Trial, written by Jackie Dent and titled War on Trial. The first national print media the resistance to the Talisman Sabre war rehearsals has ever had, Graeme is pleased with the report particulary because it describes and quotes from other faith based peace activists. Above the mugshot from the piece by photographer James Brickwood.
On 1 November he was present outside the Supreme Court of NSW standing, along with about 25 others, in solidarity with environmental activist, Jonathan Moylan. whoplead not guilty to a charge of disseminating false material likely to induce people in Australia to dispose of Whitehaven Coal shares. Good on him. To further support the campaign, Graeme has painted up a #standwithjono banner to the above design.
Graeme supported a Hands Off Syria rally in Martin Place on Sunday 13 October. Small, feisty, Assad government approved and done to support my anti-war friends Marlene Obeid and Tim Anderson. Here a YouTube,
He participated the Swan Island Peace Convergence blockade at the barrack gates of 4 Squadron Special Air Service at Queenscliff 22-26 September. Bearing witness to the crimes committed in our name and with our taxes by this cult of assassins. Above the moment when the gate was opened and 15 activist invaded the base. See report.
On Thursday 23 August Graeme was found guilty in the Rockhampton District Court to a charge of wilful damage to Commonwealth property arising from Bryan Law's Tiger Ploughshare action of 21 July 2011. Graeme had defended himself with the intent of putting on trial the Tiger Armed Reconnisance Helicopter and the wars it was designed to serve. Above a pic of the legal support team: the Reverent Simon Moyle (left) and his MacKenzie friend in court, Sean O'Reilly (right).
Part of the Peace Convergence 2011 resistance to the 2011 Talisman Sabre US-led war games, here are two YouTube videos edited by Bryan from police evidence: one of the action and the other of Graeme's subsequent interview by Rockhampton CIB . They were both played in the course of the trial, the latter twice.
Bryan died 26 March. Here Graeme's tribute to Bryan Law. Here his eulogies.
Here reflections of the trial by Sean O'Reilly. Here a statement to the court drafted by Graeme. Here the FaceBook event page for the Tiger Ploughshare trial.
Meanwhile here the trial website. Here media. Here the downloadable flyer (4.6 Mb)
Above the photo Graeme took of his Peace Pilgrim companion, Greg Rolles, blockading a convoy of 14 US Marine Humvees inside the Shoalwater Bay Military Training Area on 24 July 2013. Report here. Media here.
Also check out the reports on the Peace Convergence 2013 website. There is also a FaceBook page here: and also the media for Camp Peace Pilgrim
As part of a campaign to raise national awareness of the cost of the US military alliance and its wars in the lead up to Talisman Saber 2103, Graeme and and friends organised a 16 day, four city (Melbourne-Sydney-Brisbane-Rockhampton) tour of Vince Emanuele, former US Marine and two tour veteran of the Iraq war, now an organiser for Veterans for Peace in Chicago and National Board member for IVAW.
Here a collation of his public addresses,Tv and radio interviews. Above Vince poses on Bryan Law's PeaceTrike outside the Talisman Saber Military Open Day at Rockhampton Showground 14 July. For Graeme the high point of the Talisman Saber 2013 resistance was Vince's address through the wire to the troops at Western Street Barracks, Rockhampton, on 15 July.
For 4 July and as part of the build for Talisman Saber 2013 resistance, Graeme organised an Independence from America Day celebration at the gates of Western Barracks inRockhampton, the TS13 supply base. Here a report.
Photo courtesy Chris Ison, Rockhampton Morning Bulletin
Well known for his past organising, Graeme was well received by local media and local cops when he arrived in Rockhampton. The above pic from a photostory in Rockhampton Morning Bulletin 15 June.
On 1 June 2013 in Queens Mall, Brisbane, Graeme supported the solidarity rally for Bradley Manning in ,. A beautiful event with about 50 people participating. Pix above show Willy Bach of Stand Fast spruiking and the amazing Murray Gay on double base playing a fugue over Amy Goodman's War and Peace Report on Collateral Murder. And here is Andy Paine singing The Ballade of Bradley Manning.
12 - 22 May 2013 Graeme celebrated the 40th anniversary of the transformative Nimbin Aquarius Festival for which he was director. Photo above shows him beside Johnny Allen, his dear friend and co director, being honoured as Aquarian elders.
The commemoration comprised reunions of old friends, viewiings of recently shot or recovered original video footage, splendid concerts, a 2 day conference on the legacies of Aquarius hosted by Southern Cross University, and a wonderful Masquerade Ball. The many linked, open FaceBook page My Aquarius Story tells the story. Here is Graeme's gratitude as expressed on line in EchoNet.
On 24 April 2013 he helped organise the 3rd annual Anzac eve Peace Vigil and the Anzac Day Remember the Frontier Wars March. Here a lovely vimeo of the first recorded and edited by Ellie Gilbert. Here one of the 2013 Lest We Forget the Frontier Wars Anzac March.
For the Global Day of Action on Military Spending on 15 April, Graeme organised a Peacebus SpeakOut @ Defence HQ , Russell. Supported by Quaker friends from Silver Wattle Quaker Centre, it was a classic Quaker witness action and very powerful. See media. See report.
On 19 March Graeme supported two separate events which remembered the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the arrogance of the politicians who ignored the will of the people, and the disaster that followed. One was a lamentation by Canberra's Chorus of Women singing in the foyer of the Parliament. The other was a lantern vigil by the Lake that evening. Campaign for an Iraq War Inquiry.
While in Sydney Graeme met up with Vince Emmanuele a Chicago organiser for the IVAW. Building bridges for future exchanges with war resisting vets from US.
For the past 4 years Peacebus has been supporting the call for justice for the Hickey family, their 16 yr old son TJ killed by police chase in 2004. Nine years on the rally on 14 February 2013 was smaller in number but feisty in its march to the Parliament. Here an album of pix.
On Sunday 10 Feb 2012 Peacebus supported the Hands Off Syria! rally which assembled at Sydney Town Hall and marched to the US Consulate in Martin Place. Peacebus helped with PA and signage for the feisty crowd of maybe 500 pro Assad all vocal in contesting the US/Nato lies. This the only Sydney protest against the Israeli bombing of Syria and whitie lefties few on the ground. Tim Anderson was a principle organiser and he much respected by the Sydney Syrian community for his research and commentaries on the US proxy war on Syria. Peacebus honoured to name him as a friend. YouTube here.
Graeme likes to begin his activist year at the sacred fire of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra celebrating Sovereignty Day on 26 January. Compared to previous year, the 40th anniversary of its founding, when an accidental protest ambushed PM Gillard and gave the sovereignty movement international publicity, it was a small and quiet event. Flags at half mast and a memorial service was held for the late Auntie Isobel Coe, former Embassy matriarch who died 10 November. Michael Anderson and Les Maezler convened a meeting of Sovereign Union there but apart from agenda setting, little progress on the sovereignty issue was made.
Over Christmas 2012 Graeme took in refuge in a mate's shed on a bush block near Linton (40km west of Ballarat) Victoria where he was been very productive painting new banners and making stuff. Included was a banner for Holy Innocents Peace Procession 2012, from Victoria Barracks to Federation Square and back, 28 December. Organised by GraceTree Community, Coburg. Here media. Here a report.
On 10 December 2012 Graeme supported another occupation organised by the good folk of WACA, WikiLeaks Australian Citizens Alliance, this time the occupation of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Melbourne. A dozen people occupoed the foyer while another 4 spruiked outside. Again police made no arrests and made no move to carry protesters out. Report and pix here.
He enjoyed commemorating the 158th anniversary of the Eureka rebellion in Ballarat on 3 December. Been at it for 14 years and reckons this the best yet. Media here.. Included was the burning of an effigy of Major General Michael Krause AM, door opener for the Marines in Darwin. Report here. Takver's pix here.
On 26 November 2012 Graeme supported an occupation of the US Consulate building at 553 St Kilda Road, Melbourne, by the good folk of WACA, WikiLeaks Australian Citizens Alliance. Some six people dressed in orange coveralls desported themselves on the floor of the foyer while another six paraded outside the building. Police made no arrests and were in no hurry to carry protesters out. The Peacebus PA proved effective and the action was well received by passing motorists and pedestrians. Report and pix here.
So appalled was he by the Israeli attack on Gaza that Graeme painted up a brace of Palestinian flags to array in support of the Gaza rally which took place in Melbourne Friday 23 November. Some 500 people turned out for it and it was a feisty crowd. Great speeches. Great spirit. Here pix.
On 6 November 2012 supported the Melbourne Cup Day Welcome the Refugees Picnic and BBQ outside the Maribrynong Detention Centre. It was a day of goodwill and good companionship. Solidarity made tangible. How despicable by contrast the Gillard government, which goes about punishing the poor people fleeing the wars the US military, with our help, is wagingin their homelands.
Graeme participated in the Swan Island Peace Convergence 24 - 27 September. Big success! For two days we (25 adults and about 12 kids) blockaded the gates of the Swan Island SAS/ASIS base. A triumph for non violent direct action. No arrests! See YouTubes here. Story by Simon Moyle here.
And here are Graeme's worries about the Special Air Services Regiment, which has evolved during 11 years of war in Afghanistan into a terrorist force which operates globally and beyond any accounting to the Australian people or their Parliament, taking its orders directly from US Joint Special Forces Command. Of all the evil fruit to come from that war, says Graeme, this is the most pernicious.
For two months, July through August 2012, Graeme was in Darwin, on the ground and agitating against the establishment of a US Marine base there as part of what he called a Peacebus Mission to Darwin. Apart from actions of witness with occupations of public place with banner rigs, his 'prophetic voice' got heard via a series of letters published in the NT News. Here is an index of Mission to Darwin blogs. While trekking south he wrote a Postcard from Darwin which was published by the Washington based, Institute of Policy Studies.
Graeme's stay in Darwin coincided with Operation Pitch Black, the biennial air war games that this time around involved 94 war planes from the US and its Pacific allies and vassals. Preparing for war with China. The all hours jet noise of take offs and landings at RAAF base Darwin was oppressive and a warning of worse to come with the US Marine base build up. Outrage!
On 12 July Graeme framed with flags the MUA rally at Stokes Hill Wharf which announced the MUA's opposition to the federal Government proposal to make Muckaty a nuke waste dump and Darwin a nuke waste port. Sydney Morning Herald report.
His first "Base Watch" action was a colloboration with Darwin's Base Watch: a celebration of Independence from the USA Day with a Speak Out at the gates of Robertson Barracks on 4 July. Above Base Watch organiser, Justin Tutty, spruiks. Media statement here. YouTube here. Report here.
Graeme was chanting "Ja Madekka!" ("Yes! Freedom!") with a small group rallying in solidarity with the West Papuans independence movement when the Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono came to Darwin and met with PM Gillard on 2 July. Above is our assembly outside the NT Parliament. We later moved to Mitchell Street and as near as the cops would allow to the Crown Hotel. To get the West Papauan flags noticed. 14 years jail for flying this flag in West Papua.
Graeme supported a small rally of anguish by local indigenous leaders outside the Northen Territory Parliament on the fifth anniversary of the NT Territory Intervention and its imminent renewal and repacking by the mining industry owned Gillard government as Stronger Futures. The biggest land grab since the Durack family arrived in the Territory in 1860s. That figure 42,824 is how many people signed a petition for its revoking. Ignored of course. Anger, despair and powerlessness was the message. "what more do we have to do to be heard?" was the plaintive cry.
Graeme announced his arrival in Darwin on 12 June by going to the gates of Robertson Barracks. Next evening he joined up with a local anti-nuke activist and ambushed an ALP fund raiser at which the federal Minister for Education and uranium mining turn coat, Peter Garrett, was guest speaker. Report here.
The Peacebus Mission to Darwin was launched at Lavarack Barracks, Townsville, Queensland on 5 June. Above the Townsville Morning Bulletin report. Here the media statement for the event. Here Graeme's report. Here a response in the Marine Corps Times.
Peacebus captain, Graeme Dunstan, is presently in Townsville, Queensland. On Thursday 31 May he supported a rally in support of Julian Assange outside the electoral office of Ewan Jones, Member for Herbert (Liberal). Notices on Facebook and IndyMedia attracted 16 concerned citizens Plus WIN Tv and ABC Radio North Qld. Here the report with audio and pix. Also Magnetic Times report.
Graeme was head down in Townsville for over a week 27 May - 3 June 2012, painting a new Peacebus mural in preparation for the launch of the Peacebus Mission to Darwin. Above the design courtesy Softly Dunstan of Mighty Nice.
Along with his faith based peace activist mate, Bryan Law of Cairns Peace by Peace he appeared in Rockhampton court on 10 May. Together they seized the opporunity for a Speak Out against military spending and the war on Afghan people and were received by the local media as visiting celebrities. See Morning Bulletin 10 May (above), Morning Bulletin 11 May 2012 and the AAP story.
Photos above courtesy Thorsten Jones
Graeme was in Nimbin for the annual Mardi Grass last 4 - 6 May, the 20th anniversary. Big crowd and beautiful weather. The cops low key and the promise of an occuption of the Police Station unfulfilled. Many welcoming hugs for Graeme and he got to help marshal the Parade without challenge. Echo Net Daily report.
He participated the Putting an End to War 2012 convocation at the Silver Wattle Quaker Centre. On 26 April he was part of an action by faith-based peace witnesses there assembled, to deliver a letter to the base commander of HQ Joint Operations Command demanding the Australian military quit Afghanistan. Here is a podcast of a program broadcast by Adrian Glamorgan on WA community radio RTR.Fm based on interviews recorded there. Photos here.
On 25 April 2012 Peacebus supported Michael Anderson and the second annual Lest We Forget the Frontier Wars March which he led at the tail end of the Canberra Anzac Day March. The valiant few and magnificent. An idea whose aim has come, spectators applauded warmly. Above the massacre naming placards carried. Here report in NZ Herald.
Graeme was lantern master for the second annual Anzac eve Peace Vigil at the Australian War Memorial 24 April. See vimeo of the first one here. A deeply moving beautiful event, visually and aurally. Report and photos to be posted.
Graeme's contribution to the Global Day of Action on Military Spending, 17 April 2012, was a Speak Out under the 'rabbits ears' at Defence HQ in Canberra. Media here. Report here.
On 17 February Graeme attended a public forum at UTS called in support of Julian Assange by the Support Assange & WikiLeaks Coalition. Chaired by Mary Kostakidis, speakers included historian Humphrey McQueen, Greens Senator Scott Ludlam, Julian's mother, Christine Assange, and his lawyer, the lovely Jennifer Robinson.
The crowd of maybe 400 overflowed the venue. The Forum was also live cast to internet and twittered. Green Left Weekly report here. The support of Greens Senators Scott Ludlam and Lee Rhiannon (also present) was loudly affirmed. By contrast the pusillanimous attitude of the Gillard government drew contempt. Out of touch and marching to the beat of the US war drum, doomed it is and good riddance.
The above stencil art by I Skirka was found in foyer. Julian Assange as the Valentine of the people!
Graeme put out flags and provided PA for the 14 February 2012 8th anniversary of the police killing of 16 year old Redfern boy, TJ Hickey.
A hundred strong with lots of media and lots of bad feeling towards the cops who, when not verbally abused, were snubbed. Voices raised in grief and anger. The Hickey family are supported in their grief and their demand for justice by the inner city left; anarchists bearing "Fuck the Police" banners, dodged objecting cops. See Green Left Weekly report here. Photo above posted to Twitter by Rachel Evans. Peacebus signage design courtesy Softly Dunstan, beloved daughter.
Graeme put out flags for the 40th anniversary of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy on the lawns of Old Parliament House 26-29 January. And along with his flag deploying comrade in arms, Benny Zable, dressed the Sovereignty Day march from ANU to the Tent Embassy via Parliament House. A vision splendid.
Beautiful camp, great spirit. A small side protest, the accidental ambush of the Prime Minister Gillard and side kick Opposition Leader Abbott, spooked security and the unbecoming Tv images of Gillard being dragged away went around Australia and around the world. Chance or a gift from the ancestors? Suddenly Aboriginal sovereignty was national news again and the Tent Embassy doing its magic in the way it did 40 years earlier. Pic above: the Sovereignty Day march Canberra 26 January courtesy Marie Jack.
On 7 January 2012 he supported the Occupy Wonthaggi Speakers Forum.
At dawn on 3 December 2011 Graeme celebrated the 157th anniversary of the Eureka Rebellion with the burning of an effigy of disgraced media baron Rupert Murdoch. See media. In support of Dr Joe Toscano and the Reclaim the Radical Tradition of the Eureka Rebellion project of the Anarchist Media Institute. A wondrous event. Report here. Takver pix here.
Above radical historian Humphrey McQueen speaks at the Occupy Capital Hill rally, outside Parliament House while US President Obama spruiks for war within, 17 November. Report here. Pip Hinman's YouTube slideshow here.
Based on the design he developed for the aborted Obama visit of 2009, Graeme made a small fleet of cardboard drones for this one. Here above the first unveilled sans tail fins 16 November 2011.
Graeme journeyed Canberra to Sydney in expectation he would be supporting the Re-Occupy Sydney rally of Saturday 5 November with PA and banner rigs. NSW Police of various kind conspired to frustrate this intention. Here the story.
Sonia Qadir speaking at Troops Out Rally 8 October in Sydney Town Hall Square, in the background the banner design courtesy of his daughter, Softly Price of Mighty Nice.
Peacebus.com captain, Graeme Dunstan, supported the "Troops out of Afghanistan/No more US wars" rally in Sydney, Saturday 8 October. He painted up the banner above and sewed up a set of peace flags for it using his daughter's designs and her shed. Ten years of war in Afghanistan. Only 50 people showed. No media. But it was an affirming and uplifting experience for those dedicated to peacemaking in these times none the less. Here Peter Boyle's photo album of the Rally. Graeme's report here Beautifully cut vimeo here.
He also made the above wreath for laying at the Sydney Cenotaph on behalf of Stand Fast. See media. In the end the RSL veto-ed the proposal and the wreath was carried in the parade and used to remember the dead outside the US Consulate in Martin Place. Here a YouTube of Graeme Speaking
On 9 September 2011 he attended and arrayed with banners for the Malalai Joya public meeting organised by the Sydney Stop the War Coalition in Marrickville Town Hall. Great feeling, standing ovation for this "not afraid to die" war resisting heroine.
About 400 people attended and $1000 was raised for Malalai to take back to Afghanistan. Best of all was the good feeling and cooperation amongst the various anti-war Left factions. This an affirmation that is renewed spirit in the movement to get Australian troops out of Afghanistan.
5-7 September Graeme journeyed to the Silver Wattle Quaker Centre near Bungendore NSW for a bit spiritual renewal and to hear the life stories and struggles of Radical Spirits who Turned the World Upside-Down as presented by peace activist Friend, Dale Hess. Above Helen Bayes, Silver Wattle director, and Ruth X.
A weekend retreat will take place at Silver Wattle 8-9 October to begin planning for the 2012 Anzac eve Peace Lantern Vigil which will take place at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. Inquiries: Annie 02 6282 4943. And also to be discussed is an associated National Non Violence Action Gathering proposed for Silver Wattle, 23-27 April 2012.
He supported the Max Brenner boycott in Newtown on Saturday 20 July. About 60 people chanting outside the chocolate shop till it closed its doors. Poking a stick at the Zionist hornet's nest indeed, the campaign is sure drawing out the supporters of Israel, right or wrong. Hoorah for Bob Brown for refusing to be bought or intimidated.
During June and July he was in Rockhampton serving as convener of Peace Convergence 2011, the popular resistance the bienniel US-led war games (Exercise Talisman Sabre) at nearby Shoalwater Bay.
For his troubles he was arrested and charged as Bryan Law's accomplice in the ploughsharing a brand new, Oz army Tiger attack helicopter at Rockhampton air base, 21 July 2011. Here his Peace Convergence 2011 report. Hear Graeme's statement to the Rocky CIB, 22 July. Here a partial blog about life with Bryan @ Franz Jaegerstaetter House, 22 Buckle Street Rockhampton.
For Peace Convergence Graeme was based at Franz Jaegerstaetter House in Park Avenue, Brisbane and his first job there was to paint a new, Peace Convergence mural for Peacebus.com. On 9 June he unveilled the mural at an action at Western Street barracks, Rockhampton. Photo courtesy, Chris Ison, Morning Bulletin. The design courtesy of his daughter Softly Dunstan of Mighty Nice has designed. Here her hand at work.
On 14 May Peacebus.com supported the 2011 Northern Rivers Guardians' rally against Coal Seam Gas Mining in Murwillumbah, NSW, with flags and banners. A big turn out, two thousand people on the street and coming from all over, farmers and greenies in a new and very determined alliance. Here a prophecy: resistance to coal seam gas mining will redefine and re-Earth grassroots politcs in Australia. It will marginalise the ALP and give birth of something new, potent and responsive to the demands of the times.
On 1 May Peacebus.com was in Nimbin to help marshal the 2011 Nimbin Mardi Grass Parade. He put out flags and banners and also got back pack puppets dancing as Sea Shepherds. YouTube here.Pix above Jeff Dawson.
The crowd assembles on top of Mount Ainslie in Canberra on Anzac Day eve, 24 April 2011, for the inaugural Anzac eve Peace Lantern Vigil. Media here. Report coming. Here Terry Quins pix.
Probably the most significant outcome of the Anzac eve Lantern Vigil was the Anzac Day march led by Michael Anderson, one of the original founders of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, to commemorate the dead of the Frontier Wars. This year they were turned away but Anzac centenary coming and its only a matter of time ... Here a beautiful vimeo recorded and edited by Ellie Gilbert.
Dr Sue Wareham speaks at the Peacebus.com Defund the Military SpeakOut as part of the Global Day of Action on Military Expenditure at Blamey Square, Defence HQ, Russell, Canberra, 12 April with the "Bugs Bunny" Australian - American Memorial about 30 meters away and directly to the front of the speakers. Quaker Davis Johnson to the right, Women in Black to the left. Report coming. Media here
By way of promoting the Anzac eve Peace Lantern Vigil, Graeme organised the Speak Out above and also assisted in organising a wine and cheese talk at Manning Clark House with Dr Marilyn Lake and Dr Sue Wareham speaking on the theme, What's Wrong with Anzac?
On 14 February 2011 Peacebus.com supported the seventh annual memorial Rally and March for TJ Hickey, the 16 year old Aboriginal boy, who died of police pursuit in Redfern 2004. Killer cops and a big cover up. But the Hickey family and their supporters will not rest. This despite ongoing police harrassment of the family. Aided by the Peacebus.com PA the crowd chanted as they moved through the streets of Redfern to the Police Station: "Police say accident. We say murder."
Photo above, Egyptian-Australian and survivor of Terror War torture in the dungeons of the Murarak regime, Mamdouh Habib, watched by his devoted wife Maha, speaks to the Egyptian Revolution solidarity and victory celebration at Sydney Town Hall 12 February. Peacebus.com proud to be there with PA to give Mamdouh's truth amplification. Photo by Peter Boyle. Not everyday one celebrates a revolution. Check out the colour and the joy in Peter's Facebook album.
Outside the Canberra Magistrates Court on 7 February 2011 Peacebus.com supported Auntie Jude Kelly, elder in residence at the Tent Embassy in her call for justice for her son Luke, who was arrested on Commonwealth Bridge for refusing a police directive while bearing a Koori flag in the Sovereignty Day Peace Walk on 26 Jan. He was subsequently remanded in custody for breaching bail conditions. After four nights in jail he was released on 8 Feb when it was revealed in the court that there were no bail conditions.
Peacebus.com supported the Sovereignty Day celebrations at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy on 25 and 26 December. Graeme put out the flags and lanterns in the photo above and got the letters S O V E R E I G N T Y erected.
Peacebus.com was in Melbourne to support the WikiLeaks solidarity action which assembled at the State Library 10 December 2010. A big and feisty protest against the London detention of Julian Assange who had had explicit condemnation by PM Julia Gillard. Julian Assange has sure hotted up the anti-war movement and opposition to the US Alliance. "In the Empire of Lies, truth is treason." Go WikiLeaks! See IndyMedia reports of national rallies. See Rap News performance.
On 3 December 2010 Peacebus.com commemorated the 156th anniversary of the Eureka Rebellion supporting the Anarchist Media Institute's Reclaim the Radical Spirit of the Eureka Rebellion and burning an effigy of PM Gillard, Widow Maker, at dawn at the Eureka Stockade memorial.. See media. See report.
Peacebus.com was outside the Geelong Magistrates Court 29 November to support the Swan Island Nine. See media. See Indy media report. See Jessica Morrison's reflections.
Peacebus.com was at the gates of Victoria Barracks, Melbourne, on 8 November 2010, speaking out against the deals being struck with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and US Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates, for the occupation of Australian military bases by US forces. See media. See report.
Peacebus.com was at gates of Puckapunyal Army Base speaking out on 5 November 2010. See media. See report.
Peacebus.com conducted a Stand Fast Speak Out outside the Bandiana Army barracks at Wodonga, Victoria, Friday 29 October 2010. See media. See Prime Tv report. See Graeme's report.
WA Greens Senator Scott Ludlam speaks to the media at the Peacebus.com organised Speak Out on the lawns of the Australian Parliament on the day the nine-year-too-late debate on the Afghan war began in the House of Representatives. See report. See media. Pip Hinman's report in Green Left Weekly.
Peacebus.com supported the Troops Out Rally at Sydney Town Hall, 8 October 2010, the ninth anniversary of the US led invasion of Afghanistan. Indeed Peacebus.com captain, Graeme Dunstan, was a speaker at it and he also painted a beautiful banner for it - design courtesy of his daughter, Softly Dunstan of Mighty Nice. Peter Boyle's pix. Rihab Charida's Press TV clip.
On 24 SeptemberGraeme the third in the campaign of Stand Fast Speak Outs, this time at the gates of Holsworthy Barracks. See media. See report.
He arrived in Sydney in turn to support a rally by the Sydney Refugee Action Coalition at the Villawood detention centre on 22 September.
Polite Force dealing outside the Nimbin Police Station during the Polite Peaceful Protest on Police Priorities, Saturday 11 September 2010.
In Nimbin on Saturday 9/11 he supported a protest organised by the Nimbin HEMP Embassy against the oppressive policing regime. As is the way with HEMP Embassy actions, it was a hoot. See Nimbin Wave illustrated report.
Photo: Anai Fien
He had come from Brisbane where he had organised a Stand Fast Speak Out against the Afghan War at the gates of Gallipoli Barracks, Enoggera, 9 September. See report in the Workers Bush Telegraph. More pix by Owain James. Pre-event media.
The first of the campaign of Stand Fast barrack gate Speak Out against the Afghan War took place outside the Lavarack Barracks in Townsville on 13 August. Here the media release and above the report in the Townsville Bulletin Saturday 14 August. Blog coming.
Graeme led a flag making project for NAIDOC Week in Rockhampton. Photo above from NAIDOC March in Rockie 9 July by Chris Ison of the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin. Report coming.
While there he made contact with peace activist friends there and did some plotting for resistance to the Talisman Sabre US-Oz war games at Shoalwater Bay next year.
On Saturday 19 June he was at the Jaggera Cultural Centre in Musgrave Park, West End, celebrating the 80 day Women's Peace Walk from Brisbane to Canberra. There he met Hamish Chitts, founder of Stand Fast, and with his assistance, changed the Peacebus.com mural.
Graeme came to Brisbane via The Dreaming where he found the Black History presentation by Land Rights activist, Gary Foley, inspired and inspiring. Above a photo and Gary and Graeme, first meeting in 30 years.
He had come from Rainbow Region and celebrating the 37th anniversary of the Nimbin Aquarius Festival which seeded so much counter cultural transformation in the district. He supported is Aquarian friend and fellow artful activist, Benny Zable, who was charged with trespass on Australia Day last. Photo above.
He came to Nimbin from a journey to Goodooga and a meeting with aboriginal elder, Michael Anderson, the last survivor of the founders of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra 1972, Australia's longest running protest. Michael was convenor of the New Way Summit on Aboriginal Rights which took place at ANU in Canberra 30 Jan to 1 February.
Michael was also one of the mob of young land rights activists who attended the 1973 Aquarius Festival in Nimbin. So it will be a meeting of Aquarian elders plotting a human rights/activist/ eldership gathering on his land there. Above Michael and Graeme with the flag that Graeme painted up based on the design of the flag flown at the founding of the Tent Embassy in 1972.
Above a flag raising at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy 28 April with elder in residence Auntie Jude Kelly, Shiralee Hood and Jude's two sons, Luke and Mica - an appropriate start for the Journey to Goodooga.
Graeme attended the Australian Quaker Centre on the shores of Lake George near Bungendore where he spent the Anzac Day weekend in retreat with a group of peace activist Christians interested in Putting an End to War. Such an affirmation for the heart and the spirit, he could not keep from singing!
There he did some plotting for peace; in particular some planning and cooridination for resistance to the 2011 US -Oz war games at Shoalwater Bay (known as Talisman Sabre) and a lantern presence at the next Anzac Day observance in Canberra. Viva the Anzac Peacemakers! Here an illustrated report.
Graeme was in Newcastle on 28 March for the fifth annual People's Flotilla Blockade of coal ship movement of Newcastle Harbour. The event was organised byRising Tide, the most active (in the sense of direct action) climate change resistance group in the land he helped out by rigging flags and banners in support. Maybe 300 people, lots of kayaks, lots of cops but no coal ships. Success! Everyday we stop coal exports is a day closer to stopping them forever.
He had come from Canberra where, on behalf of Stand Fast veteran's against against the wars, he had been preparing on an artful welcome for US President Obama, the Nobel Peace Laurette who promotes war. But Obama baled out.
Above the banner he painted up - design courtesy of his daughter, Softly Dunstan of Mighty Nice Studios, Sydney. And a prototype cardboard MQ-1 Predator Drone for the fleet he was planning to assemble. See On Making a Cardboard Drone.
Here the media for the aborted protest. Here the blog.
During December he was in and around Sydney helping organise amongst veterans resistance to the US wars on Iraq and Afghanistan. Based on three years at Duntroon 45 years ago he was "welcomed aboard" as a member/organiser of Stand Fast. He has been advocating a rally of veterans in Canberra on the Anzac Day weekend 2010.
He was witness to the climate change activism which manifested at the Helensburgh Climate Camp of 9-11 October 2009. See illustrated report.
During August he was in the Rainbow Region of NSW helping organise the resistance to the Repco Motor Rally through the Tweed Valley and beyond on 3-6 September. Success. See his report and also his blog of sorts.
Prime Minister Rudd came to Lismore on 24 August and the HEMP Embassy took the Big Joint to meet him. Peacebus.com was there in support of the Nimbin HEMP Embassy. See illustrated report.
Peacebus.com was a presence in Yeppoon-Rockhampton for the Peace Convergence and in resistance to the biennial US-Australian war games at Shoalwater Bay known as Operation Talisman-Sabre, 6 - 26 July.
He kept a blog of sorts. Anillustrated report is in the making.
Graeme Dunstan was Marshal of the 2009 Nimbin Mardi Grass Parade of Sunday 4 May. The Obama banner he painted up for it was designed by his "clever like a monkey" daughter Softly Dunstan and painted with the assistance of Mardi Grass volunteers, My Wiman, Raphael Bardin and Robin. Illustrated report.
As part of the Easter protests against the environmental destruction of the Barrick Gold mine at Lake Cowal near West Wyalong on 12 April 2009. See illustrated report. Peacebus.com blockaded the mine gate at shift change and Graeme later charged with obstruction.
Peacebus.com supported the fourth annual Peoples Blockade of Newcastle Harbour on 21 March 2009 with flags and banners. That day no coal ships left the Harbour, the biggest coal port in the world, because of our flotilla presence. Victory to the People! See Graeme's report Ending coal one day at a time.
Above is part of the Climate Action Summit crowd who circled the federal Parliament on 3 February, its first sitting for 2009. Peacebus.com was there.
Peacebus.com was also part of the Stop the Intervention Rally later that day and was in residence at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy 25 Jan to 5 February. See report. Below is Auntie Isobelle Coe at the sacred fire on the afternoon of 30 January.
Peacebus.com had travelled to Canberra from Wonthaggi in Victoria where he participated in protests against the building of a desalination plant near Wonthaggi. Another story of ALP-corporate corruption in these times, see report. Below a photo of the local activist on the jetty at San Remo, Victoria, 7 January 2009, in one of a series citizen initiated actions in resistance.
Before that Peacebus.com had assisted GM free protestersin an action outside the gates of Corio College in Geelong, Victoria, where Prime Minister Rudd and his Cabinet were meeting interested local citizens in a tightly controlled exercise in pretend democracy, 7 December 2008. See report.
Graeme had been invited to the two above protest actions by an activist whom he met at dawn on the 3 December 2008 at the Eureka memorial in Ballarat, Victoria amongst those who celebrated the 154th anniversary of the Eureka rebellion. There Graeme burned an effigy of Australian Federal Police Commissioner, Mick Keelty, in protest at the white wash by the dud Rudd government for his Terror War excesses under the Howard regime. See report.
2008 was a busy year of protest for Peacebus.com. On Saturday 1 November he supported his Newcastle Rising Tide friends to mount a climate change action at the Bayswater Power Station near Muswellbrook. He painted up the banner for the action. See illustrated report.
And before that he was in the Blue Mountains making lanterns and deploying flags for the Festival of Joy at the Katoomba Community Gardens on Saturday 18 October. Have flags and lanterns, will travel.
Graeme gets around. In Corrimal, Wollongong. On Saturday 11 October, he supported a local citizen action to reclaim a small patch of escarpment rain forest from inappropriate development by the late father of ICAC declared-corrupt property developer, Frank Vellar.. Photos posted..
He addressed the Environmentally Concerned Citizens of Orange (ECCO) on 24 September 2008 on the toxic consequences of cyanide leach gold mining. Orange citizens, already concerned about the overweening thirst of the Cadia gold mine, are faced with the prospects of another gold mine at near by Lucknow.
Graeme was outside Australian Federal Police headquarters in Canberra calling for the sacking of the Commissioner, Mick Keelty, on 19 September. Mick had been before the Clarke Inquiry into his Terror War policing under the former Terror War prime minister, John Howard. See report.
Graeme Dunstan under the banner he painted for the Newcastle Climate Camp rally 13 July 2008
Peacebus.com was an active contributor to the Climate Camp which took place in Newcastle 10-15 July. On Sunday 13 July a rally of 1000 people closed down the coal loader for 7 hours. Happy Wheels was stopped and searched by cops on two separate occasions. See Graeme's report
Graeme celebrated Independence from America Day in Byron Bay on 4 July with a small but feisty action. See 53 minute YouTube.
He celebrated the 35th anniversary of the Nimbin Aquarius Festival by convening an Honorable Elders camp under the Nimbin Rocks on 16-19 May. See illustrated report.
Graeme Dunstan at Honorable Elders Camp 19 May 2008
For the previous months of 2008 he has been on the road with Cyanide Watch, the direct action campaign to bear witness to the cyanide crimes of the gold mining industry and their suppliers.
In association with a video illustrated presentation on Zapista resistance in southern Mexico at The Carrington Hotel, Katoomba, NSW, on the evening of 11 April 2008, a Cyanide Watch action took place by the rail. See In Katoomba Cart Wheeling Cyanide Free.
There have also been Cyanide Watch actions outside the gates of the Barrick Gold mine at Lake Cowal, Easter Sunday 23 March and before that outside the Stawell Gold Mine in Stawell Victoria 19 March.
Here is a report of the Cyanide Watch was outside of Orica's HQ in Melbourne on Friday 29 February.
Peacebus.com began its 2008 actions by was assisting at the Sorry Day actions and celebration at the Tent Embassy on the days 9 through 13 February 2008.
Peacebus.com aims to contribute to the building of sustainable resistance to Earth destroying corporate greed. For insight, check out Peacebus.com praxis.
And in between actions of witness Graeme is a father and grandfather. Here above Iggy Bravo (5 years) and his brother Baxter Valentine Price (2 1/2 years) as superheros. And below his far away in Mexico grand daughter, Dixie Valentina Dunstan Valderrama, now 2 years old and presently visiting Oz.
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