"Canberra News, Views and Opinion"
[First Filed Oct 17, 2009]
Mount Ainslie was a glorious place to be this afternoon for a proud Canberran.
Victoria’s banjo country bused in to vilify our pagan community and Canberra turned up to shout them down, and laugh at them.
It was done with a laugh and a smile, resounding choruses of “We are Australian”, people dancing in their underpants, and men kissing to cries of “Heathen, Heathen” from the fundamentalists. (rejoined with proud shouts of “homo, homo” from the members of the crowd not wearing funny red tags).
Oddly, despite much advance media the police were not in attendance, so it was lucky the “Catch The Fire:” mob were not only outnumbered but also in general much older and frailer.
The anti-fundies had managed to gather in numbers around the Mt Ainslie beacon and after ten or so minutes of confrontation the fundamentalists, ringed by a looser crowd of Canberrans decided to retreat away, led by a man with a megaphone “speaking in tongues”.
I left just before three to update you all, hopefully it has stayed calm up there.
The Danes are understandably proud because when the Nazis came for the Danish Jews the Danes managed to evacuate the endangered members of their community to neutral Sweden.
In a smaller way I’m equally proud that Canberra turned out in good numbers to laugh at the forces of intolerance come to vilify members of our community.
Here’s some video and audio, not shot with a purpose built video camera sadly, but it gets across the spirit of the thing:
UPDATED: qednet has posted a more complete video account on the day on YouTube. It looks like I wasn’t the only one to wander off too early and the fundies got their moment on the beacon (not a comms tower).
ANOTHER UPDATE: The Age has picked up the yarn.
(Stills slideshow below)
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yay canberra. take it religious nutbars.
Superb.
WOW! Good onya for sticking to this bloke.
If I’d know this was going down today, I would have been out there in support!
Ha Ha – I got my arse out.
Yay!
Another fun part of it all was the bemused tourists wondering what the hell was going on and if we do this regularly.
Protesters in underpants always add a certain je ne sais quoi to a gathering.
johnboy said :
You should have told the tourists that this is normal every day life in Canberra.
What did you mean by “it was lucky the “Catch The Fire:” mob were not only outnumbered but also in general much older and frailer”?
I thought one or two of the elderly Christian women looked frightened.
Go Heathens! Go Heathens. Oh, oh, Go Heathens!
awww such a tiny, inadequate loudspeaker.
Did Danny boy even show up?
It certainly was a fantastic afternoon with an extremly eclectic group of people – heaps of luverly & very vocal folks from the gay community, plenty of pagans, assorted adult industry people (who put on a very nice BBQ and unveiled a fabulous new work of art by that well known artist Prickasso)the occasional burlesque dancer – and even a contingent from the ANU’s atheist society.
The mad pastor certainly managed to annoy a wide array of people and in doing so, unwittingly brought us all together for an afternoon of singing, dancing, kissing, laughter & general frivolity!
Well done!
The lack of a visible police presence was disturbing, it wouldn’t have taken much for it to have gotten out of hand.
Kudos to all who showed up. The sight of a conga line of homos, witches and assorted liberty lovers scything through the Catch the Fire mob was one of the funniest things I’ve seen in years.
Underpants man also put on a fine show.
And the nutjobs really do speak in tongues!
I’d like to complain to the proprietors of this website about a serious inaccuracy in the above story, that draws attention to the lax reporting standards shown here. Specifically in the sentence beginning: “Victoria’s banjo country bused in…”
The word is bussed.
Also I believe that the sentence is factually incorrect as well, as many of the protesters travelled here not by mechanical means such as busses, but were instead propelled interstate by a series of violent knee-jerk reactions. Sadly I have no film of this.
This looks like a great day with goods spirits.
It’s great that you have covered this Johnboy.
It seems like the rest of Canberra’s media have missed a fun story.
I thought one or two of the elderly Christian women looked frightened.
That doesn’t make sense. The christians came by their own admission to conduct Spiritual Warfare on the others and ‘target their arrorws’ at them. Only one party came with conflict in mind, everyone else was doing their own thing. If anyone should have been frightened it should have been the targets of the vengeful minions of the avenging diety (who that didn’t seem to be inclined to do much smiting, probably has his hands busy with the Greens when he gets to Canberra)
Oh dear Canberra…how very embarrassing…
ahappychappy
Yes lol,the short guy with the little horn at the emd LMAO
Well done!
Today Im proud to be a Canberran
have to say that i think the fundies did out number us, especially towards the end.
witches hats are a nice touch.
LOL! Score +1 Canberra lifestyle!!
Ari said :
at points some individuals (from both sides) did get a little too worked up, in each case i saw their mates (again on both sides) pulled them back and tell them to calm down.
even with the passion everyone brought, it was pretty civil. no pushing or the like. i did get a bit sick of the fundies trying to cast spells/bless on me.
the police did come by in unmarked cars every now and then, I suppose they just kept an eye on things in case it did get out of hand. i’m glad there was no visible presence, from past experience I think that just tends to antagonise the situation.
and wtf was up with the american guy reading from the gospel with a jewish prayer shawl?
these guys read too much old testament.
I was late to the party…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eRgwR_u1LI
Oops a better version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQH_pyMtDD0
pity I missed the early action
I hope your brief moment of pagan fun was worth it, because
You’re
all
going
to
burn
in
hell
for
eternity
.
What a great day, and what a great stand we made!
Danny Nalliah tried to exorcise me, and failed. For more info, see today’s Canberra Times!
I’ll post up some links to YouTube videos when I get around to uploading them.
And so much for the blood on the “altar”. I’ve seen more realistic blood in Wes Craven movies!