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Friday, October 5, 2012

October 5. Day 279. They're back

 Earlier this week the Sovereign Tent Embassy at Musgrave Park was reduced to a charred mess.
At the time I thought that might be it. I was wrong.
"They can burn us down. They can blow us up but we'll be back," 51-year-old Julie Hopkins from Inala told me this morning.
Julie was boiling the billy for her second cup of tea when I walked through the park just after 6am.
She'd been up for more than an hour and had finished the washing up the 13 people who camped on site had generated the night before.
Her sister Zoe Fisher told me I should go and talk to Julie.
"She's the one doing all the work," Zoe said.
Julie hadn't been to the tent embassy before the fire.
"When I heard, I just had to come down and pay my respects," she said.
She was not alone.
"As soon as people heard about the fire they came from everywhere to donate stuff," she said.
The tent embassy is indeed back up and running and there is no sign of the fire. The park is pretty much as it has always been.
Julie said she regarded Musgrave Park as a spiritual home having grown up and gone to school in the area. She was part of the Commonwealth Games Protests in 1982 and will be back this weekend for the 30th anniversary commemorations.
She went and grabbed me a flyer and suggested I come back.
I might just do that. With luck, Julie might even make me a cup of billy tea.

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