Cafe Locked Out in Bendigo

Cafe Locked Out

We have been moving so fast for so long, we haven’t had much time to reflect, but in November 2021, Damien and I went to Bendigo. Our plan was to set up a table and see if anyone wanted to come out and chat with us.

And they did. And we streamed it live.

One of the people we interviewed told us how horrible the op shops were being. People who worked there, who had grown up with them, were barring them from going in.

This led us to do the two op shop protests, which, a week later, saw the op shops drop their mandates.

Was it us? Who knows?

After this we would do a few more towns, unaware as we did, of how long the battle was before us.

Bendigo Nov 2021

We didn’t know how we were going to do it until we were there. We had no musicians with us, no jugglers, no prepared speeches.
But then, as we were setting up the show—well over an hour before we were meant to start—people began turning up. They would be both the audience and the show.
The pitch? As Barry, our great tech setup, and I walked around telling people that in the city, the media and Dan were saying the regional towns were happy and booming, we were here to see if that was true.
We’re going live for two hours, and you’re welcome to come up and tell your story.
And they did, and this was the show.
Damien and I took turns interviewing and meeting and greeting.
One young man I interviewed was a high school science teacher. In his ten minutes, it was clear that he loved his job, but that hadn’t helped. Passion, competence, and dedication weren’t enough anymore; now, compliance with the government was the prerequisite. His wife had lost her job too—she was in retail. He told me she’d won an award the year before, staff member of the year. Now, not only were they both unemployed, but they couldn’t even get into the op shops to buy clothes for themselves or their kids. None of the people who turned up could.
The charities set up to support the poor were now shunning them instead. In the city, I know people found that too, but out here, the people on the door checking the passports knew the people they were turning away. This is what our government was doing—dividing communities in an effort to crush the spirit of anyone who refused to comply.
As it grew colder, more people turned up. The last one told me he had been at home with his wife. They’d been watching us live on their phones, and she’d told him, “You have to get down there. You have to tell your story.”

So he did. His name was Aaron, a father of seven. On the back of his skull was a scar from where they had removed a tumor from his brain. He wore a lapel around his neck with a mask exemption, but he told us it didn’t help. He was a leper now, shunned by his community for not complying. He too couldn’t get into op shops, but the story he really wanted to tell was about his mother, who he claimed died shortly after receiving the shot.
It was clear he felt helpless to change anything that was happening to him and his family. It was clear that the trauma ran deep and was getting deeper.
And he was not rare.
This is where we are now. For the sake of our health, we are sacking nurses, teachers, train conductors—you name it. We have tradies who can’t enter hardware stores. We have young girls who can’t do their karate classes, as the ABC proudly states that Victorians have hit 90% double-vaxxed.
This crowd hated the media. They saw everything as lies. This is why we livestreamed—why we didn’t edit. We weren’t after little grabs to plug an agenda, but the stories of those brave enough to speak. And they did speak, each voice laying down a challenge to this tide of tyranny.
But would it be enough?
Then, after we were wrapping up, one woman—a single mum who had also lost her job as a teacher—came up and told me that in her town, just down the road, she’d found a venue to bring young mothers together. Despite the concept being only three weeks old, she already had over 150 young mums, who, out of view of those brown shirts among us, were warming to each other—talking and laughing as their children played, unaware of all the needles waiting for them.
Then another young man, also now unemployed, told me how he was setting up a youth group with other people because the youth needed it. He said, "You could see it in their eyes. As loose-limbed, they slunk down the footpath past the stores they couldn’t enter.”
“They need somewhere,” he said. “They need to relearn life skills.” And there was an anger in his eyes, a defiance.
Finally, we were hugged by the woman who had spread the word. “This is such a great crowd,” she said. “It’s amazing.” And because of the warmth of the crowd, it felt amazing.
In a park in the middle of Bendigo, they had come to hear some other truths—stories that were contrary to the mainstream narrative. A crowd from which people stepped forward and started sharing their own truths. And as a cold wind blew around us, instead of racing home to somewhere sheltered and warm, the crowd instead pulled the collars of their coats closer and held their ground as they spoke their truth. Each story hard but cathartic to hear—like drummers announcing to the approaching, inescapable war, that instead of everyone gladly handing over our liberty, as the mainstream media would have us believe, barricades were being erected and trenches dug.
Michael Gray Griffith