Castlemaine students were front and centre as youth anger at the impact that unaddressed climate change will have on their future hit the CBD streets of Melbourne on Friday.
Thousands of students from across the state joined Friday’s Big School Strike for Climate Action, rallying on the steps of Parliament House and marching down Collins Street through Melbourne CBD, while across the nation thousands more held similar demonstrations.
The protest began with a small group of students in Castlemaine, inspired by a 15-year-old Swedish climate activist, Greta Thunberg, who started boycotting classes before parliamentary elections in her nation in September.
According to the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, assisting the School Strike For Climate Action, the Castlemaine students reached out to other schools across the country then sought support from the AYCC in organising and getting their message out.
On Friday the local student activists – Castlemaine’s Milou Albrecht, Tully Boyle, Harriet O’Shea Carre and Callum Neilson-Bridgfoot – were among the 200 local secondary and primary school students who travelled by rail to Melbourne for the demonstration calling on Scott Morrison’s minority Coalition government to take meaningful action to help avert climate crisis.
Arriving at Southern Cross Station the local students performed a flashmob, catching the attention of commuters and passersby before marching down Collins Street and rallying on the steps of Parliament House where they were joined by thousands of similarly concerned students from across the state.
“I’m participating because I care about what my life is going to be in the future and I care about the world I’m going to be living in in the future,” Castlemaine North Primary school student Callum Neilson-Bridgfoot told the Midland Express.
“Climate change is going to be impacting on our future and the Australian government isn’t taking enough action,” Castlemaine Secondary College student Gracie Carroll said.
The Castlemaine students who had played a key role in initiating the action, beginning with their smaller demonstration at MP offices in Bendigo last month, were among speakers to address the Friday’s demonstration, which also featured live music by all-girl band from Castlemaine Secondary College, Ethical Decimal.
The protest comes after Indian mining giant Adani announced it would self-fund its Carmichael mine in central Queensland and soon begin construction.
It also comes on the last day of one of the driest springs on record, with the Bureau of Meteorology predicting a hotter than average summer and in a week that saw unprecedented fires in central Queensland and a ‘one-in-100-year’ storm in Sydney.
The warming trend shows we are running out of time to tackle climate change, according to the World Meteorological Organization, which last week published its provisional statement on the State of the Climate in 2018.
