Thirty Years of Creative Resistance - Friends of the Earth Australia

The final day of riding, from Yass to
Canberra, was a mass of bicycles. In
1976, over 350 people had riden from
Melbourne, and another 70 from Sydney.
Local cyclists from Canberra swelled the
numbers further. It was a tremendous
feeling coming over Commonwealth
Avenue Bridge occupying the full three
lanes of the road. The police had set up
a road block, but cyclists simply raced
across the lawns to set up the tents in
front of parliament house, where we were
welcomed by activists from the Aboriginal
Embassy.
While in Canberra, there were visits to
the Aboriginal Embassy on Mugga Way,
protests in the public gallery of parliament,
street theatre in Civic and on the steps of
parliament, and a cycle tour of embassies
engaged in the nuclear cycle, including
the USA, Great Britain, USSR, Germany,
France, and Japan. Evenings were spent
around a campfire drum singing songs and
talking to visitors and tourists. Even the
odd politician came over the road to join us
for a while: former Minister in the Whitlam
Government, Tom Uren, came up to me
and said we were doing a good job and to
keep it up!
Melbourne always managed to have
more riders than from Sydney, which
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is surprising given the longer distance
involved. The 1977 ride against Uranium
from Sydney was large enough for three
different routes. Riders from Melbourne
also took different routes in self-sufficient
decentralised groups. Eight cyclists were
arrested when the cyclists arrived in
Canberra due to confrontational tactics by
the police. The ride was definitely proving
popular and a powerful manifestation of
the campaign to Stop Uranium Mining.
For three years no rides occurred,
although educational activity and direct
action protests kept the issue public.
For example, in Melbourne there were
demonstrations on East Swanston Dock
of ships carrying yellowcake. In Sydney I
was arrested during September 1977 in
civil disobedience protests in the middle of
the night at White Bay Container Terminal
to stop the export of Uranium yellowcake.
Late at night convoys of trucks with a
police escort left the Lucas Heights nuclear
reactor near Sutherland, and traveled
at high speed through innercity Sydney.
Several hundred people were mobilised
by telephone trees and attempted to
stop the trucks reaching the wharf
through non violent direct action. Mass
arrests and quite brutal police attacks on
demonstrators occurred which made front
page news not only in Sydney but around
the world.