A TEENAGE environmental protester who allegedly super-glued herself to a coal loader at the Port of Newcastle has been granted conditional bail, with a magistrate saying her actions put others at serious risk.
Grace Ilbery, an 18-year-old Canberra woman, sat crying in the dock at Newcastle Local Court on Wednesday afternoon as the matter was mentioned.
The court heard her unauthorised protest, which was live-streamed on social media, caused the shut-down of part of the port on Tuesday.
Magistrate John Chicken said protesters needed to "understand the risk they put themselves at and the risk they put others at" - particularly when taking action near machinery "capable of ripping a human apart".
"[Protesters] need to understand they do not operate in a vacuum," he said.
"What they are doing is placing people at serious risk, including the people who have to take them off the machinery.
"They have to think long and hard about whether [their actions] are worth the risk to human life they expose themselves and others to.
"I accept there is a right to protest. I have no problem with protests, but when you put people's lives at risk and people's safety at risk, that's when it becomes an issue."
As part of her bail conditions, Ms Ilbery had to put up $1000 surety and commit to reporting to Queanbeyan police station weekly. She will face court again on July 5.
Ms Ilbery's protest was one of several that have been co-ordinated by activist group Blockade Australia in recent days.
Claudia Ellen Hannigan, 22, was on Tuesday granted bail in Newcastle Local Court for allegedly dangling over the coal freight line at Kooragang and gluing herself to a padlock.
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, a 22-year-old Lake Macquarie man disrupted the coal supply line by scaling a nine-metre-high pole over train tracks at Branxton, which caused the temporary closure of the Hunter line between Maitland and Scone.
He was safely retrieved just after 9.30am and charged before he was granted conditional bail in Cessnock Local Court. He will face court again on July 13.
"The Australian system is killing us. We need to fight to continue living. The luxury of a handful of people is being prioritised over the lives of every other living thing on the planet," the man said in a statement released through Blockade Australia.
"The best way we can fight the system is by directly confronting its operations with direct actions like this. Physical action that disrupts the destructive functioning of the colonial project, known as Australia, is real political power.
"This is an organised resistance to the Australian system's organised destruction."
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