What we learned, Sunday 3 August
We will wrap up today’s live blog here, on what has been an historic and busy news day. Here’s what we covered:
The Sydney Harbour Bridge was closed at 11.30am with police estimating at least 90,000 marched. Organisers claim up to 300,000 pro-Palestinian supporters walked in the rain across the bridge from 1.30pm after speeches from Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi, Indigenous actor Meyne Wyatt and former Socceroo and Australian of the Year Craig Foster.
Those in the protest included the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, former foreign affairs minister Bob Carr, and federal Labor MP Ed Husic. Shouts of “We are all Palestinian” could be heard from the front of the march.
Text messages from NSW police told people to stop walking across the bridge, and police said they would work with protester organisers to get people off the bridge in a staged manner.
The bridge emptied of people after 4pm, with protesters facing long delays on trains.
Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters in Melbourne were met by Victoria police in riot gear, trucks and a barricade as police blocked the plan for the protesters to block the Kings Street Bridge.
In a media statement headlined “Time to move on”, the Victorian state opposition attacked the pro-Palestine protest in Melbourne, blaming the premier, Jacinta Allan, for failing to stop the blockade.
Emergency services continue to search for a woman who police say escaped a vehicle stuck in flood waters in the Hunter region.
There was a lot of rain and snow around parts of NSW.
We will be back tomorrow with all the latest. Until then, stay safe.
Updated
And that’s where we’ll wrap the blog up today.
Thank you so much for staying with our live coverage of what was one of the biggest protests in Sydney’s history.
The police estimate more than 90,000 people attended, with demonstrators stretching the entire length of the 1.2km Harbour Bridge.
There will be more from us later this evening after our journalists that were on the ground file their coverage of the day.
For now, find our latest here:
Updated
