Australia’s student strikers for climate believed they could change their future. Where are they now?

The director of the Australia Youth Climate Coalition, Grace Vegesana, at the organisation's office in Redfern, Sydney. Photograph: The Guardian

On a stinking hot November day, seven years ago, Grace Vegesana and a handful of other young climate activists set up a small stage in a large square in Sydney’s CBD – and waited. Inspired by the first school striker for climate, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, the high school students decided to organise their own rally.

Vegesana expected a hundred people to show up. Five thousand came. “It was like, oh my God, we’ve unleashed some kind of beast, people want more,” she recalls. In the months afterwards crowds doubled and then tripled.