Melanie Watkins wasn’t going to let a 37C day stop her from bringing her children to Belmore Park on Friday morning for Sydney’s Invasion Day rally.
The two boys, aged 10 and six, stood to the side of the demonstration listening quietly to the speeches, their wide-brimmed hats keeping sunburn at bay.
“Today is a day to mourn, not to celebrate,” Watkins says. “I brought my kids because it’s important they know the true history of Australia … Hopefully by educating them at a young age, they can help bring some change.”
Watkins is among thousands of people who turned out at Invasion Day events across the nation on Friday, where speakers called for Australia Day to be abolished.
The speeches in major capital cities highlighted anger and despair over high incarceration rates, ongoing deaths in custody and the forced removal of First Nations children from their families. The rallies come just months after the proposal for an Indigenous voice to parliament was overwhelmingly defeated at the referendum.
In Victoria, the host of the Invasion Day rally congratulated those who chopped Captain Cook off a statue in St Kilda on Thursday, drawing applause from the crowd outside parliament. “This is massive. I’m really, really proud of our city,” he said. “I’m really proud of the people who took action yesterday.”
Some attenders at the Melbourne rally held signs noting the destruction with the words “the colony will fall”, the same phrase that was spray-painted on the statue’s plinth.
The rallies in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane also heavily featured Palestinian flags and the keffiyeh, a traditional scarf that has grown to symbolise the struggle for a Palestinian state.
In Sydney, crowds chanted “always was, always will be Aboriginal land” as well as messages such as “ceasefire now” and “we all want peace”.
Speakers at the rally in Sydney, organised by the grassroots group Blak Caucus, explicitly called to “end occupation everywhere” and for Australia to cut its ties with Israel.
The veteran Indigenous rights activist Gary Foley told the crowd outside Victoria’s parliament that this year’s Invasion Day protest was a “particularly historic gathering”.
“We have invited our Palestinian brothers and sisters to be here today as an act in solidarity,” he said.
Paul Silva, the nephew of David Dungay Jr who died in a prison hospital in 2015, made an emotional speech about the ripple effects of intergenerational trauma, while Apryl Day, the daughter of Tanya Day, used her speech to link her family’s struggle to the Palestinian cause. Tanya Day died from an injury sustained in a police cell in 2017 after she was arrested for being drunk on a train, under a law that a royal commission had recommended be repealed 30 years ago. The Victorian government agreed to repeal the law in 2019.
“The Palestinian community were with us from the beginning to the end of mum’s inquest and we need to continue to do that for them, and stand with Palestine today,” Apryl Day told the rally.
At Brisbane’s rally, the crowd spilled out of Queen’s Gardens as protesters battled the heat holding signs reading “not a date to celebrate” and “no justice, no peace”.
Journalist and academic Amy McQuire spoke against what she called a policy of forced “amnesia”, pointing to her home state having one of the highest national rates of imprisonment of young Indigenous people, while the academic Chelsea Watego criticised the state for having the strongest opposition to the voice to parliament.
“The prime minister Albanese said on October 14 [that] the Australian people have spoken,” she said.
“You hear what they said? We don’t deserve shit. Not even an advisory body. We’ve got to listen to that.”
In Sydney, teenagers, elderly people, young babies and dogs marched the 1.6km to Victoria Park, keeping themselves cool with portable fans and umbrellas.
Bundjalung woman Lara Lei brought her three-year-old daughter Matai to the protest, who flitted among the crowd in red, white and black.
Lei travelled to Sydney to visit her 101-year-old grandmother.
“We wanted to use this weekend to see her and look after our elders,” she said. “We’re here to show our children not to hide away on this day and be proud.”
To conclude the speeches, the Sydney crowd huddled in a semicircle as local artist Dobby performed a song titled Until We Are Free alongside a group of culturally and linguistically diverse artists.
BVT, one of the performers, told Guardian Australia there was “no question” 26 January should be abolished.
“Why are we still demanding that respect, that common ground?”
Asked whether the tides were changing, she paused before replying: “As long as tides exist, they’re going to push and pull.
“But we’ll be damned if we don’t push back. It’s great we have these numbers, but at the end of the day, we’re still here, fighting against something that put us here in the first place.”
