The rally in Melbourne hasn’t gotten much coverage because of Sydney, but it is mentioned here. They claim 3000 attended but that’s way off, it was easily 25-40,000 (some estimates I’ve seen go as high as 50k). The march stretched down most of Bourke St and I couldn’t see the start or end of it.
300k was the organiser estimate for Sydney which is about 5-6% of the city.
Oh haha, cool I saw myself. Yeah I tried getting some photos when we went down Bourke St, but it was so massive that it actually looks small. The crowd disappeared over the hill heading west and went around the corner back up Swanston. In the photos the crowd just blurs and looks like part of the road or something, so you can’t get a good idea of the scale. I was really hoping for aerial footage, though tbf I haven’t gone looking.
Some aerial footage here: https://www.9news.com.au/national/propalestine-protesters-barred-from-melbourne-bridge/02f1a339-a25d-4c57-9d0e-32171e1ee0e9
It only seems to show small parts of the protest at any one time. You can see in ground-level shots that the crowd is much bigger than it ever appears in the helicopter shots.
That’s shockingly good reporting from 9. Acknowledging the excessive show of force from the police, and the difference between them being militarised and the anti-genocide protestors being old men and women with scarves. And not even as an afterthought, but as a really good chunk of the story.