A crowd of around 60 marched the streets of Shepparton at the weekend to shine a light on gender-based violence in Australia.
Shepparton-based group Goulburn Valley Against Gendered Violence held a rally at Victoria Park Lake on Saturday morning, where guest speakers and members of the public addressed the crowd.
After an introduction by one of the organisers, Maddi Thorpe, and a Welcome to Country by Uncle Stan Dryden, who also delivered a speech on his own experiences with violence, supporters set off for a march in the CBD.
They raised their handmade signs into the sky past the police station and courthouse along the block bordered by Sobraon, Welsford, High and Wyndham Sts as police escorts stopped traffic.
The crowd paused at the corner of Sobraon and Wyndham Sts to temporarily hang their placards on the chain-wire fence adjacent to the lake, along with purple and orange support ribbons, so that passing foot and road traffic could further absorb the message.
Upon returning to the rally’s starting point at the lake, guest speaker and one of the event’s organisers, Lutfiye Kavci, took to the microphone to lead the crowd in a minute’s silence for victims and survivors of domestic violence and to tell the crowd her story of surviving her attempted murder.
“Organising this rally and march was very important to me because I am very passionate about spreading awareness of domestic violence in hopes of making a change,” she said after the rally.
“But it was also a very big learning curve for me because we made sure the whole town knew this was happening.”
The group put flyers in shop windows and high foot traffic areas, and letterbox drops to hundreds of homes ahead of the rally.
“We also made sure support services were made aware so they could come along to show their support, but unfortunately they were disappointingly lacking,” Ms Kavci said.
The group will look to hold more rallies in the future, maybe on a different day, to avoid clashing with weekend sports.