Watching the news from Gaza on the television, David said that we should join the march across the bridge.  Rae agreed.  But how to manage it?  David cannot walk very far; he would have to use the mobility scooter.  The scooter is called Neddy.  David often remarks that he is a sturdy horse, but he can’t take the jumps.

We decided to go by metro, which is scooter friendly, then discovered the metro would be closed for the day.  We would have to take the mainline train, which involved getting help with ramps.

On the day it was pouring with rain.  We prepared before going to Meeting, taking raincoats, umbrellas, warm clothes, sandwiches and water.  When we announced our intention of marching at Meeting, Friends looked a bit astonished, suggesting we were noble but foolhardy.  After Meeting for Worship the rain increased, so we too had pause for thought.  But we felt that if we did not walk in the rain no-one would take us seriously.

At Hornsby station we saw a train load of people, obviously bridge-bound, arrive from the Central Coast and move to the city-bound platform.  There were so many people we could not find the platform staff in time to catch that train. The next train was not crowded at first but filled up by the time we got to Wynyard.  The platform there was chaotic.  David needed the lift to get off the platform, but there was a long queue of people with prams waiting to catch it.  Rae went down the stairs and waited for him.

There were so many people on the concourse Rae had to leap nimbly around them so as not to be carried away before David and Neddy arrived.  A loud hailer told us not to go out the York Street entrance (which would have been the most direct route) but to head to George Street.  Rail staff had opened the barriers to let people through without ‘tapping off’.  However, some people were so afraid that they would be charged extra for not tapping off that they wanted to do it anyway.

As we explored the heights and depths of Wynyard station, we passed a Middle Eastern – possibly Palestinian – family.  They included a couple of small children who looked alarmingly like the Gazan children on TV, but in much better condition and with all limbs intact.  A bit of a shock, but it reminded us of what we were there for.

It took another lift to get up to street level.  As we waited It was now 1:00, the time the rally was meant to start.  We joined the mass of humanity heading down George Street and into Margaret Street.  And there we came to a halt.

We stayed in Margaret Street for 2 hours.  There were speeches in Lang Park, a tiny park unable to hold even a fraction of the protesters.  We could not see or hear any of this, but people apparently moved on from there about 1.30 pm.  Still, we saw no sign of movement.  A couple of people with loud hailers tried to lead chants, but the response was muted.  Throughout the rally someone would occasionally call ‘Free Palestine!’, after which those around them responded ‘Free free Palestine, free free free Palestine’ in a sort of a singsong. But the whole rally was surprisingly quiet.

It rained the whole time.  Mostly it was drizzle, but there were bursts of heavier rain during which umbrellas went up.  We were so packed that you had to angle your umbrella to avoid other people’s, so that the rain snaked between the umbrellas and emerged in unexpected spurts.  Yet no-one made a fuss.

Rae thought the scooter might have annoyed people, but everyone was protective of David.  A man with a large umbrella stood behind him so David could share his umbrella, as we turned out to have left one umbrella in the car.  This man’s umbrella was larger than ours, so I had an umbrella to myself.

At 3:00 we began to move.  There were a lot of low barriers on the road, and we had to weave our way around them.  Once on the bridge the rain increased, and a woman insisted on sheltering David with her umbrella, again it was larger than mine.  I asked her if she was Palestinian, but she said she was Egyptian.  She and her husband had travelled for two and a half hours to attend the march.

Rae is naturally nervous of crowds.  She does not trust them; but we saw no aggression. On the contrary the mood was hopeful.  Surely it counted for something that so many people cared, and that such a cross-section of the Sydney population had turned out despite the weather?  Rae was not sure that she hoped for very much; she remembered the anti-Iraq war rally which brought 250,000 into Sydney.  John Howard dismissed the protesters, talking about the ‘silent majority’ who, being silent, were not likely to contradict him.  But sometimes, even without much hope, one must act.

We were half-way across the bridge when a police helicopter flew over, making an announcement.  We heard ‘This is a police helicopter.  In consultation with the organisers we…’ and then they were too far away to hear the rest.  We saw some people coming back.  Messages had been sent to everyone’s smartphones, but we are not of the generation which lives in constant communication with their phones.  Rae asked around until she found a young person who knew what was happening.  Apparently, the police were worried about crowd crush as people came off the bridge.  We did not see any problem from where we were, but of course it was impossible to see far ahead.  Rae’s only concern had been whether we would find a toilet at the other end of the bridge.

On the way back we came to a place where there was a low barrier on the road.  The police said we should go over it, but we could not lift the scooter.  No worries, however.  David got off the scooter and two sturdy police swung it over, while another two police took hold of David and swung him over, rather to his alarm.  This process was repeated once more, and then we made our way back to Wynyard.  Rail staff gathered around David to see if he wanted help, but we brushed them off and made for the toilets!  Finally, we made it to the platform, where a couple of rail staff held up the train while they got out a ramp for David.

We read in the paper next day that there had been no violence and no arrests.  It was as though we all knew that violence was not getting us anywhere, and it was time to give kindness a try.  A hundred thousand Quakers could not have behaved better!