The conspiracy community: Canberra protesters united in alienation and anger

Exhibition Park in Canberra hosts car festivals, farmers’ markets and book fairs on its expansive grounds. But this week it’s been taken over by thousands of protesters rallying against vaccine mandates. 

Cars — many adorned with merchant navy flags, the ​​Aboriginal flag and signs protesting their cause — are squeezed on to every spare patch of grass, tents and caravans stretching as far as the eye can see.

There’s a community feel. Some campers play live music, others have set up barbecues, and there’s a man selling light-up toys and magician sets. The group is diverse: young and old, a mix of trades and while predominantly white there’s a mix of ethnicities and religions. 

Despite the chilly breeze, plenty of people are walking around, beer in one hand and cigarette in the other, in bare feet or thongs. Weed smoke wafts from several campsites. People smile and wave to one another and stop to check in on solo travellers. 

Every time a convoy of cars arrives — the last arriving from northern Queensland — passengers toot their horns and stick their heads out the window to whoops and cheers.

But there’s a dark side to the festivities. Many protesters here aren’t just against vaccine mandates. They are actively trying to catch COVID-19 and discourage others from taking the vaccine. Some want to storm Parliament; others want a stop to childhood vaccinations. 

The protesters don’t have a clear message: most are against vaccine mandates, some are rallying for Indigenous land rights, and others still believe in a conspiracy alleging Australia’s politicians are part of a widespread paedophile ring.

Michael Simms is one of the few unofficial organisers of the convoy. He runs an organisation called Millions March Against Mandatory Vaccination Australia and was a disability support worker in Canberra before losing his job for refusing to get the vaccine. Simms claims he is the father of a vaccine-injured child. 

“There’s no real group [organisers]. That’s a good thing and bad thing,” he said. 

He says the movement was grassroots and while he’s enjoying his notoriety for being one of the few known organisers, he didn’t set out for this: “After one truck driver said he was driving to Canberra, things just spiralled.”

While peacekeeper volunteers roam the sites to make sure no one gets too rowdy, there has been plenty of dissent among self-proclaimed organisers. They’re confused about events, fighting over microphones and what their demands even are, with some circulating petitions and others calling for funding with no real goal. (GoFundMe froze access to $160,000 in donated funds due to a lack of detailed spending plan.)

Simms doesn’t like being told what to do. If the vaccine mandates didn’t exist, I ask, would he have been more inclined to get it? 

“It would have been more of a thought,” he said.

He believes that although the group lacks clear direction, the community feel is incredibly important.

“For the first time in two years, people have got to leave their state and find people that are kinda like them when their family or friends may have told them ‘You’re nuts’,” he said. 

A group of older women sit huddled in a circle, enjoying white wine and conversation. The sun has started to set, turning the sky vivid shades of orange and purple, and they are wrapped in sleeping bags with their camp chairs facing the view. They invite me to sit on their esky and ask questions. 

The women met at the campground or on convoys from other parts of Australia. Most were travelling alone. I ask what, aside from anti-vaccine ideals, drew them together. 

“A sense of community,” says one, who asked for her name not to be used. “It’s about actually being accepted and loved and being able to speak out without being judged or being harassed or feeling like we have to walk on eggshells.”

Most of the women, who previously worked as phlebotomists, teachers and registered nurses, lost their jobs for refusing to accept the vaccine mandate. 

“I lost my purpose in life,” Leigh Riley, who worked as a nurse in Gympie, Queensland, tells me. It sent her spiralling into a dark depression, drinking heavily before finding a community in the anti-mandate movement. Her family won’t see her because of her views.  

I ask if she’d been tempted to get the vaccine just to be able to experience family life once again. 

“It made me more resolute,” she said. “I believe it’s not good for me, and I believe that so strongly I refuse to get it and I lost my job so there’s no way I’ll backpedal on this.” 

It’s an interesting point. For many sucked into the vortex of extreme theories, walking away from them when so many sacrifices have been made can be tough. While Riley says she doesn’t consider herself an anti-vaxxer and doesn’t want to be lumped in with such a stigmatised group, if she had her time again she wouldn’t vaccinate her children.  

Joe Barker travelled from Melbourne. She loves her grandchildren but hasn’t seen them in two years: “I’ve lost my son and his children, and I was only able to FaceTime my granddaughter this Christmas.”

Her family didn’t want to engage in debate around the vaccine with her. Her daughter won’t allow her to visit while unvaccinated for her own protection, because there’s no one to look after her if she becomes sick. Barker doesn’t believe this is brought about by concern: “My daughter is using it as an excuse.” 

The women dwell in unsubstantiated theories: falsified death certificates, collusion by the federal government and the United Nations for a new world order.

But when questioned, their theories don’t hold ground. At first, they tell me the Australian government is profiting off the vaccine. When I mention the huge economic downturn and contract procurement costs, they tell me politicians have family members in big pharma who are profiting. 

When I ask how a COVID vaccine could produce a “new world order” they say the vaccine is a testing ground to see how compliant populations would be with mask mandates and check-ins before introducing digital social currencies and controls. I get the feeling a few of the women are afraid of change.

It’s a friendly community tinged with sadness: the women are bound by their losses, be it social, economic, or family. Most have withdrawn their superannuation funds to get by. All are distrustful of the government. I get the sense that if their concerns around vaccines were met with empathy or understanding to begin with, they might not have been sucked into fringe idealism. 

But so drawn in are they now — one former primary school teacher from Sydney, Marina Krivoshev, watches a non-stop stream of a prominent anti-vaxxers as we speak — that they can’t turn back. Deeper and deeper the conspiracies will go, alienating them further from their old social circles but embedding them deeper into a new one.