Amid smoking clouds of tear gas, garbage bin fires and masked mobs of ugly anti-war protesters, I suddenly found myself caught in no-man’s land.
But I never expected to take the piercing hit in the stomach from a police gun.
As a veteran of big protests in Victoria, I know only too well there is every chance you may not walk away the same way you walked in.
But on Wednesday, even I was caught by surprise by the ‘non-lethal munitions’ shot that pounded into my guts. I just thank God it wasn’t a lethal round.
Upon arriving on Clarendon Street close to the Melbourne Convention Centre hosting the Land Force weapons expo that became the focus of the hate mob, I did the usual rounds.
I found other media and we laughed with nervous bravado as we played down the obviously dicey situation we were all smack-bang in the middle of.
We’d all been in this spot before, but something about this demo seemed a tad more electric, a tad more dangerous.
Line upon line of police had already come under fire from the volatile mob before I even arrived, at one stage almost breaking through the perimeter fence of the expo.
I had made a pre-emptive decision to wear my media identification around my neck. During pandemic protests, I didn’t have one until the show was pretty much over.
To be honest, it never helped then – and they sure as hell doesn’t work now.
The police were shooting. The sound was unmistakable. It was odd, disconcerting and unprecedented.
They just seemed to be popping off rounds into the crowd from rifle-like weapons, some sporting bright fluoro butts and magazines.
Others looked like something more commonly seen at US school massacres, black AR15 lookalikes (or originals, who
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