Hundreds of students and concerned residents of the Bega Valley took to Littleton Gardens today to strike for climate action.
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Following the rally in the gardens, around 100 people also marched in Bega's streets and through Sapphire Marketplace.
The Schools Strike for Climate Action took place in more than 50 cities and towns across Australia and Friday's event will mark the biggest protest for climate action since concerns first arose about COVID-19.
The strike also comes right after the Morrison government this week announced that $600million of taxpayer money would be spent on building a gas-fired power station in NSW.
The federal budget delivered on May 11 also put more than $58million towards expanding the gas industry.
Students around the country are demanding the government cease funding gas and coal projects with taxpayer funds and instead invest in renewable energies and jobs.
They are also championing that First Nations solutions be used to protect country.
The energy and enthusiasm of the youth was clearly on display with a range of young people taking to the podium to have their say about government shortcomings and where the climate movement needs to head into the future.
"There are things I'd much rather be doing today but our hands are forced," said 17-year-old Angus Ashcroft from Bega High School.
"If there's one thing you should take from this day it's that there is nothing that the Berejiklian Morrison governments fear more than a population who are educated on the issues and who are willing to hit them in the closest thing to a backbone, which is the ballot box," he said.
"It's our political disengagement as a nation that's allowed these people to hold off this for so long.
"There will be a new wave of voters flooding into the system next election and it is this new wave that need to show the government that if they want our vote they need more than flimsy platitudes and condescending lies," said Angus.
21-year-old Eric 'Sergio' Herbert was welcomed to the stage with his introduction being that he had been arrested more times than any other activist. He confirmed it had been 17 times over the past two years for his work as a radical climate justice activist.
"I'm here in Bega today to talk to the people on the front line of this climate and ecological emergency. The people here have seen what it means to suffer from the inaction of our politicians and our leaders.
"So I could be in Sydney but instead I chose to travel 500km south to talk to the people who in my professional opinion will be the ones that will actually make these politicians act, not the 50,000 in the big cities because those people don't know what it's like to be breathing through a wet sock wondering if you're going to be alive in the next few hours."
Not all of the speakers during the rally were younger members of the community however, with many who had been advocating in this space for some time.
President of the Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action Jo Dodds spoke to the protestors.
"This is maybe my fourth time at the rally and what's so impressive to me is to see you all here again today and to know that you haven't given up even though we've had to have four rallies here in Littleton Gardens.
"You're here showing our leaders how much young people care and how much you're supported by the adults around."
Not everyone in Bega was happy with the protesters taking to the streets. Some members of the public expressed their concerns about the students skipping school to attend the rally while enjoying their lunch break.
Others honked their horns and drove in an aggressive and dangerous manner around the group during the march, or verbally expressed their disagreement with the protesters.
Not everyone showed the same level of dissatisfaction though, with others leaving their place of work to cheer on the students and those who marched with them.
Other people in cars passing by gave the thumbs up symbol while honking in agreement.
This clearly was not the first rodeo for a portion of the protesters, with many of them speaking to the fact that they were still beating the drum of environmentalism over 30 years on.
Sean Burke is one of those many who has been involved in this movement for a number of years. He has a number of demands for state and federal governments.
"Draft climate resilience strategy, lobby state and federal governments to commit to the reduction of greenhouse gases and getting out of coal, that's the big one, and also for forestry to stop logging our native forests, it's criminal."
Mr Burke remembers when logging of Gulaga Mountain began in 1988 and he along with others took direct action.
"There was no protest, we just used Forestry Commission publications about the significance of Gulaga to Aboriginal people and took that to Canberra and instruction came down through the states and the Forestry Commission as it was then.
"National Parks and Wildlife Services then got a study done of the significance to contemporary Aboriginal people and from that it stopped and they handed Gulaga and Biamanga back to the Aboriginal owners," he said.
Sue Andrew said she had been protesting for about 30 years, but in the last two years had joined an organisation called Extinction Rebellion, which she said had taken her years of protesting to the next level.
"I am actually putting myself on the frontline and blockading and just being prepared to do whatever it takes to sound the alarm.
"I want to demand that the government tell the truth, that they act now and they create a citizen's assembly to create the change that we need sooner rather than later.
"A citizen's assembly would be diverse with an equal ration of men and women and they would work together with the government to create the solutions that we already know are there, we just need the political will to drive it to make it happen."
The overall public response to the young protesters was mixed.