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The Canberra Times
The Canberra Times
National
Steve Evans

Inside Canberra's COVID tent city at Exhibition Park

In the anti-vaxx camp. Elizabeth Steward of Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. Picture: Karleen Minney

Liz Steward will become a grandmother in a week's time. She will not be allowed to see the baby because she is determined to remain unvaccinated.

The baby's mother has told her that she will never see her grandchild unless she has the jabs.

And that, Ms Steward will not do - loopy as her unshakeable view would be deemed by any reputable expert on the planet.

"My daughter thinks I'm totally crazy," the soon-to-be grandmother said. "But there's nothing I can do about it," which is not true: she could get vaccinated but won't.

Talking to people at what has sprawled into a tent city at Exhibition Park, with perhaps thousands of people there, it's hard to get a grip on what the exact objection to vaccination is.

"It's all about control and once it's in your body, it won't come out. In my heart, it's not the right thing to do," Ms Steward said.

She doesn't elaborate on who is doing the secret controlling. But her belief - echoed by other conspiracists - is costing her dear.

Not only will she be deprived of the magical feeling of a newborn baby's finger around her own fingers - the fingers of her grand-daughter - but she has lost her job as a locksmith after 27 years of employment. "I loved that job," she said.

She also cared for someone with muscular dystrophy who told her that he didn't want her care anymore if she remained unvaccinated. She also lost her waitress job at a Thai restaurant for the same reason.

And on top of all that, she said she had been kicked out of her beekeeping club and out of a choir - all because she resisted what the experts invariably say are life-saving vaccines.

Liz Steward comes across as friendly. She tours what is now a large gathering of tents and vans beating the tribal healing drum which she made ("I knew I had to make a drum," she explained.) She greets everybody with a smile.

She is a believer in forces moving people. "The universe brought us together," she explain.

Touring what the residents call Camp Zero with her is to get a sense of another, sealed world of beliefs.

It is like wandering into a cult meeting where all the rules of logic you thought you knew outside don't apply. Liz, herself, has the sparkling eyes of a true believer. Many do.

Lee Axford and Jake the dog. Picture: Steve Evans

But they are a mix. There are aggressive people in this movement. On a previous encounter, three fit men snatched my phones and equipment because they loathe the media (and that's a common view amongst the true believers).

Ms Steward concedes there are racists - "I just give them love. I just smile at them," she said.

If the different tribes in this disparate cult have anything in common, it is that government has let them down (and they share that belief with the Trumpists in the United States and the people who voted for Britain to leave the European Union).

"The world has gone to shit," Lee Axford said. "The politicians have sold us out. They don't care about the people.

The protesters see themselves as crusaders who alone see the truth which others fail to see. "The people are asleep. They don't want to know," Mr Axford said.

His wife died five years ago so he is bringing up his 16-year-old son alone. He finds it hard to juggle all the demands of fatherhood, earning a living and what seems like an endless string of tasks and demands.

"The world is too hard. It takes a very strong person to get through that," he said, adding: "We know we've got to be here to save our kids from the poison."

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Refusing vaccination has cost Mr Axford dearly, too. He said he had lost his job in construction because of his refusal to be vaccinated.

His teenage son said he had lost friends - when his pals went to the cinema he refused to wear a mask so they refused to be with him.

Youngsters seemed to share the zeal for the cause of parents. Several teenagers at EPIC said they wouldn't go to university if it meant they had to be vaccinated.

"I know why a lot of people are angry," Mr Axford's teenage son said, "There are people here who have lost their jobs and lost their homes. They are here with nothing."

If you challenge people at the camp by quoting science and statistics back at them, they often resort to: "the figures are fixed". It is like engaging in argument with a deep believer in a mystical cult. "There's lies, lies and more lies," one person said.

They quote false information about how COVID is not as bad as flu.

But it is not a cult which is going away. The tent city has grown over the last few days, building up to what its occupants say will be a very big protest on Saturday.

But the permanence isn't in the tents and the vans, it is in the dogma in the minds of the occupants. They clearly reinforce each other's views. In the tent city, falsity becomes truth.

Cults don't dissolve easily.

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