Those used to the usual rhythm of a federal election night might have expected a trickle of a count, softened by platitudes about small unrepresentative booths.
But the no verdict was as quick as it was brutal.
The event for yes supporters at the Wests Ashfield leagues club in Sydney was the sort of gathering you have when you need to mark an occasion not to celebrate.
Three hundred people in an over-air conditioned function room overlooking Liverpool Road, almost a small enough crowd to be able to thank each volunteer personally. They were slow to arrive, due to a mixture of being hard at work at polling booths to the end and anticipating little to cheer for.
If Australia looked more like Ashfield the result might have been different: it’s younger, wealthier and twice as university-educated as the nation that slapped away what the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, described as an outstretched hand of friendship.
The daylight savings states (New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania) delivered the first blow, in what were to be the states keenest to entrench an Indigenous advisory body in the constitution.
The inner west mayor and Albanese ally, Darcy Byrne, and the leading yes campaigner, Thomas Mayo, addressed the crowd at a quarter past seven.
Byrne’s claim that “tonight we will find out if our noble fight” to make this statement of respect to Indigenous Australians “real and meaningful will be successful in our generation” was dead on arrival.
Both blamed the no campaign’s tactics and targeted Peter Dutton personally, with Mayo saying he had been “dishonest” and “lied to the Australian people”.
“There should be repercussions for this sort of behaviour in our democracy, they should not get away with this,” Mayo said.
“So when we succeed at this, let it be known that they did that. That they have lied to the Australian people. That dishonesty should not be forgotten.”
Mayo was strident, vowing that it “doesn’t matter what happens tonight, if it is a no answer, then we’re not lying down, we’re not taking no for an answer and we will continue”.
As soon as he finished, the ABC removed the need for caveats, declaring that because at least NSW, Tasmania and South Australia had voted no, the referendum had failed.
The reaction from volunteers was immediate and emotional. Tears – for the missed opportunity, for the impact of rejection on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, for the dark victory of lies and misinformation.
The campaign director, Dean Parkin, received a hero’s welcome.
After acknowledging “this is not the result we were seeking”, Parkin addressed Australians who had voted “with hardness in [their] hearts”.
“Understand that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have never wanted to take anything from you,” he said.
“All we wanted to do was to join with you, our Indigenous story, our Indigenous culture. Not to take away or diminish what it is that you have but to add to it, to strengthen [it], to enrich it.”
Parkin said the campaign did “all we could” to alleviate doubts but could not cut through “what has been the single largest misinformation campaign that this country has ever seen”.
Parkin said that political leaders who had opposed the voice have a “solemn responsibility to join with everybody and help bring this country back together”.
“It’s not enough to say that you were against division. You now have a solemn responsibility to back up those words.
“When parliament sits next week in Canberra, it is time to put the cudgels down. It is time to stop treating our issue as a political football, as it has all too often.”
Parkin thanked Albanese for his commitment to hold the referendum “where other leaders have shrunk from the challenge”, saying he will not leave parliament lamenting that he had not done enough.
Parkin said “very few” political leaders were willing to invest their own political capital in support of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians rather than “generate political capital off our backs”.
Parkin thanked the crossbench and “courageous” Liberals and Nationals who “stood on points of principle” against the status quo of their parties.
Choking back tears with deep breaths, Parkin addressed his Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander brothers and sisters: “This campaign has always been in service to you.
“It has always been guided by your leadership. It has always been guided by the tremendous need from our people across this country, that remains today, and will remain tomorrow and remains the outstanding business of this country.”
Parkin said that Indigenous Australians had earned the right “to take a breath” and “to take a rest”. But he insisted the campaign had built a movement that would regroup to seek “reconciliation and justice”.
