Sunday, May 2, 2010

What about the workers?

Today is Labour Day in Queensland. It occurred to us that we have never seen a Labour Day march, and here we are living in the centre of the city and they will be almost marching right past us.

So we walked a few metres down the road, and arrived in a shady, slightly elevated spot on a corner they would all come around, just as the first marchers arrived.




The police had closed off several streets, and the traffic lights were turned off. Even so we saw one elderly Chinese man come and press the pedestrian crossing button and stand there hopefully for a long time before he just headed across through the crowd.



Many of the unions had employed a marching band, or in several cases a Scottish bagpipes band to lead their procession.



There were truckloads of children, and some travelled in buses or car trailers.



Most groups were chanting about not selling off Queensland. But these live animals had a different protest to make.



There were lots of balloons, in many different colours - but these chaps had the biggest (and best!) ones.



The Prime Minister himself (K. Rudd) was supposed to be here, but we didn't see him.

But, other than that, it was pretty much every man and his dog (with his ball).



So ... that was my first Labour Day march. :)

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