For over a week now, a group of people including former immigration detention workers, refugees and others have been slowly walking in silence from the Villawood detention centre in Sydney to Canberra, protesting against the treatment of asylum seekers across Australia’s detention network.
The journey will take nine days and cover about 300km. The group swells and shrinks as people join for legs of varying lengths. During the march, no one speaks.
The group, Changing the Tide, is a new one, seeking to send a message to the federal government and opposition, registering its disapproval of Australia’s immigration policies. They have engaged the comedian Akmal Saleh as their patron.
The group intends to hand letters collected from supporters to members of government.
“We have come a long way to ensure that these messages are delivered,” said organiser Anne Hilton.
Hilton worked as a counsellor at a Darwin detention centre for more than a year. She told Guardian Australia of a severely under-resourced, crowded and cruel system, which exacerbated mental illnesses and dismissed the numerous cases of psychological trauma among asylum seekers from histories of torture and abuse.
“It was one of the worst equipped facilities,” she said.
“But I think because of the staff that were there it was one of the better centres. Men that were transferred to other centres they would say they’d much rather be [here].”
Hilton said she would often turn up to work and find that men she had been treating for months had disappeared overnight, with no reason given.
Many of her allegations mirror those revealed to Guardian Australia by former International Health and Medical Services chief psychiatrist Dr Peter Young.
“It’s very cruel,” she said.
“They build up support systems around them with other men. They build trusting relationships with some of the Serco officers, with IHMS, and then it’s just all gone in a matter of hours.”
Walking with the group is Kerry Bower, wife of Gosford Anglican minister Rod Bower, who has amassed a large social media following with his messages of activism on the church’s signboard.
“We also have a woman on the walk who worked on Manus, and we have an [Iranian] woman who... stayed at Villawood when it was a hostel, before it was a detention centre,” Hilton said.
The Changing the Tide walkers will arrive at Parliament House to join a larger demonstration, before meeting politicians, including the opposition immigration spokesman, Richard Marles, and Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, and hope to hand over letters and emails from supporters.
Both the prime minister, Tony Abbott, and the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, declined to meet them.
Hilton said the group has walked for hours each day in silence, stopping at towns to meet locals and talk about their protest.
She said walking in silence was a “powerful” experience.
“We get together and talk at night about similar reflections we had as we walked along. We look at the wide open spaces of our landscape and just wonder why we are so selfish and mean-spirited and refusing to share this with people,” Hilton said.
They expect a large group of people to join the walkers for the last leg from Sutton to Canberra on Sunday. On Saturday the group left Goulburn, after holding one of the several talks they have initiated at stops along the way.
“Australia is being portrayed as this very selfish mean-spirited country and yet our experience on this walk is the total opposite to that,” Hilton said.
Churches and local residents house and feed the group at each stop.
“Wouldn’t it be great if asylum seekers could experience the side of Australia that we’re seeing?” Hilton said.
“All they get to experience is what’s behind those high electric and barbed wire fences … I believe that what we’re experiencing is really the true spirit of Australia.”