A Canberra builder who'd booked himself into a Canberra campground for some time away from it all found himself in the thick of the action on Monday night.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
Tom Jones said he booked into the Cotter Campground, about 20 minutes from the city's CBD, for two weeks when a rental dispute saw him between homes.
He had been enjoying the serenity when protesters began slowly filing in ahead of anti-vaccination rallies over the weekend.
"I get up, I go to work, I come home, I feed myself and then I go to bed, so I was unaware of anything forthcoming," Mr Jones said.
"I turned up on Friday afternoon and people were coming in in droves."
Mr Jones said the first people to arrive had been respectful but from Sunday, when protesters had been ordered to leave Exhibition Park, things took a turn.
"The first thing they did was assemble three or four of them and move a rock so they could put all their four-wheel drives in there, which meant people that paid to set a tent up couldn't access it," he said.
"And then one individual very proudly told me that he was responsible for 200 people camping on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin.
"I said 'how did that happen?', he said 'oh, I've got an angle grinder, the gate was locked so I cut the lock.
"That to me was a total disregard for the law."
READ MORE:
Mr Jones said on Sunday night someone had fired a high-powered rifle, while another individual had done burnouts up and down the road.
Three people were arrested during the police operation at Exhibition Park on Monday. Another four were arrested at the Cotter Campground later that day for failing to comply with police directions to leave.
He said the police moving in to remove the protesters on Monday evening had been a welcome sight.
"They were wonderful, absolutely wonderful," he said.
"I saw people verbally abusing them very badly and they just got on with it.
"They're not bad people, they're good people doing a job and it was handled beautifully.
