There was about 50 mothers, midwives, lots of babies in prams and slings marching together today at lunchtime from about 12noon through Martin Place up to Parliament house. It was a thrill to see so many turn up.

It was fun; we chanted What do We want? Midwives and When do we want them? Now!!!! Very LOUDLY

We tried to synchronize some other chants too and had a couple of laughs along the way so for a while we switched to "Mothers and Midwives marching together"

The area was fairly crowded with lots of astonished faces looking at us reading our slogans on posters.

Justine Caines (Maternity Coalition NSW President) was brilliant at organizing everyone - she has the ability to make it all look very easy. Straight after the march she took off for a meeting in Canberra - what a woman!!!

2GB Radio was there for interviews.
ABC Radio was there too.
Channel 7 News was filming - and following us all the way. I am not sure who the other film crews were but they were very interested and followed our crowd too.
We had representatives from the Democrats in the march and with their banners too.

The march was co-coordinated by Tanya Leishman (from my classes) who is a Greens Candidate from Heathcote and the Greens were well represented and had their flags and banners too. Lee Rhiannon gave a speech, as did The Hon. Dr Arthur Chesterfield-Evans MLC - these were recorded by 2GB and ABC RADIO.

It was an easy march - no rain J - just a fairly short distance to travel so we didn't get puffed out and it seems having it in the middle of the city was a good idea to attract the media attention.

The youngest baby was Tanya's at 6 weeks old!!! Isn't she amazing to organise this with her first baby being 6 weeks old.

Some mothers brought in 2 or 3 children and they were all great - the camera crews were particularly interested in filming the littlies.

After the march we relaxed together and ate our lunch at the domain in the afternoon sunshine - quite beautiful -
It was clearly a very very successful march.
It was a buzz!!!
Never mind if you weren't there to join us this time - come along next time.

I think the next one is for the Illawarra region at Wollongong - only takes 50 mins to get there from Sydney.

Julie Clarke

P.O. Box 1190
Blackburn North,
Victoria 3130
Australia