Melbourne and Geelong event and commercial photography

…Well, rather, on this week in 2024.

In what was clearly a tactical blunder on part of the charity (yes, it’s a charity) that organises the bi-annual Land Forces weapons expo; AMDA Foundation thought it was a good idea to bring the 2024 edition of Land Forces to Melbourne.

AMDA clearly thought that this would fly completely under the radar in the country’s most politically active city. Land Forces is an event that was ran out of Brisbane following years of sustained protest there against the weapons expo.

Spoiler alert: Land Forces was definitely on people’s radars in Melbourne despite the wishful thinking of the organisers. That much, goes without saying.

You’ve got to remember, at this point, Melbourne had played host to nearly a year of weekly pro Palestine demonstrations that were regularly drawing thousands of attendees. Not to mention the hundreds of other protest actions, pickets and blockades against weapons manufacturers, ports, politicians offices and more across the suburbs in between the big weekend rallies in the city.

Nevertheless, the Victorian State Government threw the kitchen sink at protecting this weapons expo from those dastardly protesters, even bringing in riot police from New South Wales and Queensland to bolster the already over-militarised Victoria Police.

Despite the heavy police presence during the event and the threats leading up to it, it didn’t stop thousands of people turning out over the week to protest the event, and they ran Land Forces out of Melbourne too.

Here’s some images from last year’s Disrupt Land Forces protests:

Riot police from New South Wales were brought in to bolster the policing of the Land Forces protests.

Victoria Police of course also brought out hundreds of its own to protect the Land Forces expo. Flash bangs, rubber bullets (a photographer was hospitalised after being shot in the ear), bean bag rounds and tear gas were used copiously against the protesters.

Protesters built makeshift barricades.

Bubbles were apparently too much for the police to handle, as soon after this photo was taken, the officers grabbed this woman and confiscated her bubble wand.

The woman was fine aside from some mild bemusement from her and her fellow protesters.