Record turn-out for anti-DV march in Ballina

This year’s Rotary march in Ballina calling for an end to domestic violence was the largest yet, with the local initiative sparking similar campaigns around the country and world.

Towards the northern end of the state, a small but dedicated group of around thirty people in Murwillumbah also turned out on Friday in support of what has become an annual event.

Murwillumbah Rotary Club Mt Warning AM member Kaylene Stanford said the group marched from Murwillumbah’s Knox Park to the Tweed Shire Council chambers in the mid-morning, before heading back outside to continue taking their message through the hinterland town’s streets.

Front-facing council staff wore the campaign’s signature purple t-shirts, emblazoned with the message, ‘together we say no to domestic and family violence’, Ms Stanford said, and joined protesters for photos.

Local police also supported the event as in the past, she said, with a Tweed Byron Police District domestic violence liaison officer in attendance.

Other supporters included members of Zonta International, a group with a stated mission to advance the status of women, and Country Women’s Association members from as far as the Gold Coast.

Around the world in sixteen days, starting in Ballina

Meanwhile, more than 1,200 people joined Friday’s lunchtime march from River Street to Ballina Indoor Sports Centre.

Rotary International South Pacific campaign leader David Harmon has been organising the march in Ballina since its launch six years ago and said this time of year was now his busiest, attracting national and global interest in campaign support.

The local 2025 march number was Ballina’s highest yet, Mr Harmon said, and represented a broad range of supporters from local high school students to police, support groups and Ballina Shire Mayor Sharon Cadwaller, who again spoke publicly in both her capacity as a local government representative and domestic violence survivor.

The march was part of a sixteen-day campaign calling for an end to family and domestic violence and Mr Harmon said he knew of solidarity Rotary club events happening from as near as Queensland’s Scenic Rim to as far as Victoria and Adelaide, where seven or eight clubs had hosted events ‘all through the weekend,’ across the ditch in New Zealand, throughout the Pacific islands and further abroad in the US, Scotland and Cambodia.

Another six clubs in Uganda were also participating in the campaign, while in Nigeria, the Rotary International President Elect and his wife were also strong supporters.

Teens hear from domestic violence experts at free breakfast

‘The campaign that started in Ballina has really gathered legs,’ Mr Harmon said.

He didn’t just mean people walking.

Mr Harmon said the Rotary organisation and other supporters of an end to domestic and family violence were determined to ‘break the cycle’ in terms of intergenerational repetition.

To this end, this year’s Ballina campaign included a school leadership breakfast hosted by the local Rotary branch and the Cherry Street Sports Club.

Every high school across the Northern Rivers was invited to send student leaders to the free breakfast to hear from domestic and family violence experts, including a local magistrate, mental health professional and the NSW Police Coercive Control project lead, Bridget Mottram.

NSW was the first state to outlaw coercive control but at the same time, Mr Harmon said data showed 44% of young people in Australia had been exposed to or lived with domestic and/or family violence.

Eleven of around thirty schools invited to last Thursday’s breakfast sent representatives, with Banora Point students traveling the farthest for what Mr Harmon described as ‘whole of community approach model’ on ending domestic and family violence.

Other students came from Summerland Christian College, Trinity and Xavier Catholic Colleges, Wollumbin and Ballina Coast Highs, three other public schools in Lismore, and Mullumbimby and Byron representatives sadly missed.