The first thing hiker Nathaniel Maxwell noticed as he trudged towards an ancient rock cavern in the Grampians National Park last Saturday was the sound of dozens of voices singing Waltzing Matilda.
It was the Australia Day long weekend and as Mr Maxwell peered into the cave-like formation known as the Cool Chamber in central Victoria, he noticed that many of the men were wearing black T-shirts bearing a distinctive Celtic-style symbol. Others were wearing army fatigues. Some raised their arm in a Nazi salute. As Mr Maxwell walked away, he heard shouts of “white power!”
Other hikers and residents of nearby Halls Gap watched members of the same group marching through the small tourist town on Sunday and Monday. They assembled around the local barbecue area, some shirtless with Nazi tattoos, and sipped coffee outside the Black Panther Cafe, which is staffed and owned by an Indian family.
“We are the Ku Klux Klan,” one of them belligerently told a local, who declined to be named for fear of repercussions. Another heard the group screaming racist slogans as they got drunk on Sunday night while camping illegally at Lake Bellfield, a beautiful body of water at the foot of the Grampians’ granite peaks and ridges.
Read the article by in The Sydney Morning Herald.