As Peter Spencer remains on his platform, refusing to eat in a protest over farmers’ land rights, his daughter Sarah tells why she understands her dad’s action.
Starving, sunburnt and isolated on a makeshift platform 20 metres in the air, Peter Spencer could not imagine his suffering getting any worse … until he looked down.
When the protesting farmer, in the sixth week of his dramatic hunger strike, which began on November 23, 2009, saw his daughter Sarah nursing her four-month-old son Saxon on the ground, he realised he was too weak to come down and embrace his new grandson for the first time.
With Sarah unwilling to risk her baby’s life in a climb up to the platform – which is on a wind-monitoring tower on her dad’s property in Cooma, an hour south of Canberra – Peter, 58, was forced to watch on in despair.
Giving up food was one thing, forgoing time with the newest member of his family another.But Sarah says she understands Peter’s decision to maintain his strike in his campaign for better land rights for farmers.
“It was very hard for Dad – it would be for any grandfather,” she says. “Dad could see his new grandson from the platform, and he couldn’t cuddle him. I was sad myself. I can only imagine how he felt.”
But despite Peter’s disappointment, it was still a shining display of love-laced family unity. His children experienced first-hand their father’s opposition to the government’s refusal to compensate farmers it has banned from developing and clearing their land.
It was a poignant moment that made Peter realise the enormous emotional pain his campaign was costing. But just seeing his four children and grandson was a well-timed morale-boost for him as the lonely vigil of his hunger strike extended towards 50 days.
“We went straight to see him when we arrived back in Australia,” says Sarah, who now lives in America. “We called out, ‘We love you, Dad.’ He was really surprised because he didn’t know we were coming.”
With Peter as a figurehead, thousands of farmers across Australia caught up in similar bureaucratic obstinacy that is sending them bankrupt, have found new resolve in demanding a royal commission into land rights.
Peter’s unprecedented hunger strike has turned the farmers’ fight into a national issue. But for Sarah, the personal struggle of watching her dad – who is surviving only on fluids – deteriorate has been agonising.
Your say: Do you support Peter’s protest? Should Prime Minister Kevin Rudd meet with him?
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