General News
12 December, 2025
Community rallies in protest against “insidious” gender-based violence
Maryborough’s main street stopped for a crowd of over a hundred community members on Wednesday morning, in a rally to mark the end to this year’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based violence campaign.
In a movement organised by Maryborough District Health Service (MDHS), Central Goldfields Shire Council (CGSC), The Orange Door, Zonta, and many other community partners, residents dressed in orange to walk from Phillips Gardens to MDHS, converging to hear speeches from advocates and survivors.
Reviving the marches that took place in previous years, this week’s major event depicted a shared message among advocates, improving community partnerships and education being key to intervention.
CGSC community partnerships manager Melissa Kennedy was overwhelmed with the community’s response.
“We just didn’t know how many people would turn up. To see the number of people that came from the community to walk in solidarity with victims of family violence is so encouraging,” she said.
“It is a real testament to the work that has been undertaken to this point to spread the message and for the community to understand how important and insidious the problem is.”
“If we are really serious about ending family violence, we need a whole of community response and action with this, we can’t have any one service, professional people in the community who witness things ... we need to know that it is ok to reach out for support and ask for support,” MDHS inclusion and diversity lead Karla Rawles said.
Maryborough Police family violence liaison sergeant David Symmons said police are often the first to be alerted of family violence incidents, but can’t intervene unless the community knows how to help.
“The police aren’t aware of everything, so if there are incidents, unless the community, victim, family, friends, people in sporting clubs, do let us know, we are not aware,” he said.
“This type of thing brings it to the front of the community’s mind, and that in turn gets us involved at an earlier stage, hopefully.”
According to recent statistics from Crime Statistics Agency Victoria, Central Goldfields Shire saw a rate of 2959 family violence incidents per 100,000 people during the 2024-25 financial year, the highest of all local government areas in the Loddon region. This rate is twice the state average.
“The numbers are going up, but sometimes you can’t say it’s a bad thing because then people are talking about it,” Sgt Symmons said.
Centre for Non-Violence’s Michelle Biggs echoed the statistics meant there were fewer local incidents going unnoticed, but education and prevention is still fundamental.
“I think all the services and responses are really important but the primary prevention work is just as important,” she said.
“Some people don’t actually know they are living with family violence and that’s what’s going on for them, because it might be normalised for whatever reason, and not everyone reaches out to police either, so a lot of it goes under reported, and the statistics are probably higher than what we see.”
Witnessing a variety of situations when turning out to incidents, Maryborough SES unit controller Rachel Mitchell agreed.
“Even taking it into schools helps the kids to realise some of the things they might see as just a little bit of a prank or bullying might not even be that, it may be a precursor to them showing complete disrespect to a partner, or other people, in the future,” she said.
“It’s often forgotten about but we often go to a lot of different situations and see a lot of different families and some times we pick up on things that are going on. SES try to be there for people, it doesn’t matter who you are, you deserve to be safe.”
The global theme for this year’s campaign was ending digital violence against all women and girls. Experts and advocates fear the public’s awareness may primarily be physical violence and don’t want other forms of abuse including coercive control, emotional and financial abuse or technological control to go unnoticed.
During the 2024-25 financial year, Central Goldfields Shire saw 245 reported incidents of verbal abuse, 174 incidents of emotional abuse and 82 incidents of ‘other abuse’, encompassing social and spiritual abuse, property damage, stalking, theft and pet abuse.
Maryborough Zonta Club’s Bronwen Haywood said the event provoked these conversations before the march ended.
“I was on the roundabout because I couldn’t walk the distance ... after I got off the centre podium, I was approached by a woman who asked me what we were protesting about, and I said ‘it’s the 16 days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, ... we are preventing family violence’, and she said, ‘it’s not just violence, it can be financial’. I was late to the speeches because she debriefed to me about her 30 years of living in a relationship where she was controlled financially,” she said.
“So we have a little bit to do about educating people what the 16 days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence is.”
If you or someone you know is experiencing, or at risk of experiencing domestic, family and sexual violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732, text 0458 737 732 or visit www.1800respect.org.au for online chat and video call services — available 24/7.
