Hi All, John Jiggens (journalist) sent this to me this morning. "Julian Assange’s father, John Shipton, has been travelling from Melbourne to Canberra via Sydney in a colourful motorcade on the Home Run 4 Julian Assange tour, aiming to galvanise support for Julian in Melbourne, Canberra, and Sydney as well as regional centres in Victoria and New South Wales. 

The photo above shows John Shipton at the start of the tour, posing in front of his van, which is decorated with a huge image of Julian and the slogan Australians Bring Assange Home, accompanied by friends Jacob Grech and Graeme Dunstan.  

Graeme Dunstan is the Captain of the Peace bus, a brightly decorated Kombi, adorned with a van-size version of the No Extradition bumper sticker. A flamboyant convoy of vans and support vehicles, the Home Run 4 Julian motorcade began its two-week-plus tour outside the Victoria State Library on February 27.  

The convoy was at Wagga, having already visited Bendigo, Castlemaine, and Albury where I spoke to John Shipton. John was buoyed by the tour, which had involved public Speak-Outs outside courthouses, interviews with the media, and meetings with supporters in smaller country towns. He spoke with fondness of the stop-over in Benalla where they had dropped in to have a cup of tea and found themselves besieged by supporters who thrust money and goodwill on them, and turned up the next day with more money and donations. 

After Wagga, John explained, Charles Sturt University was the tour’s next stop, then Goulburn where the tourists would spend two days manning a stall at the Goulburn show. They would be joined in Goulburn by Australian filmmaker James Ricketson, who spent 15 months in a Cambodian jail, charged with espionage, who would film the rest of the tour. After Goulburn, the tour would continue to Katoomba, Parramatta, and Sydney, before finishing its exhausting run in Canberra on March 15. 

While they have been out on the road, John’s spirit has been uplifted by nightly contact with Julian in Belmarsh. As John remarked: 

“Seeing that there has been an infestation of COVID-19 in the jail since March last year, and the jail and prisoners are in lock-down for 23 hours each day, the jail extends a privilege ─ in their view ─ of a ten-minute phone call each day.” 

John recounted this touching experience:  

“In the evening I was walking along speaking to him on the phone and a cricket started to sing, and Julian said, ‘Is that a cricket? Is that a cricket?’ He hasn’t heard a cricket for nine-and-a-half-years. He likes to hear about where we are because that is his home patch, and he loved touring in motor cars when he was little.” 

Despite the long-drawn-out harassment of his son, John Shipton was pleased by Opposition Leader Albanese’s recent remarks to caucus that Assange had suffered enough, and expressed his belief that support for Julian was growing in many places, though with some notable exceptions. 

“The world-wide upswelling of support for Julian and the understanding of the intimidation of journalists, the oppression, the punishment, the judicial kidnapping of journalists  ─ an Australian national being judicially kidnapped to the United States ─  setting that up as an example for all future critics of the US to be judicially kidnapped. The understanding has struck probably everybody, except the Prime Minister’s Department and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. They are still in the bunker, staring out through the upright telescope to see what’s on the horizon (laughs).” 

When I asked him if he’d seen any encouraging signs from the government, John Shipton replied: 

“I haven’t seen anything from them that would encourage me ─ except this: the government spokesperson (and the same in the UK) no longer say smearing or damaging calumnies, no longer commit calumnies against Julian Assange. They don’t do it any more. We are back to neutral, where we should have been ten years ago.”  Thankyou John Jiggens for your article.

Details below are where the "Home Run for Julian will be today and over the next few days.

• Wikileaks Cafe 1pm Wednesday, March 10, 192 Great Western Hwy, Hazelbrook
• Marise Payne MP office 12pm Thursday March 11, 2/12 Macquarie St. Parramatta
• Sydney Martin Place 5pm - 6pm Friday March 12
• Sydney Town Hall 6pm - 7pm Friday March 12
• Canberra 6pm - 8pm Sunday March 14, ANU Food Co-op, 3 Kingsley St Acton
• Canberra 8am - 9am Monday March 15, Corner of State Circle & Kings Avenue
• Canberra 9:30am Monday March 15, "Meet the Pollies Rally" Federation Mall.