Last of the Raid Tents Raised at the Bixbus Tent Community

The last two of the fourteen medium tents brought through in the raid on the Singleton warehouse went up by early afternoon. With them, the whole of the raid's stock was standing: fourteen tents and 252 military cots, raised in four days by volunteers working under Aaron Smyth and Brett Wilson. Settlers had been moving onto cots since the first three tents went up on the day of the raid, taking beds as fast as each tent was finished, and the work had slowed only as the ground grew harder and the crews more tired.

With nothing left in store to put up, the rest of the day went on turning rows of canvas into a planned camp. Aaron divided the ground into zones, keeping sleeping tents apart from the spaces meant for cooking and gathering. He set out a central supply area where food and tools could be handed out from one place rather than from wherever they had been dropped, and marked wash areas and a proper line of latrines away from the tents. Brett walked the rows with him, checking pegs and guy ropes and moving two tents that had been pitched too close to the latrine line.

For the first time, Bixbus had more beds standing than it had people. Fewer than a hundred settlers lived in the settlement, and most had already moved under canvas or were about to. Some still preferred the camping tents, cars and motorhomes they had lived in since July, and nobody was made to move. The capacity that looked generous that evening was the whole of what the raid had brought, and there was no more where it had come from.