Education
University of New South Wales.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
Graeme Dunstan
Edit ProfileCareer
Foreign the former VFL player, see Graeme Dunstan (football player). He is an engineering graduate of the University of New South Wales (UNSW), where he was President of the Students" Union (1967) and twice co-editor of its newspaper, Tharunka, (1967 and 1971). In 1966, while President of the UNSW Labor Club, he was active in organizing anti-Vietnam War protests.
As organizer of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Welcome Committee he stopped United States President Lyndon B. Johnson"s motorcade in Liverpool Street, Sydney by lying under the president"s car, upon which NSW Premier, Robert Askin, was reported to have said "run over the bastards".
In 1973 with Johnny Allen as director of the Aquarius Foundation of the Australian Union of Students and Dunstan, as director of the Foundation"s biennial Aquarius Festival, together they produced the Aquarius Festival which took place in Nimbin, New South Wales. In 1985-1989 he was a Festivals Consultant to the Victorian Tourism Commission and in that role he was one of the initiators the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Limited serving as its founding Secretary in 1987.
As a freelance event organizer, Dunstan has helped produce celebrations including the Byron Bay NYE (1995), Bondi Beach Christmas and NYE celebration 1996, Nimbin "Let lieutenant Grow" Mardi Grass (1998 - "99), the Sunshine Coast Schoolies Week (1997), the annual Eureka Dawn Walk (since 1998) and the annual Independence from America Day Parade in Byron Bay (since 1998). In July 2011, Dunstan assisted a fellow activist, Bryan Law, who smashed a hole in an Australian military helicopter using a garden mattock.
The helicopter was grounded for four months.
Dunstan represented himself at trial. On August 22, 2013, a jury found him guilty. He was sentenced to three years of "good behavior" and ordered to pay more than $160,000, but he avoided imprisonment for his role in the politically motivated property destruction.
He is captain of Peacebus.com, which is a website and a campaign vehicle from which he organizes Cyanide Watch and other actions of witness for peace, justice and a sustaining Earth.
