LIVING as a successful independent playwright two years ago, Michael Gray Griffith reflects on the recent changes in Australia that have permanently altered his career and his life.

For one thing, his trip through the south-west earlier this week through Portland, Mount Gambier and Hamilton driving a politically-signed ‘freedom’ truck was definitely not the original plan.

With a convoy of friends and supporters, and making stops at country towns running his online show, Café Locked Out, amongst wool-growing properties, is a far cry from his former well-connected showbiz life.

 “I was travelling … with my theatre company (to) a lot of rural towns,” he said.

“We were actually meant to come to Hamilton with a play called ‘Marooned’ and another one called ‘The Magnolia Tree’ – we had a few.

“I was writing my own plays, I was writing about the people I interview now, ordinary Australians in our era and the problems they face and people really loved them.

“I wasn’t surviving on grants, I was surviving on audiences.

“The army was just about to start touring one of my plays to their bases because it was a suicide prevention play.

“Then Bruce Beresford, who directed Breaker Morant and Driving Miss Daisy, was going to direct one of my plays – the first time he ever directed a play, they were putting a lot of money into it; it was a just a very, very exciting time.

“Then COVID hit and all the theatres in the world shut down.”

Mr Griffith said after some time, he took issue with the way the situation was being handled politically – especially with the lockdowns - and being a gifted communicator, he gave air to his misgivings on social media.

“Originally, when it happened, I was fully on board, I wore the mask, I stayed home, I did everything,” he said.

“It was only when I saw so much hypocrisy, that I began to question things.

“I was watching our freedoms getting eroded and I was just thinking, ‘Why can’t we have a discussion about this?’

“Then they were censoring everything, and (I said) ‘They’re censoring everything; what’s going on? Why can’t we talk about this?’ – and then that conversation would (also) be censored.

“Then I was told by someone high up in the art world, ‘If you keep doing these rants, you’ll be blacklisted, your art career will be finished – you’re on the edge of some immense success’.

But Mr Griffith said he came to a fork in the road soon thereafter which turned him into an “exiled playwright”.

“New South Wales introduced segregation and I did a post that said, ‘No way is my company ever going to play to segregated audiences’,” he said.

“That was it, my life was finished.

“That’s when I got kicked out of society.”

With little else to do, he set up a Facebook page originally called Café Locked Down “just to defend free speech”.

“I had no idea what I was doing,” Mr Griffith said.

“I just got people on – anyone who was willing to talk and we just had these hour-long discussions.

“That was the end of August - and lo and behold, (now) the reach of the Facebook show alone was five and half million and we’re just nudging up to 100,000 followers.”

He said the main point of contention that resonated with such a large number of people was the subject of vaccine mandates.

Desperate people would log on to share their stories of feeling coerced, bullied and even having experienced being shut out by family and long-term friends.

“My only principal point of why I'm fighting, is I believe the bedrock of democracy is freedom of choice,” Mr Griffith said.

“The mandate’s (are) saying it’s no choice, you have to take this thing … basically comply or die.”

Mr Griffith said he takes the COVID virus seriously – he actually contracted it last year – but does not consider the response from authorities proportional and also does not understand the censorship of reasonable questions; he especially has no time for mainstream media.

“I realise we have this thing going on, but I don’t see people dying in the streets,” he said.

“I don’t see the hospitals are full and we know they’re not full because we meet people who work in them and they say they’re not full.

“Why can’t we ask questions?

“We’re being lied to constantly.

“What I see is a rather than a pandemic is a complete erosion of our freedoms to a point that it's destroying our culture.”

He said the end of last year included a particularly egregious example of traditional media’s narrative.

“I think Christmas Day, where families were basically urged to exclude or ostracise family members who hadn't complied - I think that was basically a line in the sand where we showed, we're not who we think we are,” Mr Griffith said.

“We’re not these robust larrikins who hate the government, we’re these obedient chickens who will do whatever the farmer tells us to do.”

Challenged to evidence such a severe evaluation of Australia’s present state of consciousness, Mr Griffith said such opinions are validated by speaking to immigrants who emigrated to Australia fleeing fully-fledged authoritarian regimes.

“My favourite people to interview are Hungarians, Czechoslovakians, the Portuguese, Chileans, Argentinians – they all went through this,” he said.

He said unlike most “complacent” Aussies, they all deeply understood the danger of incremental overreach of government into the private lives of individuals – and it wasn’t just for themselves, but how it eventually affects a nation.

“(If) the government tries to control people’s lives so much, people stop doing stuff,” Mr Griffith said.

“They don’t fix stuff, they don’t start ventures, they just don’t care.

“They decide the best thing to do is protect yourself and society grinds to a halt and everything crumbles – (it) might take time, but that’s what happens.”

He said he has also interviewed many highly-qualified medical people who have experienced an oppressive level of censorship from the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) and specifically gave the example of what happened to a good friend of his, Dr Paul Oosterhuis, who has had his registration suspended.

“Thirty years as an anaesthetist in emergency hospitals - this man has probably saved countless lives,” Mr Griffith said.

“He did a few Facebook memes – gone. Three or four Facebook memes where he questioned it through a meme – gone. He's taking them to the Supreme Court.”

Asked by The Spectator what he thinks the ‘freedom’ convoy might achieve, Mr Griffith said, “There’s been a question that nobody’s been able to ask is, ‘What do Australians want?’”

“Do they want tyranny or do they want freedom?” he said.

Mr Griffith said the truck tour was a carry-over from the record-sized rally in Canberra on February 12 where hundreds of thousands of people from all over Australia turned up to march on Parliament House and protest mandates; the atmosphere had been “incredible” with a strongly-representative demographic present, both at the event and later at the Exhibition Park In Canberra (EPIC) campsite.

“I think amongst these people are guardians of freedom and they come in all different shapes and sizes and ages,” he said.

The somewhat disorganised nature of his road trip did not appear to be any great obstacle - even though sometimes they arrive in towns with as little as an hour’s notice, people still turn up to see him.

The farmhouse location where his entourage arrived at north-west of Hamilton on Monday evening was a diverse collection of a few dozen people waiting for him - chatting like best mates around a fire pit and being served up dinner; some of those who attended had travelled over 100 kilometres, including from across the border in South Australia.

When the heavens opened after his online show had finished, the crowd took cover under the car port with drinks in hand patiently waiting for this interview with the affable communicator to end.

“Suddenly there's this gathering of people wanting to meet us and talk about freedom and issues and their concerns and the horrific stories,” he said.

“Mount Gambier was a great crowd.

“Other little towns - suddenly you’re driving down and someone bursts out of nowhere with flags.

“The same happened in Portland - it was a really nice gathering of people in Portland.

“The bond between the freedom tribe, I've never experienced anything like it. There's enormous respect.”

He has experienced significant opposition also – the truck was vandalised shortly before leaving Melbourne; Mr Griffith said he would be happy to talk with his detractors, but that’s not usually what happens.

“Very rarely - in fact hardly ever (do we) get people from the other side wanting to talk to us – they’re just aggressive,” Mr Griffith said.

“(They) yell at us, throw something at us - never a discussion. I don't understand why.”

Despite this, he said he hoped more people would reconsider how they viewed the political climate in Australia now.

 “That horrible feeling inside you is the fact that you're not facing up to the reality that your life is gone.

“There’s something deeply wrong in our society.

“The freedoms that we have now were won for us by people we don't know and it's our responsibility and obligation to defend it and fight for it.”

With huge numbers of people logging on to view Café Locked Out regularly, it’s tough to ignore that Mr Griffith’s message is resonating with many.

“I feel at the moment, the greatest weapon we have is our voice and the courage to use it,” he said.

“I found a great purpose to my life, which I feel blessed for.”