A week of Blockade Australia climate protests in Sydney tests tough new laws

Rolles was arrested and charged on Tuesday morning for his alleged role in blocking roads with fellow climate activists, and was released on strict bail conditions late on Wednesday.

The conditions included that he leave Sydney within 72 hours, not use encrypted messaging applications, and have no contact with about 38 people who are also allegedly involved with Blockade Australia, some of whom are his closest friends.

At the time he speaks to Guardian Australia, on Thursday morning, he is awaiting the results of a rapid Covid test. While he is on the phone, he learns it is positive, making the task of leaving Sydney, as he has been ordered to do, somewhat of a logistical challenge.

Sydney had been in the crosshairs of Blockade Australia for months, with the activist group saying that stopping the economic heart of Australia was the only way for people to take climate change seriously.

The week of disruption started with activists marching through Hyde Park, and one of them, Mali Cooper from Lismore, allegedly blocking the Sydney Harbour tunnel with a car before attaching herself to the steering wheel with a bike lock.

In an 18-minute video posted on social media by one of the activists at the Wednesday march, a man wearing a skull mask, blowing a whistle and banging a drum fashioned from a large plastic container and a piece of rope, leads the group while dozens of police on foot, horseback, motorbike and in a large van follow along.

According to New South Wales police statements, there were 23 arrests made between Monday and Wednesday involving people allegedly involved in the protests. Those arrested came from Tasmania, Victoria, Queensland, NSW and the Australian Capital Territory, and were aged from their 20s to their 70s.

If found guilty the majority of those arrested face up to two years in prison and fines of $22,000 under tough new anti-protest laws introduced early this year by the NSW government.

Rolles and Woods were both in Colo in late June when a fellow activist spotted covert police operatives watching them from bushland at a remote property.

Woods says it has been confronting seeing how police have attempted to quash their activism, saying it is beyond the scope of what he had expected.

Davis says none of the people arrested on Tuesday have been granted police bail, despite grounds to do so in the majority of cases, and the conditions eventually agreed to were, in his view, incredibly punitive. Most of those he was representing had no criminal records.