Lumen Wirltuti:Warltati 2025 - Flipbook - Page 26
Your stories
A new seat
of power
By Mark Douglas
The extraordinary images on these pages
document how a toilet came to be cemented
into place in front of Parliament House on
North Terrace on Prosh Day, 7 August 1970.
They capture mischief conceived, once
again, by University of Adelaide engineering
students.
In recent issues, Lumen has revealed the
perpetrators of two significant Uni pranks –
those who hung the FJ from the Uni
footbridge in 1971, and the trio who hung
a life-sized mannequin from the Elder Hall
spire in 1952.
Yet the masterminds behind the FJ prank
often refer to this Parliament House toilet
stunt as the greatest ever perpetrated by the
Adelaide University Engineering Society
(AUES).
Here’s how it happened.
In the era of huge anti-Vietnam war
protests, the AUES decided to create a
fictional protest march – the “antidemonstration demonstration”. Under
cover of this well-attended phony march to
Parliament, protesting nothing, as noisily as
possible, AUES students carried a makeshift
platform to become the stage for the
demonstration.
An anonymous Lumen contributor, who
went by the name of “The Phantom”, shared
some of these images, writing: “Unknown to
most of the people partaking in this exercise,
the ‘stage’ concealed people carrying a toilet,
buckets, water, a digging implement, a crowbar, reinforcing steel and some specially
formulated quick-setting concrete.”
Speakers atop the platform addressed the
assemblage, while Members of Parliament
looked on. Meantime, the people beneath the
stage were working furiously to cement the
toilet into place. When the protest ended, their
work was revealed.
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