When Brisbane City Council started removing bus shelters to 'clean up' the city, reportedly "at the request of local businesses", homeless people lost dry places to sleep, public transport users could no longer sit shielded from the weather, and Michael Candy was mobilised.
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| Michael Candy and a fellow "Dirty Worker" install the Bitter Bench in William Street, Brisbane, at the former site of a bus shelter. |
A prolific robotics tinkerer, Candy invented the Bitter Bench, a motorised seat designed "as a retaliation" for "the city's most vulnerable being targeted”.
On a bright January morning in 2012, he and some friends donned high-vis gear, positioned traffic cones in Brisbane's William Street, and set his bench into concrete.
It was rigged to tip people off as they sat, triggering "a proximity-activated audio system" that played recorded testimonials from the homeless people who had been displaced. A sign told pedestrians this was "mayor Campbell Newman's penance to the homeless”.
Read Katherine Wilson’s story in The Sydney Morning Herald - “The rise of the tinkerers: how DIY activists are making their own way.”
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