There's no bridge too far for this climate activist's cause

Sydney Morning Herald

13-05-2025

She recommends we order an avocado smoothie each and share the salt and pepper tofu and sizzling 'beef'. CoCo is vegan, and I decide not to tell her about my usually meat-heavy diet.
We had first planned to eat Ethiopian food – because it was her first meal out of prison last year – but the chosen restaurant only opens in the evening. 'Day works best for me,' CoCo texted before our lunch. 'Most of our [protest] planning meetings are at night for the working folks.'
Since her first fortnight in the ACT prison, CoCo has been detained twice more – for blocking the Sydney Harbour and West Gate bridges. But she wasn't always an environmental zealot – and even voted for the Liberal Party at her first election.
After studying philosophy at university, she went on a cross-country road trip when Australia was in drought. She grew concerned at the dry and arid parts of Australia she traversed. But it wasn't until she arrived in Melbourne, the protest capital, that she was 'really quickly radicalised'.
Over the course of a two-hour seminar by activist group Extinction Rebellion, CoCo became enraged at what she came to see as political inaction on the climate crisis. She committed her life to activism.
'I was at a point where I would have started a family ... and I made the decision to not start a family and instead devote myself to this,' she says.
'I can't imagine bringing a kid into this world with what I know we're going to face unless we have a change in our trajectory.'
Her fears are rooted in the climate science that indicates global warming rising more than 1.5 degrees would have severe impacts on Earth's ecosystems and societies.
Already glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, extreme weather events such as bushfires are happening more often, coral bleaching is widespread on the Great Barrier Reef and rising sea levels have forced the relocation of some low-lying island communities.
The crisis is what motivated her to park a truck on Sydney Harbour Bridge and block traffic.
CoCo was nervous on that April morning in 2022, unsure if her crew of activists – which comprised a philosopher, firefighter and opera singer – would be able to pull it off. Then-NSW premier Dominic Perrottet already wanted their 'heads on a platter' over earlier stunts, CoCo says, and the state was cracking down on protesters.
The truck rolled along narrow city streets and stopped in the inner suburb of Millers Point for a last-minute bathroom break, and drove on to the bridge about 8.15am in the thick of the morning rush.
In the moments leading up to the 'truck jump' (as I'm told it's called), CoCo had a knot of worry in her stomach. But once her team arrived at the bridge she felt relieved 'because even if you see flashing lights, you just stop the truck and you're in your blockade'.
When the truck stopped, adrenaline took over. Two protesters glued their hands to the road and the other two, including CoCo, climbed on top of the truck and livestreamed on social media.
Meanwhile, traffic banked up and commuters hammered their car horns. It created an immense traffic jam and received widespread news coverage.
The fallout was swift.
CoCo was sentenced to 15 months' jail, which raised questions over the anti-protest laws in NSW. The sentence was eventually quashed on appeal.
In an interesting quirk, CoCo's uncle, Alister Henskens (Uncle Al, she calls him with a chuckle), is a NSW state MP and at the time was a Liberal minister, and strengthened the laws used to prosecute his niece before she was sentenced.
'He knew that that would put me in prison, and he did it anyway,' she says. 'So you can imagine that we haven't really been in touch since.'
CoCo says her father's side of the family are rusted-on Liberal voters and believe that 'you're only a good person if you're making money'. It was in this environment she voted Liberal in her first election. (At this month's federal election she volunteered for the Greens but also says she would consider supporting someone 'even further left'.)
Eventually, her upbringing became at odds with CoCo's core philosophies and she underwent a 'huge culture shift', which she reflected by changing her name. Growing up as a child of divorced parents, CoCo had a long and unwieldy name: Deanna Maree Henskens-Silsbury.
She simplified her surname to CoCo one drunken night with her mother when she was 18, and she went by the name throughout her 20s.
'And when I landed in Melbourne and started doing activism and stuff, I think I just wanted a name that was a little bit older,' she says. 'I was sort of hitting 30, and wanted to have something a bit more grounded … so I chose Violet.' Violet CoCo is now legally her name.
CoCo's protests often court controversy by causing damage and leaving unsuspecting commuters stranded in traffic. But she argues the disruption she causes doesn't detract from her message.
'There's got to be one or two people that sort of see us protesting and go, 'Oh, well, I'm going to ignore the science now because you annoyed me today', but overwhelmingly the message cuts through despite the annoyance caused,' she says.
'You have to be a pretty big idiot to be like, 'I don't believe the science because this person is being annoying'.'
Her claim is supported by research from Yale University research that found that disruptive climate activism generally strengthened pro-environmental attitudes.
Surveys by Michael E. Mann and Shawn Patterson of the University of Pennsylvania, however, show that the public overall does not approve of these kinds of protests. In their research, 46 per cent of respondents reported that such tactics decreased their support for efforts to address climate change, 40 per cent said they had no impact, and 13 per cent said they increased their support.'
The scorn of commuters and social media pile-ons also doesn't faze her. 'I'm not here to be liked. I'm here to be effective,' she says.
But I do find myself liking CoCo: she's an engaging storyteller and a fun lunch guest.
So I'm almost reluctant to sour the mood and ask how she justifies her actions going beyond disruptive and creating distress.
Last year, CoCo pulled off another truck jump, this time on Melbourne's West Gate Bridge during peak-hour. The bridge was blocked for two hours and in the ensuing chaos a pregnant woman had to give birth on the side of the road after she became stuck in traffic en route to the hospital and calls to triple zero were delayed.
CoCo admits she feels 'pretty terrified' about this, but defends it as being for the greater good.
'I'm vegan, I'm someone who doesn't want to cause harm in the world at all … it's really confronting to face that eventuality,' she says.
'Sometimes I view it from a utilitarian perspective, which is like if you don't do this then billions and billions of people will potentially die of starvation and [be] burning alive and floods and all of this.
'So it's like maybe when you're a parent, you have to disrupt your kid's day to make them go to bed or eat vegetables, and they don't like it, and it's a bit frustrating … that's how I view the lens of disruption when it comes to ambulances being blocked.'
We've gobbled up our vegetable spring rolls at Huong Viet and nearly drained the avocado smoothies.
Her stunt on the West Gate earned CoCo her third and longest stint behind bars: two months in the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in Ravenhall.
Her partner, Brad Homewood, served a similar sentence in the neighbouring men's prison for his role in the West Gate protest.
They wrote letters to each other via prison mail, describing the view of the sunset from their separate cells. In one letter, CoCo asked Homewood to marry her.
They have since tied the knot and have matching heart-shaped tattoos paired with an infinity symbol in green and black – the colours of environmentalism and anarchy.
While the climate crisis worsens, CoCo says that it's becoming harder to attract protesters to join her cause. Young people are instead flocking to join the pro-Palestine protests in Melbourne.
'I think it's definitely absorbed a lot of the energy. It's the zeitgeist at the moment,' says CoCo. 'I feel like COVID did really do a number on the climate community. It collapsed us a lot.'
Despite the prison sentences, enraged commuters, a family feud and a lack of new blood for protests, CoCo's resolve remains steadfast.
Last month, she tied herself to a logging machine in Tasmania's Central Highlands, and in March, she spearheaded a protest outside federal Labor MP Peter Khalil's office.
But if she gave up protesting, CoCo would be philosophising and playing music.
'And obviously, I'd have a family,' she says. Giving up motherhood remains her biggest sacrifice.
'It's definitely something that I reckon with a lot,' she says.