The Walk Together event, one of a number that occurred concurrently across Australia, was organised by Rural Australians for Refugees and Young People for Refugees to help make new Australians in the region feel welcome.

YPR president Tayla Hansen said the walk was an opportunity to speak out against what she sees as an increase in racist rhetoric making its way into political debate.

“The rise of parties like One Nation that reiterate that it’s OK for that rhetoric to be out in the community, it’s OK for that negativity and derogatory rhetoric to come out of people in the community and for me that’s not OK,” she said.

“It’s never OK, it’s never been OK and we don’t want instances of really bad things in history repeating themselves.”

The 25-year-old said, with the exception of a few, Bendigonians were generally an inclusive and welcoming lot.

“It’s important just to show there are people in the community that stand in solidarity with people from different backgrounds,” she said.

“We really show that we are together as a community and it’s good to have that so that people that are from different backgrounds feel welcome in Bendigo.”

Golden Square man David Hooke was among the crowd, and also warned of the dangers of divisiveness in democratic societies.

“The quickest way to have social disruption is to marginalise certain groups, so we want to make sure everyone feels welcome and comfortable here,” he said.

“It’s all very well for people to try to divide the community, sometimes for political gain, [but] this is very counterproductive and can end up being quite dangerous as we see in other countries where civil wars are being fought – we don’t want that sort of thing here.”

Ms Hansen said the majority of people who travelled to Bendigo from overseas had positive experiences.

“We have doctors that have moved here from India and Pakistan and they have had no negative experiences at all,” she said.

“We’ve had a lot of Karen community people, refugees from Myanmar, and they make fantastic contributions in their own way to the community every day.”