Every dead Gazan child had a name. We recited each one, out loud, at Collins Street Baptist Church, Melbourne

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Its 3.30am and I have been sleeping in a red-wallpapered vestry at the back of Collins Street Baptist Church. It is warm in here and dark. Its smells of old Bibles and faded lilies, and it is hard to wake. I slip out of my sleeping bag and walk, sock-footed, back into the church. The reading is still going.

A voice in the dark. Calling their names. Nearly 19,000 children who have died in the past two years in Gaza. Their names are printed phonetically, and next to the name, their age. This vigil has committed to reading out loud, over 30 hours, all the names that have been gathered.

We are reading the names of the 40 Jewish children who lost their lives on October 7, the 250 children who have been killed on the West Bank, and then, the