It was the deafening banging on the front door of Victorian Greens MP Lidia Thorpe’s electorate office, in Melbourne’s inner-north, that first raised the alarm.
Luckily the door was locked, but it didn’t stop an unidentified man from getting his message across.
“All Abos must die,” the note he slipped under the door read.
The incident was the latest in a string of graphic sexual violence and death threats Ms Thorpe received after calling for Australian flags to be flown at half-mast on January 26.
“I wasn’t shocked. I was more disturbed a little, I think, by the level of degree that they went to,” Ms Thorpe tells NITV News.
As a Gunnai-Gundtjimara woman, Lidia has grown up surrounded by women who've dedicated their lives to the Aboriginal cause; women with fire in their bellies.
As a result she's become accustomed to being attacked for voicing her opinion.
“I’ve grown up in an environment where speaking out about Aboriginal people and our rights, [and] calling for land rights ... has always meant that we’re attacked,” she says.
But this time it was different.
“To threaten me by using quite detailed gang rape threats… that was the part that I wasn’t used to.”
Ms Thorpe, the first Aboriginal woman elected to the Victorian parliament, was shaken by the level of violence in the threats.
“My staff called the police because the threat at the door was quite a serious one. Parliamentary Services also had the police involved due to the emails that came through to my parliamentary email, and so the local police increased the security around my office and around my personal address, so they would regularly do drive-bys to ensure that their presence was known,” she says.
“It has heightened my sense of security in terms of I have to be aware of my surroundings. But I think we do that unconsciously as women anyway."
For 24-year-old Aboriginal activist, Tarneen Onus-Williams, going to the police is not an option she tells NITV News.
“I think I’m safer with my dad and my family being my security guards than the actual police."
“I’ve gone to the police before for a sexual assault, almost two years ago now. In my case, they kept bringing up things about Invasion Day, and the person ended up getting off,” she says.
Ms Onus-Williams is no stranger to being on the receiving end of abuse for speaking her mind, but it was after her speech during an Invasion Day rally in Melbourne last month where she said, ‘F**k Australia! Hope it burns to the ground!’ that Tarneen felt the full brunt of that abuse. Despite arguing her words were to be taken "metaphorically", rather than literally, Ms Onus-Williams has been at the centre of a wild media storm. High profile commentators and mainstream media outlets have condemned her publicly, others have taken to social media to defend her, sparking the #IStandwithTarneen campaign which trended on Twitter.
Ms Onus-Williams told NITV News the experience has left her distraught.
“Someone wrote [to me], 'there is nothing better than hate-f**king someone', that was probably one of the worst ones because that is so disgusting,” she reveals.
Even during our interview, she received another insult.
“Just now, someone has called me a 'parasite'," she reads from her Twitter account.
"Calling someone an animal or referring to them as such a bug means that their life is disposable. For me, it’s like a mandate for murder.”
It's been a difficult few weeks for Ms Onus-Williams.
"I felt very isolated and that I’d done the wrong thing, and I’d done this to my community," she says.
The reaction to her comments has been stinging. Almost every publication around the nation has reported on the speech and conservative politicians pounced on the headline grabbing opportunity.
Former Victorian Liberal Premier Jeff Kennett was one of the first, saying “those who use inappropriate language against the country they choose to live in, use language like that because they don’t have the intellectual capacity to argue their case.”
“If they don’t like it, if they think the country is as bad as so many of their banners indicate, they have the opportunity to buy a one-way plane ticket,” he said.
Victorian opposition leader Matthew Guy labelled her comments as “a disgrace”. The Daily Telegraph went as far as body-shaming her by saying, 'Tarneen wants Australia to burn, but probably not all the pie shops'. The Herald Sun called out Ms Onus-Williams for failing to talk about “welfare issues in Indigenous communities, including domestic abuse, alcoholism and murders.”
But she says the Invasion Day rally is to do just that — to protest against the treatment of Aboriginal people.
"When we have Black Deaths in Custody protests, no-one turns up. When we have a Don Dale rally, yeah, there are a few people that turn up but not that many. People say, 'why aren’t you protesting this and this?', telling me how do to do my activism. We do those things, but you choose not to listen, you choose not to show up. Don’t tell me how to do my activism as an Aboriginal woman."
Lidia Thorpe agrees black women need a safe platform.
"Let this country hear both sides of the story. Let’s have those women that have been affected by this, let them speak up," she says.
Alice Springs Councillor Jacinta Price is another Indigenous woman who has experienced hate and rage for voicing her opinions.
After joining former Labor leader Mark Latham's campaign to 'Save Australia Day,' saying changing the date is 'shallow,' 'meaningless,' and only 'fuels hate', such statements have seen the Walpiri woman embraced by many conservative commentators.
She's become a regular on former Abbott advisor Peta Credlin's Sky News program, she's addressed the National Press Club, and appeared on Alan Jones' 2GB and the Bolt Report.
But Ms Price's controversial views have left many in the Indigenous community up in arms. More than 6500 people have signed a petition stating Ms Price and her mother Bess, a former NT politician, 'do not represent' them or speak on their behalf.
But Ms Price maintains: "I’m not trying to be a spokesperson for all Aboriginal people."
"The media have pushed this narrative that there’s only one Indigenous viewpoint for so long, that when someone like me comes along and says something that’s different, suddenly I’m turning against my own people," she told NITV News.
Consequently, her perspective on how to address issues in the community has meant she has become the subject of public vitriol.
"I’ve had moments when it’s really hurt me," she says.
She says some of the worst abuse has involved threats to rape and kill her.
"It makes me feel disgusting, like you know, if someone can send that to you, are they abusers themselves? Have they perpetrated sexual violence against another person?".
"[Aboriginal women are] utterly vilified in the most horrendous way and you wouldn’t even think that you know, a rapist or a murderer would be abused in such a way, in the way that we get abused.”
While much of the opposition has come from within her own community, there's no doubt she too has become the target of abuse, some of which may be even deemed punishable by law, under the Racial Discrimination Act or the Criminal Code.
All three women, while they have opposing views, share some similarities.
They're black, female and outspoken. They've all been persecuted for speaking out and fear not just for their safety, but that of their families and children.