It has now been 2 weeks since the senseless and overwrought reaction to my ‘Australia Day’ blackboard began. The media frenzy has abated somewhat, but the personal attacks - written, verbal and physical - have not.

This week, I replaced the glass window of my shopfront, as it had been smashed during the night. My staff opened the door at 7am to serve my regular coffee crowd. I spent the day cleaning broken beer bottles and glass from every corner of my studio.

Threats and abuse continue in the form of calls, texts and emails. My staff have been threatened from the curb. Customers have been ‘warned’ not to attend my espresso bar. Eggs and flour have been thrown over my shopfront.

I was pushed into a corner one evening by two local men who explained that “white people fighted and died for this country” and I should, therefore, “stop walking like a f*cking f*ggot”.

And on it goes.

Although clearly united by a tangle of pre-existing hatreds and anxieties, referring to my aggressors as ‘politically motivated’ would be too kind. These aggressors are cultural molecules, not activists. They are the natural outgrowths of Australian history; a history that they frequently cite, but never study.

They seem incapable, also, of recognising the disproportionality of their hatred. As the days wear on, my simple chalked jibe becomes still truer. Those most offended by the blackboard have committed themselves to proving its veracity.

My written response to the media (posted to this page on January 27) has received 30,215 likes and 6,976 shares, completely overwhelming the scale of the original Facebook hate campaign against my business. This was a welcome surprise.

The messages of support from across the country and the world were diverse and numerous. Many of these have been long and considered. I apologise that it has not yet been possible to respond individually to each. The show of unity, from new friends and old, was so much appreciated. Thankyou.

The blackboard - and my necessary online statement - also became a national media discussion, the subject of separate articles by The Guardian, ABC, SMH, Triple J’s Hack, Huffington Post, 9 News, Crikey, Buzzfeed, Pedestrian TV et al.

Helen Razer and Maurits Zwankhuizen wrote entertaining opinion pieces on the blackboard; ‘nationaldickheadday’ became a twitter hashtag; the furore was reported across the Fairfax network, most efficiently in parody by the excellent Herald cartoonist, Shakespeare.

Dragging my blackboard into the (relative) sunlight of the mainstream media brought some balance to the discourse, originally fomented by the Facebook network of extreme-right organisations and individuals. Amongst these, the rhetoric is routinely violent, disturbingly explicit, uncensored in its bigotry, unburdened by self-awareness and consistently self-refuting. The authors frequently struggle to arrange a coherent sentence, much less articulate a political locus.

Of course, these ‘patriots’ would be the first to protest should their own freedom of expression be curtailed.

As with prolonged exposure to any toxin, the stress of constant attack is accumulative, and exhausting. Restoring my shopfront after each spate of vandalism has been time-consuming and expensive. Keeping the evidence of physical damages and emotional strain from my young child requires a surge of positivity, increasingly difficult to muster. And, though I dismiss the countless death threats as repulsive hyperbole, I absorb each word subconsciously.

But then, my personal exposure to this vicious and pervasive cultural toxin has only been 2 short weeks. In our country, there are strong individuals, families and communities who are forced to confront this very same toxin from birth, for a lifetime, through generations. They have my deepest respect.