As a fluoro sun slipped beneath the waves in Broome for another night this week, Yes supporters who had been banking on a late-campaign tailwind were holding their breath.
The Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum – which polls suggest is all but lost – has become obscured as attention understandably turns to events in and the world steels for the potential outbreak of a broader regional or world conflict.
You can almost hear the available oxygen being sucked up.
The Yes campaign is well aware that the referendum issues have been given significant exposure and scrutinised at a minute level ever since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made that pivotal pledge on the night of his election victory.
The No campaign has successfully mobilised national scepticism over the eternally vexed policy area of Indigenous Affairs.
Polls that once indicated a significant win have shifted to the likelihood of a resounding loss.
Some people are tired of the arguments. Their social media feeds and barbecue chatter have been filled with opinions, lies and furphies that have raised significant doubts.
The No campaign has managed to convince many people the Voice will be divisive and create another layer of bureaucracy. They've worked to persuade the public that they deserve more detail and, without that, the referendum proposal is too opaque to pass the pub test.
The prominent position of Indigenous figures in the No campaign has also been consequential.
As support for No surged forward, the Yes movement seized on the possibility of winning over the undecided voter, believing that this cohort might not settle on a position until the last moment.
A final-week strategy was constructed to counteract the naysayers and launch a barrage of demographically targeted and emotionally laden messaging.
to the central deserts and re-amplify the message that the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and its call for a constitutionally enshrined Voice, came from Indigenous people.
While sitting in the red dust hand-in-hand with Aṉangu women, his face displayed the raw emotion that has bubbled up at key moments in this campaign.
Labor Senator Pat Dodson - often dubbed the father of reconciliation - would be through his latest chemotherapy session and well enough to sit in his office and make a final appeal for unity around a Yes vote.
He had been named the government's envoy for reconciliation and the implementation of the Uluru Statement from the Heart.
During Dodson's speech to the , he said an Indigenous advisory body would prevent non-Indigenous bureaucracies from continuing to make the same mistakes and spoke of the need to give hope to children contemplating suicide.
He said the Yes campaign appealed to the better nature of the country and expressed concern that a No victory would mean the continuation of punitive assimilation and the painful loss of culture and connection.
Many other prominent Indigenous representatives have fanned out across the country, hitting chat shows, news bulletins, pre-polls and various other platforms to promote the Voice proposal.
The Yes campaign has long known it needs to gain ground and was hoping the final week might provide enough momentum to at least get support for the Voice above 50 per cent of the country.
They hoped that, even if the Voice failed to secure support from a majority of states, winning the national vote would provide some sort of mandate for future investment in Indigenous issues and avoid confirmation of Noel Pearson's 2022 Boyer Lecture claim that Indigenous Australians are the nation's most unloved peoples.
But all of that work didn't bank on one extraordinary reality: that Hamas would launch an operation of widespread killing in Israel, filling the front pages of newspapers, the top stories in television bulletins and social media feeds.
Hamas' operation and Israel's retaliation have limited the public's bandwidth to take in new information, including last-minute Voice campaign messaging.
If that wasn't enough of a shock for those running Voice campaigns, the long-time imprisonment of Australian journalist Cheng Lei in China suddenly came to an end.
Cheng Lei's long stretch without seeing her kids, family or even sunlight was suddenly over. She was walking free in Melbourne, ending fears she was facing life behind bars after a secret Chinese trial.
Of course, the government was celebrating its diplomatic achievement in securing her release.
All of these events meant the prime minister's visit to Uluru and Dodson's National Press Club address got far less attention than they otherwise would have.
In particular, Dodson's speech went out as Israel's retaliation in Gaza went up a significant retributory notch.
Many campaigners have already given up on a Yes victory, but volunteers are toiling on. In Broome on Wednesday, the father of reconciliation wasn’t surrendering.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton is confident that it is him, not the prime minister, who has had a better read on the public mood and the national appetite for a Voice to Parliament to be carved into the nation’s founding document.
The No campaign believes it's managed to pull off a victory and, while publicly warning against complacency, the celebrating has privately begun.
For both sides, it's no longer just a matter of convincing people; it's going to be a struggle to even get their messages out over the momentous national and international events guiding the news cycle.
The referendum for a Voice will be subject to a national vote on Saturday.
At the National Press Club, Dodson was asked what Sunday morning would look like if Australians woke up to a No victory.
"We are going to have to look in the mirror and say, 'Who the hell are we and what have we done?'"
Conversely the No campaign is confident many Australians will have written a "no" on their ballot paper and will be satisfied with their reflection.
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