The chants bounced around the ornate auditorium of Brisbane city hall for only 30 seconds or so, before the group joined hands and walked out into the scorching Brisbane sun.
Merchants have walked the route for centuries, but now the first handful of tourists are discovering this unique trek, known as the Chadar.
The former certainly looks like a prizefighter who has been battered senseless by a meaner, leaner opponent; the latter has endured an equally bruising encounter in the ring but has walked away bleeding badly but still standing after a 12-round points draw.
In the summer of 2004, a young jihadist in shackles and chains was walked by his captors slowly into the Camp Bucca prison in southern Iraq.
He walked away from his desert village in Eritrea with nothing but sandals on his feet.
When I walked out in smoke, dressed like a tart in leather, the audience screamed so much that I couldn't hear the backing track and I was completely out of key.
When I visited the Jordanian border with Syria I met young children who witnessed the killing of their relatives, who had walked for weeks to escape the violence, and who face all the uncertainties and difficulties of life as a refugee.
"I've been on those sands man and boy … What happened that night was not only awful beyond words – it was absolutely avoidable … Even when the tide hit them, had they had anybody with them, like me, who knows the area, there was still a safe route off the cockle bed … They could have walked to safety".
Pre-dating both, Miss Jemima walked – and so did I.
If selected, Wood faces a New Zealand side fresh from a thrilling World Cup campaign under their captain, Brendon McCullum, in which their players walked out on to the pitch exhibiting the confidence of Tony Montana in the final scene of the film Scarface.
A local government official said he did not know how many of the girls had escaped but that many had walked through the bushes and back to Chibok.
