“I felt quite upbeat and was actually enjoying myself today even though I knew I would never get the win,” he said.

“This is the crowning achievement of the last six or eight months worth of work.

“You could tell that the Pru Goward ‘how to vote’ cards were more in demand, but I’d had some quite positive responses via phone calls, Facebook and from people who had waved to me in the streets and from people who would stop me and wish me well.

“Personally I feel that I will do much better than I did in the previous campaign.”

With almost 30,000 votes counted on Saturday night, Mr Van Der Byl had won 732 votes (or 2.44 per cent).

In 2011 he secured 3.4pc of the vote.

He has had a lot of support from all over Australia, with people coming from Sydney, Wollongong and even as far away as Perth.

“I’m certainly very thankful for people that have made this campaign a success in terms of what we’ve managed to achieve,” he said.

Mr Van Der Byl was also quite outspoken on the issue of Sharia law and Islam in Australia as well as the issue of homosexual union.

“I have been involved with the Marulan Action Group as well as the Concerned Citizens of Canberra in terms of the Islam issue,” he said.

“I would suggest that people that have criticised my stance have a very poor knowledge of Islam itself,” he said.

“The true nature of political Islam is Sharia law, and that people haven’t woken up to it. I would also say the same about 95 percent of politicians too. It is only when people are confronted with the reality of an Islamic community in their neighbourhood that they come to the reality that it is not so much a religious issue but a civil issue.

“And the toleration of Islam becomes an act of treason.

“Our constitution has a unitary ethic and rule of law which applies equally to all people, but Sharia has no relationship to it at all, but is in fact destructive to Western civilisation.”

He was also surprised at comments he made at a candidates forum which he feels were taken out of context when it came to the issue of homosexuality.

“What surprised me was that it happened at least two weeks after the event,” he said.