Let G be a compact group, let B be a unital C*-algebra, and let (A, G, a) be a free C*-dynamical system, in the sense of Ellwood, with fixed point algebra B. We prove that (A, G, a) can be realized as the G-continuous part of the invariants of an equivariant coaction of G on a corner of B ⊕ K(H) for a certain Hilbert space H that arises from the freeness of the action.This extends a result byWassermann for free and ergodic C*-dynamical systems. As an application, we show that any faithful *-representation of B on a Hilbert space HB gives rise to a faithful covariant representation of (A, G, a) on some truncation of HB ⊕ H.