Terrorism next door

At approximately 6:45pm this evening, we started hearing police and ambulance sirens going off around the neighbourhood. It was clear that a major incident was unfolding somewhere in the inner city. Within half an hour, reports of a mass shooting event at Archer Park, a grassy area at Bondi Beach, began coming in.

At 10:00pm this evening, the New South Wales Police Commissioner, Mal Lanyon, confirmed that at least 12 people have died in a terrorist attack and 29 others have been transported to various hospitals around the city. The injured included two police officers who are in serious condition. A car containing improvised explosive devices (IEDs) has also been found parked in Bondi. In the last hour or so, a massive police raid has taken place on a property in Western Sydney.

The police have confirmed the involvement of two shooters. One is dead, and the other is in a critical condition in the hospital. Video footage broadcast this evening indicates that a third shooter may have been involved. Police have yet to confirm this. Sirens continue to race through the area as I write this post. The noise has been relentless since 6:45pm.

Without a doubt, a major terrorist attack took place just six kilometres from our home this evening. The Jewish community was the intended target. More than a thousand people were celebrating the first day of Hanukkah, an ancient Jewish candle lighting festival, at a beachside event in Bondi when the shooting began.

It’s the second such incident in the Eastern Suburbs in the last two years. In April last year, a deranged man killed six people in a Bondi Junction shopping mall. This evening's live coverage is showing locations along the seaside promenade that are all too familiar to Garry and me, including an arched pedestrian footbridge I've walked across many times. Once again, just as in July 2005, we find ourselves living in a city under attack. It's senseless, shameful and insane.

UPDATE: 7:45am, 15 December

The confirmed death toll is now 16 people. This toll includes one of the gunmen and, tragically, a ten-year-old child who passed away at Sydney Children’s Hospital in Randwick last night. 42 people have presented with injuries at hospitals, including four children who have been transferred to Sydney Children’s Hospital. 

Police have confirmed there were only two gunmen involved, a father and his son. The father died at the scene yesterday, while the son remains in critical condition under police guard in the hospital. The father was a licensed gun owner and had been for at least a decade.  This is Australia's worst mass shooting since the tragedy that unfolded in Port Arthur almost two decades ago.

UPDATE: 8:25am, 15 December

The lives of yesterday’s victims are being steadily brought to light. One story has moved me deeply. Alex Kleytman, an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor and native of Ukraine, was attending the event with his wife, Larissa Kleytman. He died shielding his wife from bullets. 

Garry and I toured Auschwitz-Birkenau in 2019. The experience was profoundly moving. It breaks my heart to think that Kleytman survived this monstrous place only to have his life cruelly taken by anti-Semitic violence decades later. Australia is not Nazi Germany. He should have been safe here. The BBC claims Australia has more Holocaust survivors than any other nation outside of Israel. I had no idea.

UPDATE: 18 December
It didn’t take long for politics to enter the fray in the aftermath of last weekend’s massacre. In a stunning, and clearly politically motivated, act, former Prime Minister John Howard held a press conference on Tuesday to disparage the current Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese's call for gun reform. Until now, John Howard has kept largely to himself since leaving office in 2007. 

I’m dumbfounded by his actions. In April 1996, in the wake of the Port Arthur tragedy, both sides of politics rallied behind Howard as Prime Minister in a bipartisan effort to reform Australia’s gun laws. Fast forward two decades, and when similar tragic events engulf our nation again, he chose not to express a reciprocal measure of grace and goodwill towards the prime minister of the day.

Without a doubt, gun law reform is required in the wake of last weekend’s events. Therefore, it astounds me that Howard would actively strive to undermine any bipartisan initiative by describing calls for gun reform as a diversion. His comments strike me as Machiavellian and politically motivated.

I am by no means endorsing anything the current Government has done or failed to do. I’m simply noting my disappointment that the one man who benefited from bipartisan support in the wake of a similar atrocity chose a different path when the roles were reversed. Howard has done many great things as a leader, and our nation is the better for them. However, this week’s press conference isn’t one of them. 

To quote former Astronaut Frank Bowman, a failure of imagination enabled the events of last weekend to occur. In other words, there's work to be done in the weeks and months ahead to learn from last weekend and make lasting changes that keep our nation safe. This requires constructive debate and bipartisan support, not political point scoring.  Naturally, the debate will be fueled by high emotions.

For example, yesterday's blistering statements from Josh Freyenburg, while superficially sounding like a political play, proved authentic when challenged. He angrily hit back at television host Sarah Ferguson, who asked the former treasurer if his call for stronger action on antisemitism by the prime minister was politically motivated.

The former politician said his motivation comes from his daily life as a Jewish citizen and the simple fact that there are armed guards outside his kids’ school and police cars outside local Jewish sporting clubs.  

“Why should we live with this? If I’m not going to speak out, who is? If not now, when? If not me, who?” he told Ferguson on 7:30, the flagship ABC program.

While I don't endorse some of his rhetoric, I certainly respect the real-world experience he and his family have endured. Like all peace-loving Australians, I want our Jewish community to feel safe and embraced. It’s the same experience I sought for our nation’s Muslim community in the wake of the horrific Christchurch Mosque massacre six years ago, and for the LGBTQIA+ community during the same sex marriage debate in 2017.

Antisemitism is evil. Islamophobia is bigotry. Injustice is injustice, no matter who the victims are. Our modern nation has been built on the notion of a fresh start for people fleeing or being forcibly removed (just ask the convicts) from their home nation. Dear John, let’s keep it that way.

Mount Steel

I’ve written very little about the history of my neighbourhood in Sydney. As I read old blog posts, I’m struck by the fact that I’ve researched and written more about the history of our local area in London. How curious that so much of our daily life is considered dull and taken for granted.

I’d like to address the imbalance with a post about Mount Steel, a 60-metre-high tree-clad hill visible from our apartment. I was surprised to learn recently that this verdant mount is one of four prominent sandhills that once marked the southern boundary of colonial Sydney: Mount Steel, Mount Renny, Mount Lang and Constitution Hill. In fact, not far from the base of Mount Steel, stands a battered stone pillar marking the nineteenth century city limits.

Over time, all four sandhills were modified, or removed completely as the demand for park space grew. Mount Lang was removed to create the grassed parking zone opposite the Horden Pavillion, and Constitution Hill was flattened to form sections of the golf course behind the Supa Centre and the western fringe of Randwick Racecourse.

Today, only Mount Steel and Mount Renny remain. However, Mount Renny’s summit was flattened into a broad plateau in the 1920s to house the Moore Park Golf Club House and car park. As a result, Mount Steel, the tallest of the four original sandhills, remains the least altered. It was named after Alexander Steel in 1869. He was a Sydney Council Alderman who served from 1860-1870 and 1872-1874.

Mount Steel offers some stunning panoramic views of the city skyline. It reminds me of a similar view of London that we once enjoyed from Primrose Hill. Over the years it’s become a popular spot for people to sit and reflect or watch athletic types doing hill sprints on its northern flank. I also recall my friend Brendan using it to observe Comet McNaught in 2007.

Incredibly, Mount Steel has hosted all manner of athletic endeavours over the years. I discovered that in the late nineteenth century, it served as a training ground for professional, amateur, and " would-be” circus and vaudeville acrobats. Apparently, numerous athletes, young and old, would gather on Sunday mornings to train. Their training sessions were regularly watched by curious local onlookers.

From the 1970s to 1993, a grass ski centre operated on Mount Steel. A portable tow rope pulled skiers up the hill. They then skied down to the oval below on special grass skis or snowboards. The slope was reported to be ideal for both beginners and experienced skiers. It was 110 metres long and had a smooth beginners’ area and bumpy spots for the more adventurous.

More recently, the city council completed a crushed sandstone pathway partway up Mount Steel to improve access to its summit. The path replaces a dirt track joggers and dog walkers had carved out over the years from the base of a footbridge that spans South Dowling Street. It’s hard to imagine this landscaped mound was once a scrappy tussock-covered sandhill.

Race day in the kitchen

Confession time. We went a little feral on Melbourne Cup Day this week. A group of friends from our apartment complex booked a table for the annual “Race that Stops a Nation” lunch at Claire’s Kitchen on Oxford Street. We spent the afternoon getting entertained by several drag queens and a live band. It was a fun-filled lunch that subsequently morphed into one too many cocktails at the nearby Riley Hotel. It would be fair to say Garry and I were a little rusty the following morning.

I recently learned that The Riley Hotel opened in 1860, making it one of the oldest licensed premises on Oxford Street. It was previously known as The Brighton Hotel. According to the City of Sydney, Oxford Street evolved from an Aboriginal track ('muru') that crossed east along the ridgeline and around the bays to the southern headland of the harbour. In 1803, convicts cleared this track to provide access to the signal station at South Head, which had been built a decade earlier.