How could this have happened

It feels too much to bear. Too much to process. The senselessness of it. The horror. The utter tragedy of the attack at Westfield Bondi Junction that ended six innocent lives on an ordinary Saturday afternoon and traumatised countless more.

When something terrible happens, our instinct is often to look for reasons why it couldn’t be us. Why we are somehow immune or at least removed from that truly awful thing. I would never do that or go there. That would never be me. That could never happen to me.

It’s a form of self-protection really, an emotional buffer wrapped up in the desperate reassurance of denial. A way to distance ourselves from the brutal reality of random tragedy and the vulnerability in which we all live, all of the time.

Not this time, though.

Who could hear this news and find a way to distance themselves. We have all been in a shopping centre on a Saturday afternoon, buying groceries or activewear. Some new pyjamas for our baby. Looking at an expensive handbag. Buying a serum or some new shoes. Going for a wander.

We have all spent a normal Saturday afternoon doing normal things in our normal lives. There but for the grace of God go all of us. It feels very, very close. Because it is.

I have long referred to Westfield Bondi Junction as ‘my happy place’. Like thousands of others, it’s where I go at least once a week for distraction, for solace and for utility, usually on a Saturday afternoon. Like thousands of others, I go there to wander around and do errands, to shop for clothes and groceries. Like Ash Good and her baby did. Like Dawn Singleton. Like the three other women and one man who were murdered, like Ash. And like all the people — mostly women it seems — who were injured.

I know every inch of that shopping centre. Every shop where someone was attacked and killed, every escalator and landing where that maniac roamed, ending and upending the lives of all those unlucky enough to be there at that moment, on that day, in that place.  This happened in the one place every mother felt safe to take their babies. A place every woman, every child, every person felt safe. Should have felt safe.

It could have been any of us. Perhaps that’s what makes this so very shocking, so impossible to process. There is no reassurance. No solace. No distance. This was not America. This was not a war zone. This was a suburban shopping mall in a country where this kind of thing just doesn’t happen. Except it did happen.

Without the empty comfort of distance, with the horror too much to bear, we look for the tiniest cracks of light. The heroes. The helpers. The humanity. The bravery of strangers.

Amy Scott, the police officer who was patrolling the area alone and ran towards a crazed murderer with a knife. She didn’t know if he was the only attacker and she ran towards him anyway. She saved lives. She stopped the carnage.

Police officer, Amy Scott

The dying mother who thrust her wounded baby into the arms of two men, knowing that her child’s best chance of survival lay in the hands of those strangers. That brave woman. Those brave men.

It’s unimaginable, as it should be. We should never have to imagine the acts of evil and horror that have occurred. But they did occur and the people who were there had no choice but to respond instantly in ways that are almost impossible to fathom.

The first responders who ran into that building to save lives while everyone else was running for their lives in the opposite direction.

And for ongoing updates, you can find comprehensive coverage here…..