Monday 18th June - Bad Day !!!

Today I get up as usual and Kerry drops me off at the station. I decide not to take the slow train but to get the express this morning. The Express goes round the City loop and stops at a Station called Southern Cross before ending up at Flinders Street. Southern Cross is a bit closer to Collins Street than Flinders but not a lot in it.

I exit at Southern Cross and walk down Collins Street. As I start to walk up the steps to enter our building which is on the corner or William Street and Collins ( I am in the South Tower and the North Tower basically backs onto Flinders Street which runs parallel to Collins. These Towers are joined by an Atrium where we get our coffee and breakfasts ) I hear some unfamiliar noises short and quite load. As I get to the top of the steps the noise has stopped. I think nothing of it and enter the lift. As the doors close I hear what sounds like a shop Alarm going off. I hear it on all the way to the fifth floor where I am located and as I exit the lifts the alarm noise stops. Again I don't think too much of it.

I arrive at my desk and start to setup the laptop, login to the phone etc and have a chat to a PDU Lead John who has just started. As we talk there are police sirens going off everywhere. The sirens go on for a long while, at least fifteen minutes. We joke that I have got away and wonder what on earth is going on.....

Then a project manager I am working with Terry, lets us know what has happened. There has been a shooting on the corner outside our building and there is one dead and two critically injured. We then hear that the gunman has gone into the Rialto Hotel and that had been sealed off. I walked past the Rialto as the entrance is on Collins.... The Rialto had been sealed off. I call Kerry to let her know that I am ok and I haven't got caught up in it. It dawns on me had I caught the direct train I would have walked past the shooting area. The noises I heard whilst walking up the steps were the gunshots. Worst still I thought of the man who was dead, apparantly trying to help a girl who was being dragged by her hair into a taxi. He was fine when I started to walk up the steps with everything to live for and by the time I got to the top of the stairs (there are only about 6 or 7 steps) it had all gone and he was dead.

It hit me quite hard and for the first time I thought long and hard about the UK and the people I knew back there. Luckily Kerry, although she had heard on the radio about it, didn't reasise just how close I was to it. I was round the corner and again luckily didn't see anything but I was only 150 yards away. Whilst talking to Kerry on the phone John come's over and mentions to me not to go over to the other side as you can see the body on the street. Just then an announcement comes over the tannoy that the building has gone into high security and that and entrances and exits are locked and nobody is allowed to enter or leave the building until the police give the all clear.

The rest of the day we are all in a bit of a daze, out of the window the road has been closed off and all day police vehicles are going up and down it. Around lunchtime people are allowed to come and go out of the entrance on Collins Street but the rest of the entrances are still locked and we are still on high security.

I leave that night thinking how lucky I am and all the what if questions running running around in my head. I think constantly of the man who was just someone trying to help and his family. He was a family man and now his family have lost a husband and father. I think of Kerry and the girls and of how lucky I am and how quickly it can all be taken away....

I think the thing that has hit people so hard here is that this is just so unlike Melbourne. Melbourne is usually a friendly city, a joy to be in. As they say though, there are good bad apples whereever you go. On the plus side we have more good than bad...