I thought the petrol taker has hit this corner of this building, right near where we exploded, and the exploded.
If we're building up.
We had light fittings come crashing down around as the plaster pieces came around, and dust everywhere, and this noise, this huge explosion. A taste of terrorism, wasn't Yeah, it was the taste of terrorism. That's That's exactly what it was, domestic terrorism meters away from from where we were sitting.
I'm Andrew Rules Life and Crimes. This week as we go to air it is exactly forty years since the Russell Street bombing, which of course is one of the worst crimes ever perpetrated in Australian history. And it was the day that our guest in the studio today once said,
it's the day that we lost our innocence. And he would know because Bill Ayres, who's with us, was chief police reporter of the Venerable Herald newspaper back in the mid nineteen eighties, and Bill and I worked together at Russell Street, where in those days reporters who covered the crime beat would work, and he was on duty the morning of the Russell Street bombing. He's written us a terrific piece about his memories of that day, and he's very kindly come in to talk to us about it
all over again. Bill Airs, welcome back to your old haunts, although of course you worked at Flinders Street, but you are one of the great police reporters of ancient time and it's good to see you back here. Your piece about the Russell Street bombing was very potent, very powerful
and quite haunting. Although there are certain names sadly that we can't mention, names that are closely associated with the bombing, which for legal reasons cannot be brought up at this point, so we'll be careful about that.
We will be careful.
Bill. Take us back to the day of the bombing. What you did, how it unspooled for you? All right?
Well, as you mentioned Andrew, we worked out of a pokey little office at Russell Street. There was a few room set aside for the media guys. There was a room for the Sun and the Age and the ABC and for us at there. We had three reporters on that day. There was myself and a young cadet called Greg Kerr, and another journo Brian Adams, not related to the singer we'd started early in the morning, as was the story of the Herald that in those days, we had to start early, so wet the meet the deadlines,
and it just started out. It was a lovely sunny autumn day and we just went about doing our business, sort of cleaning up what was happening overnight and through the rest of that morning. So this is a Thursday before he said Thursday, Yeah, which meant I think that the morning newspaper people, meaning the Sun and the Age people weren't at work because on good Fridays in those
days there was no paper. There was no morning paper, but you worked for an afternoon paper, the Old Herald, which meant you were there very early to publish stories that would be published later the same day, later that same day. Yep, So we were the only ones there. There was a blow for the ab so and he'd left fairly early.
Was that Scoby?
That was Scoby?
Yeah, yep.
He'd turned right out of out of the office to head to.
The tab.
And they say beddings bad for it saved his life, saved his life. He went he went right down to the tab. If he went left, he might have might not be with us today.
If he'd gone to church, he'd be dead, but he went to the tab down on the Cartain side. Of course.
The Russell Street Police Headquarters is an iconic building, cream brick, sort of very New York sort of building really, and it's at the corner of Russell and La Trobe and its opposite the old Melbourne Magistrates Court, and it's very close to r MIT, the original r MIT campus and was the police center, the heart of the Victoria Police for decades until they moved most of their operations down and killed the road before building the new one in Spencer Street.
So we were the only newspaper people working at the time and had we had already written the lead story for the first edition of The Herald, which was of course the mandatory Easter Road Blitz story of course, and from memory, there wasn't a lot of other stuff going on that morning, so you know, we were kind of sitting around. It was getting close to knockoff time for.
Us and looking forward to Big East to break, the.
East to break, because we wouldn't have been working on the Friday, whereas the other morning boys they would have come in on the Friday for the Saturday paper. And it was it was just gone one o'clock, just ticked over.
I was.
I was actually on the phone to an assistant commission for traffic to tee him up for the Monday paper, to get him to be ready for us to get all the figures and what was happening over the recent road road road tops, etc. And then all of a sudden, all hell broke loose.
Describe what the sound and the feeling the whole building seemed to shake.
I thought, petrol tanker has hit this corner of this building, right near where we exploded, and then exploded, and the building up there was We had light fittings come crashing down around us. The plaster pieces came around, and dust everywhere, and this noise, this this huge explosion. And I hung up from from the assistant commissioner, and Brian had had left to go and get his Easter haircut, and so he was sort of on his way back from his lunch break, and so there was only Greg and I
there and our police rounds driver. Back in those days, she actually had a driver. His name is Shepard.
Shepherd, well regarded by some as wise of the most police rounds reporter.
Yes, he knew his way around Melbourne every lane way.
Yeah, lovely fellow.
Yeah, he was a great, great bloke and he had just put the kettle on and I thought that hit my mind. I thought there's been an electrical explosion because he's just top of the kettle on. Anyway, this massive explosion. So Greg and I just took off out the door and there was glass and smoke and the smell of Jelly Knight in the air.
You could just smell that was explosive.
It could smell explosives. I knew then that it was.
You knew that.
I knew that something had blown up in the street.
Now, you were a young blog originally from Seymour area and Heathcott and the Shepherdon. Your dad had worked on the railway. So did you have some idea what exploses you smell like? Because yes I did because of that. Did yeah?
Yeap just just knew that that smell right with a gunpowder, I guess. And we Yeah, So we just raced out into the middle of the street.
And in the middle of the street there was something burning.
There was a ball of flame about. It was probably about forty meters away from us.
Did you know what it was?
No idea, I had no idea what was going on. Saw this ball of flame and it kind of jumped, it jumped over a car, the bonnet of a car that had stopped on the street. I learned later that was Angela Taylor.
The burning ball was burning a still living young police.
Young police woman who was twenty one years twenty one, and yeah, she had just come out of the magistrate's court and she was heading across towards the Russell Street Police complex and she was getting lunch for the other for the rest of the crew over and looking after the courts and she she walked straight into it. She just walked straight towards that car and it just killed well, she died.
She lived later, yeah, about three weeks later. It was an horrific thing. It was. It was.
And there were other explosions happening as well, we thought, because back in those days you could park along Russell Street right outside the police building, so there were cars right along the street. And we saw this car that had blown up. But we thought, oh, there's another exploder, there's another car's gone. But it turned out it was the leftover sticks of Jelick Knight that had been and blasting caps that were going.
Off, going off on one after the other. Yeah, the big one had been a bunch of them taped together. Yeah, but about one.
Hundred and fifteen sticks of Jelick Knight.
Apparently, and there were some stray ones that yeah, yeah, okay, it's a fairly crude job, I believe. Yeah, all attached to a clock which was weighed down by a block of timber that defen a bit of red gum yep, and that will form part of the big forensic investigation down the track before they finally caught up with these crooks. What did you do next?
Next? I had to had to run back into the office and jump onto the phone to let the chief of staff know that there's been a massive explosion outside the Russell Street Police Station, police headquarters because it housed all the squads and the D twenty four Commune occasions and everything at that time, as well as being an all running police.
Station, it was a nerve center, wasn't It was absolute's where everyone, all the all the top detective and everything were based there.
So I had to ring ring up.
It was a rock song by the Sports What did the Detectives say? And it mentions Russell It was part of Melbourne's focalore. Yeah, it was.
The Herald was printed in four editions a day. There was the first one that came out around about eleven thirty twelve o'clock. Then the second one was due to go onto the presses about one o'clock, about at the same time this thing went off. So it was just starting to rumble on the presses down at Flinders, down at Flinda Street, down in the basement there, and we had to tell them to stop the presses. I've never
never said that before in my life. In a long career in journalism, I never got the chance to stop the presses.
But you did this time, and they stopped them.
And they did. They said, you know, what's what's going on? I said, been a massive explosion. Explained it, do them and they said, right, get what you can and jump on the phone as quickly as you can because we need this to go into our second edition. So both Greg and I then jumped on the phones and dictated our stories to this magnificent bunch of copy takers that were based at Flinda Street. And they could they could type as quickly as we could talk. They were so
good at what they did. But their spelling was better correct.
Correct, And yeah they were because the Herald and all newspapers probably still do. They had reporters based at Russell Street, the town Hall, the trades hall. Your age. They don't have reporters at any of those places that day, not anymore because this century that hasn't happened.
I've been out of the game for a while. But yeah, so we had people, you know, like trades everywhere and state Parliament. Of course there was a big press cos we still have that.
Yeah.
Yeah, anyway, they and these girls were vital to all of us for taking our copy, spelling it properly and getting it through to the editors.
So just so our listeners get it. And of course most of them are old enough to remember those things. You were dictating a story you'd already written with a typewriter or even rough notes on your notebook. This dictating to somebody who's wearing set of headphones and a typewriter and there banging it out there, bang it out a kilometer away from where you were s Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, we didn't have time to hit the typewriter. We just had to off the take, take a few notes, and it was all off the top.
File off the top of those wonderful words, A great skill for those that could do it.
And of course then we had to then race back out and continue to witness what was going on because there were people screaming, there were people calling for help. And I remember Neil, our driver. Last I saw of him, he was carrying a young woman who was bleeding fairly heavily around the corner away from Russell Street because we
didn't know what else was going to happen. Yeah, that was the last I saw of him for the day, so he obviously was there helping other people to his credit, great man and Greg and we just ran back out into the street and just tried to witness there was
there was people bleeding, of people. I saw a young police officer being comforted by a woman, a police woman, on the steps of Russell Street, and she kept on telling him don't look at your legs, don't look at your legs, because I looked at his legs and I could see the bone on his lower leg protruding.
Yeah, the bone.
And there are other people running around that. There was other policemen in uniform, some who'd never fired a side arm in anger, running around with their Repolice issue guns out what was going on.
No one knew.
It was such a shock, and the shock was to a degree that I've never forgotten it. No, And I think the piece that I wrote in the Sunday paper just the other day, yeah, caught that that and that was why I wrote it. I thought, forty years on, yes, let's remember what happened and let the readers of the Herald Son know what it was like, what it was like back then to be there, to actually be on the spot.
And really it's not an experience unique to you, but it's unique to only a few dozen people were really as close as when you were near as close as you were, because it happened within meters.
Of the door of that old press exactly.
Now. I know you've already said this, but the morning newspaper people weren't there. You were really bit of a skeleton crew. Yes, we we were. Normally there'd be the age people and the Sun people there as well.
They would have just come in. They would would have.
Just come in and they'd be sitting and I remember doing this for one of those papers, sitting under a window, a normal old glass window with thin, nasty glass facing Russell straight. Now, what happened to those windows? Bill?
During one of the times when I was running backwards and forwards, I thought I'll just have a quick check into their offices and just in case there was someone there. And as I had a look in through their doorway, there were shards of glass fifteen centimeters long sticking out from a cork noticeboard right behind that desk.
Oh my god.
So someone would have been sitting there.
Would have taken their head off, would have taken.
Their head off, It would have been cut ribbons, terrible and that that really shocked me as well, because I thought if there was someone there, they could.
Well have died.
Oh yeah, because it was head height. You know the window.
What's that there?
Many We used to have that office, Yes, and we got moved down a little corridor sort of in behind that office.
Yeah, is that how it worked?
Yeah, And the ABC was in They were in a little nor between us a small bathroom for a large toilet, that's right.
And it was amazing to some extent. You were lucky to be.
Yeah, we lost our view, but we probably had our lives safe, good Lord, because yeah, draw yeah, absolutely.
It was young Greg was working with you.
Yeah, yeah, Greg a very lovely fellow.
Yes he was.
He was a really a very smart young jur.
Yes, very nice fellow. Of course. He belonged to a large family. The Kerr family were well known in Melbourne, connected heavily with Carlton Football Club. His father was Laurie Kerr, who a well known ex Carlton player and businessman and public relations expert and a kingmaker in fact in politics
and football I think. But that's sort of beside the point of and Brian, Brian Adam on the day in christ he was walking back, as you said, from having a haircut and he look, you know, the lights changed or didn't change for whatever fortune to walk across the street in your head, he caught the green pedestrian light and crossed across. He would have been hit by the way, would have been hit them too, and probably killed by it.
As it happened. He was far enough back that it did not injure him physically, but it was a terrible shock to him. And I know that he was in a fog like a war fog afterwards, and that he was sat down by Stephen Price, Steve Price, who was then i'll say chiefs of staff for the Herald who sat him down and said, right now, I'll write it for you and type it, but you tell me you'll want to remember yeah, you know, coming out of the barber,
walking up the street and price. He had to write it for him for him because he was so shaken. He was naturally of course, he was a person who was in shock, in shock, which didn't stop us getting the story. But I don't think it did him a lot of good.
No, I don't think it did it. I think it affected him pretty badly to the point where he left the newspaper industry ultimately and moved to the Northern Territory and going away from Melbourne and moved away from Melbourne. I don't know whether it had anything to do with that. He might have had a job offer all what a lot of people did leave.
Yeah, now you're the rest of your day. You you didn't really have time to take it all in because you were stay busy filing stories. Yeah, tell us about that.
We we just had to continue to take our own notes. Ye, put it all into our head and then just continue continue filing update, update, update all the time. And at one stage we were evacuated from the building by the Special Operations Group. They came in all armed, and I think they were a bit surprised by the fact that we were we were there. I don't know whether they knew that we had these offices. They may not have.
Anyway, they were pretty basic in those days. Yeah, they were just black, black, armed black pajamas. Yeah.
Anyway, they gave us a bit of a fright when they came storming in and and got us out of the building. And so then we had to then find phone boxes, continue filing us stories.
Oh, I see mobile phones. Then no computers, so you'd have to fish out ten cent coins and all the rest of it.
I've always had a pocket full of coins, as you know, you would have had to have.
And so this went on all afternoon.
All after from from one o'clock through to six o'clock. We made our way back to the office, to the main office in Flinders Street and headed straight for the Phoenix Hotel, where we knew that most people would be. Just because there was a lot of journals thrown onto this story. After we file our initial peace, a lot of journeys were sent out of the office and to walk around the area.
The Phoenix of course was the pub very close to the old Herald and Sun building. It was facing Flinders Street, not far from the corner of Flinders.
And Flinderson Exhibition vision.
And it was owned in the before the it's not at this stage, but earlier by lou Richards the Football and it was known to the Lose.
Lose that's so we knew it.
And you'd have to walk up those thin stairs, stick carpet to get to the bar with drink, and that was where you sort of decompressed.
Yes, that that that's where it was that night, headed up the stairs.
What did you drink? Pots of beer?
Yeah, k didn'apped to buy one. Chief of staff was there. He was He was put his hand in his pocket for the crew, for the crew and sat us down at the table. There was me and Greg and Brian and and it was of staff then Hugh Crawford.
Very good.
He was a very good a good chief of staff and good journo too, because I think he operated out of a Sydney office for a long time and then then came down. I know Price he was chief of staff some stage, but I don't know whether Hue was replacing Price. He at the time but so they set you down and had plenty of beers. Yeah, did you start to feel it?
Did it? Yeah? He started?
Then it hit me. I was running on adrenaline up until up until I got up there, and no food, no, no, no, And yeah, they put beers in front of us, and and then you know, people would come up and talk to us, want to know what had happened, and pat us on the back for a job well done, yep, And Brian and I just fell into each other's arms
cried really yeah, not ashamed to say it. And we yeah, so we just held each other for a while and then you know, then then we kind of decompressed a bit and talked about it, and you know, just recalled what had happened and why it happened.
And how long before you got home.
There's another couple of hours before I got home, be dark.
By then it was dark and taxi.
I think I think they did actually concede a taxi ride for us this time. They did, because they didn't always do that. You would often be out on a story and you'd jump into a phone box and file your yarn, and then the church that start would say, well, there's a tram stop nearby, just jump on the tram come back to the office. But this day they actually sent us home in a.
In a cab. Where were you living then?
We were in box Hill. Then my wife Dawn, and our two very young children, Connor our daughter, and Liam, our son. She was about five and he was about two, I think, and they the kids kids love watching play school in the afternoon because they turned the TV on. They'd been out and went to turn the TV on and called out the mum, play schools and on They've got some news thing happening. Of course they were. They were covering the the bomb in the A B C.
And then Dawn saw that this was happening. And then shortly after that at Russell Straight and Short, she got a phone call from a mate of ours who knew that I was working at Russell Street and she said, is Bill all right? And Dawn then Dawn on her yeah, Jess, I better make sure that because he works out of Russell Street. So she contacted the Chief of Staff, Secretary B.
Warren.
She ran ran the entire office.
She was a World War Two veteran. She was Warren and she had a lot of character. She was strong.
Wills she very strong. Will you didn't cross her, would wouldn't be allowed to. I was back in the days, because she was the one who told all the female journals that you work for the Herald, and you don't wear trousers and that sort of thing. Yeah, there's all those skirts and dress. Gives them advice about them and yeah. So and so Dawn found out from her, of course that she I was okay, okay, and he's filing and yeah, yes.
Please don't. He can't call you. I was too busy and you got home in a taxi yet, you know whatever. It was after the kids were in bed, I suppose yeah, yeah, and what happened.
Again, Dawn came and opened the door and I just fell into her arms. And then I think that's when it dawned on us that I was pretty close that day. Anything could have happened, you too, could have been a lot worse matter of meters, yeah, read us, some serious injury, that's right, or death.
Yeah, you know, he could have lost legs.
Oh yeah, cut, bleeding, bruised, whatever, Yeah it was.
Yeah.
So so that was that was a bit.
Tearful as well for both of us, of course, because she she was grateful that I was able to walk through the door that night. We're not doing anything here about PTSD, which was a term not probably known back then. We didn't use that post traumatic stress.
There was certainly wasn't any professional help for that sort of thing back then.
Did it Did it affect you for a while? Oh?
Yeah, it did, just I was fearful for a long time.
Yep.
If on that day, one thing I did notice was every street tree was stripped of leaves, and as autumn continued along, if any leaves fluttered to the ground in front of me, I would I would jump back righted itself. It had yet the little images.
Even though there's no great logic to.
That, nobody none at all. It was autumn anyway, so it's.
An automatic reaction. Yeah, the danger, Yeah, it gets imprinted, it does.
And thunder would set things off again, big lad claps of thunder. Very fearful of that, yep. And any expert even backfire and cars backfire for years. That for years. It was for years, and you know, ultimately you get over it and and things move.
On without Did you ever dream about it? Yes? And still do really, I still do. Yeah, is that a fact? Have you ever discussed this with other people that were there, like Greg or No, No, I haven't, I haven't. I lost contact with them down the trap because they used to change over the police rounds pretty regularly, so you know, I would get transferred to a different section or go back to the main office for general news, and the other guys would go somewhere else, So we kind of
didn't get much chance to decompress. And I often wonder how they're going and do they still remember it as clearly as I did. Yeah, that'd be interesting too. I hadn't realized the out Greg for some reason, but I knew about Brian because for somebody, I reckon, I saw him. I don't know why I know this man, I reckon. I saw him later that day or something, and he was in the office and very he was shaky. He was shaky.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he made his way straight back to the office. Yeah, that's what he might He might have jumped into a phone box and mentioned it to the Judi of staff as well, and then yeah, he would have been told, that's what I come to, get back here, get back here, and they sat him down, and as you say, that helped helped him write his.
Story the first person person. Yeah, it was really something I've always been grateful I wasn't up at the round, which I'd left by then, but yes, you had, I still been working there. You know, if it had been a different day, you have the week, et cetera, if all the things. It's exactly when you'd step onto the street to go and get saying to eat, it was whatever was that time of day when you walked down the streets.
Yeah, anything could have happened. Yeah, it was a terrifying day.
And of course we've seen bad things happened since, but to actually happen in Melbourne.
That's that's probably what shocked us as much as anything This happened in this Yeah, it was a big, busy city, but we'd never experienced that sort of thing. You know, people who had a rust I called it a rusted on hatred of police. Yes, to actually decide that this was what they were going to do. They were going to take as many people down as they and as many coppers down as they could.
This was really, i mean, historically speaking, one of the biggest things, you know, since the Kelly outbreak, the Kelly shot in free policemen. Yeah, yeah, Stringy Buck Creek way back in seventy eight or a year it was, Yeah, and just over a century later here were going has happened. So yeah, it's not often that we have something of that scale strike in the nineteen twenties. Yes, that's right, violent and scary. Yeah, but in a civil situation, non not war exactly. Frightening.
Yeah, yeah, it's just a taste of terrorism, wasn't it. Yeah, it was a taste of terrorism, That's that's exactly what it was, domestic terrorism meters away from from where we were sitting, and their aim was simply to they wanted to drive that car loaded with this bomb. You might remember there was a driveway.
So this could have been worse. Yes, what were they what was their intention?
Their plan was to drive it up this driveway off Russell Street into a.
Courtyard inside the basic inside.
Yeah, basically a courtyard between the police buildings, the old Russell Street police buildings which are still there.
Yeah, those brick ones are quite beautiful. Really in their way, they had this little lane way separating the two buildings.
Yes, that's right.
It was a bit of a courtyard which was which we didn't go into really because.
Because it was only forever zone for the police cars.
It was private yea. And they wanted to drive in there and put the carriage.
Yeah, but they had a big iron gate and it was shut. So plan B was then to cart out front, out the front.
I see.
So it could have could have been a whole lot worse. The fact that one police officer tragically died it was a miracle. Yeah, there weren't any There weren't anymore that just with the glass that was flying around on its own, A lot of people got injured by that. It broke glass for a block a block, the whole city block. Just about every building in that block their window shuttered. That's how violent that that first last Yeah yeah, sonic,
Yeah yeah, I'll never forget it. And so that plan was thwarted, to thank God, because that could have been a whole lot worse, because you know above that that car was all the officers that we can't mention all the names of those who were undoubtedly involved and served time over it, and another one beat the charges that went on a peal, I think, and so on and so forth. But one person who we can talk about is the late Stan Taylor. Now Stan Taylor was an old crook.
He was an old crooked, old crooker and what police call a good crook.
He was. He'd been around a long time, he'd done all different crimes, knew his way around the system. But Stan Taylor and fairly intelligent and a good a good con man as well as a violent.
Man, yes, and a lot of it. He was certainly a lot of people.
In the acting profession knew him well, and I can remember talking to one of them. She said he'd stand did up my kitchen. He was a good, you know, a good joiner and he renovated her kitchen. Had some mother he did have some skills. Now, he was a cynical, lying, evil piece of work, but you know, he had a
degree of raffish charm. He could tell the wide people that he wasn't such a bad guy, and he'd sort of got himself a bit involved as a as an old crook who got out of jail with that sort of Hector Crawford television industry that turned out cop dramas like Homicide and Division before at Matt Block Police, and he was one of those sort of characters that could do bit parts, probably do a bit of set building, that sort of thing, and he managed to manipulate things
so that he said himself up as some sort of figure who said, look, I'm an old time crook who's given it away. I can help young blugs go get on the right path, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I think he and others set up some sort of wasn't boy Scouts, but they set up something where they were trying to allegedly take young blugs who were it's a juvenile delinquents and put them on the right path.
The reality was they used it as a recruiting ground, and Stan Taylor hooked in with a couple of brothers whose names we won't mention this some people will remember them, and another young fellow maybe, and that he under the guise of showing them a better way and to work hard and be good citizens, he was actually corrupting them, to teaching them, teaching tricks, bad stuff, very bad stuff.
He had broken into an old mine northern western Victoria a few weeks earlier. I remember writing a story about this raid on a mine and JELLYG.
Knight being stoped right out in the Southern Malley or the Northern Man.
Yeah, yeah, birching out nothing else around, that's right. And he'd robbed this mine of boxes of jellig Knight and that's what he used. So he'd been planning this.
He was along with his young young recruits and he used them as soldiers cat's paws. Yes, of course there's no loyalty among these people, because there was a bit of a scramble to be the first to put the hand up and debby in others. And an old crook, a very bad man, an old crook of stands vintage or thereabouts. Yes, I think he got in for and said I didn't do it, it was them, because I think he'd been involved with them, Yes he had. He pointed the finger and that enabled the police to prosecute
Stan Taylor and others. Whereas if Standard got in first, clearly Stan Taylor would have lagged on this other old crook because that's the way they were. And I think the idea was they were pulling robberies. Robberies, yes they were, and the part of their evil plan was to blow up Russell Street, yeah police station, and create a massive diversion. So every copper in Melbourne was focused on that while they were going to pull a bank robbery out in
the outer suburb. That's right, is that right? Yep?
That was Ultimately they apparently had sort of walked away from the car after they parked it and walked away from it, knew what knew when it was going to go off, and they apparently pattered themselves on the back the the fact that the job well done, job well done, But they would have been disappointed in the end. They only yeah, they only killed.
One terrible, terrible crime, the death of Angela Taylor, it seems to me, is the most haunting aspect of it. It really is. Anybody that we know you, I mean, you were close to it. But I think Bernie Farmer might have been Clark of the courts in those days, later became Bernie the attorney criminal defense in those days, a young clerk Clark for Darcy Dugan and other magistrates. And he talks about that day.
Yeah, he cradled Angela and the pictures that he painted were when he was interviewed, were awful. And there's another man who'll never never forget that day.
And Bernie the attorney it burn it so it affected a lot of people, some of whom we don't won't even know. We don't know their names, but people are working up and down that street in courts and in the police station and other people, other officers.
Yeah, it's just coming out and going on their lunch break.
The old Melbourne jail, the police garage in there. All sorts of people.
Yeah, lots of Yeah, other officers down further towards towards the center of the city. Just people wandering around, going into cafes, they're getting their lunch.
And they'd be dozens of people that are exposed to it in a sense, roughly like you were.
Yeah, and we'll all have their own memories of it, of course. Yeah.
It's an awful day, a sad chapter in Melbourne history, sad and tragic and awful. But it was good for you to sit down and write that piece for us, for our readers, to remind them of what happened, and to give an honest, firsthand description of it, and also to make time to come in and talk to us. Yeah.
I was happy to be offered the opportunity. I'd written the piece yep, with you in mind, yep, because I know.
Loyalty to the paper, loyal Well, this is the son of the Herald that's right.
Yeah, yeah, and it's still called the Herald Sun, which I like.
Well. On that note, billais we're going to wind it up. But this has been one of the more interesting Thank you, I hope so sessions for a while.
My pleasure, Andrew, thank.
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