You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast. Mama Miya acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on. Hey, no filter listeners, it's Maya. I'm bringing back an important episode today since this month marks the ten year anniversary of the Lint Cafe siege in Sydney, where two wonderful people, Tory Johnson and Katrina Dawson, tragically lost their lives. In this episode, which originally came out in twenty nineteen, I speak with Louisa Hope. She was
also in the cafe that day. She is a survivor of the siege. She and her mum, Robin, were held at gunpoint with all the other hostages for seventeen hours before the government was taken down by police. Louisa's story is truly incredible, and hearing her first hand account of that harrowing, shocking day is so moving and riveting. Here's Louisa Hope's story.
You have that moment where you go, well, this is it. I remember thinking survived this whole day and now we're going to die right now.
From Mamma Mia, I'm Meya Friedman, and you're listening to No Filter A podcast about people with fascinating stories to tell. When Louisa Hope walked into Sydney's Link Cafe five years ago, she never expected her life would change within minutes. It began as a very ordinary day, but over the next seventeen hours, Louisa and her mother were held at gunpoint and trapped along with sixteen other hostages, before the siege
ended in gunfire and tragedy. If you're anything like me, I bet you remember exactly what you were doing that day when you heard that a terrorist was holding people hostage in a cafe in the middle of the Sydney CBD, mere meters from a TV station. But what went on inside the Link Cafe that long day and dark night, and what happened afterwards to the survivor how did they recover? Did they recover? Louisa Hope is one of those rare people I've met only a few times in my life.
It's like it's like she's lit from within. I'm not sure what it is, but this is honestly one of the most extraordinary conversations I've ever had, and Louisa is quite simply one of the most riveting people I've interviewed In the four years since this podcast began. Here is the very aptly named Louisa Hope. I know that Lee Sales interviewed you for her book An Ordinary Day. It was an ordinary day, yes, so everybody that was there. There was nothing special about it at all. In the beginning.
How did the day start for you and your mum?
So mum and I were we had come to town the night before actually, because we had an appointment at the lawyer who happened to be in the same building as the lint upstairs. And we are Mum's out near the Blue Mountains living at the time, so we decided that we'd come in on the Sunday night. We stayed down at the Hilton and we just decided rather than deal with the traffic on the Monday morning, that we would do that. And we had a lovely time together anyway.
And so in the morning we had that moment where we went, will we go to the Link for breakfast or will we just stay here at the Hilton? What will we do? You know, tossing and turning the idea, and decided we only wanted something small, so we went, of course to the Link.
We just you know, that's sliding all moment.
But yeah, so just random random But you know, really, Mum and I probably were the people who should have least been there because you know.
It wasn't your town, it was in your area.
I know, that's right. We were in the Yeah, very much in that wrong kind of place and the wrong story for us actually at that time.
But there you go, that's what happens.
I'm so sorry about your mom. You lost your mom last year.
Yeah, that's right, she died in September. And its us as a family. We all feel that Mum was never the same after the cafe and we're very aware of that. But you know, we're comforted by the fact that she had a really glorious death and that was it was lovely really to all be together for that. But yes, we imagined that we were going to have it for quite a lot longer because she's very vital and you know, go go kind of woman.
Having come so close to death on that day, How was it different when you know, because the sliding doors moments, again, you could have both lost your lives so easily in the cafe that day. How did it go in the end.
Well, you know, the concluding moments I don't know. You know, some people would have watched it right to the end on television, but for us inside, the intensity and the you know, the adrenaline that just rushes through your body, it's so overwhelming. It's like you drip adrenaline in that moment, and I think that, well, actually, Mum and I both came out of the cafe we were related to discover assuming that the other was dead, because we couldn't imagine
how anyone could have survived. And you know, in the fact of the matter is is that all of us were injured in the cafe at the end, anyone who was in the actual cafe was injured, and sadly, of course, Katrina's injuries.
Led to her death.
So you know, but the moment of thinking that you're absolutely going to die right there and then it's very real. You know, you just sort of kind of have that moment where you go, well, this is it. This is really going to be it. I remember thinking survived this whole day and now we're going to die right now, and so that's kind of like it just stops you in your in your heart and in your in your tracks.
Really does your life flash before your eyes? Like they say, did you think of a person? Did you think of a what did you think?
No? I just thought, well, actually what I thought was, oh, well, god here I'm coming, ready or not? You know, this is me and there's no time now to make any addressments or amends or try and do things different for a bucket list. That's right. May It definitely was too late for that bucket list. And it was kind of like, yes, well here we are, it's going to end like this, just the shock of that idea.
But where were you in that moment?
I was on the floor. I was on the floor actually, and having been standing right next to the gunman, I kind of suddenly found myself on the floor. So and I had my hands covering my eyes because the gunfire was so intense and it was just full on, and I actually had that thought, oh, well, I'm going to die right here, right now, and those will watch, you know. So I took my hands away and opened my eyes, but could hardly see a thing the gun smoke in the room, and of course it was dark, but it's
so intense it was very hard to see. You know. I figured I'm as well watch it was gonna die.
What happened when the gunshots stopped.
You know, that was really interesting. That's because that's just how it was. It was this intense which felt like you know ages, you know, just like a car accident, fast and slow at the same time. But when it stopped, it just stopped suddenly, just oh, okay, it's over. And I had that oh I'm still alive, and I'm kind of feeling my head thinking, am I okay? And because I had seen my foot in the hole on my foot already and I realized that, and I thought, okay,
it's just my foot, I'm okay. Everywhere else okay, And then you kind of start I'm starting to slowly get myself up. In the next minute, one of the tag team guys is over the top of me shouting, shouting, get up, get up, run run, and I'm like, oh, I can't run my foot and he hauls me up and at the same time he says to me, can you hop? And I went, okay, I guess only I can. So you know, it was one of those crazy kind of moments. But you know, the tack guy says hop and you hop, yeah exactly.
So you know, did you know where your mum was at that stage, how would you two become separated?
Well, we had been positioned on either side of him, so Mum was on the right side of him, closest to the kitchen at the lint, and I was on the left, closest to martin place side of him, and so we had gotten separated in the you know, the
furor of what was happening at the end. So that separation was just like added to the So once you kind of do the check, yes, I'm all in one piece, and then you know, they come behind me, actually two of the tack guys because I was obviously slow, and scooped me up and took me out and just gently placed me on the on the you know road there in Phillips Street, and you know, I kind of had that moment of oh, I'm alive and the overwhelming gratitude like,
thank God, I am still alive, and at the same time, but Mum must be dead. There's no way she could have survived because you know, I actually I didn't know at that stage that Katrina was still in the cafe. I thought you'd escaped with all the others, And in a flash of a moment, I saw that Marcia was still there, but I just had assumed that it was just my mother and I and Tory that was still left there. That was all that he realized was there the gunman, and.
So was everyone else hiding.
Everyone else had escaped, so they'd all escaped, and the escape. I'm so grateful that they had escaped, because you know, if there had been more of us in the cafe, there perhaps would have been more definitely more injury, and perhaps more may have died.
I'm told that the people who did escape, many of them lived with tremendous guilt.
Oh if I could only just say to all of them, you know, please don't be guilty. I'm so grateful that you got out when you did. And I think in high that was the smartest thing to do. I mean, certainly Mum and I, you know, we talked about it afterwards, but we were all just waiting because we assumed the police were coming. So we're just waiting the police will come. And so yes, those who took the initiative to run to escape the way they did, that was the wisest thing to do.
How did the gunman react every time he found out people escaped, or did he not realize.
Well, he was very aware that the first three escaped. Originally, like all of us, in that moment, he thought that the police were coming in. And it was only the quick thinking of young Jared Malton Hoffman who said that no, no, they've escaped that we all suddenly went from like off the Richter, you know, tension and you know, everything was going nuts at the moment. In the moment, then he just suddenly calmed down, realizing that that escaped and that
the police weren't coming. But what he didn't know was that the other two young girls had quietly escaped, just ever so quietly. It was amazing really, So he didn't know that there were actually five that had escaped. He only thought that three, three men had escaped. However, and this is an important thing to be thinking about. On the day, the media were reporting every hour on the
hour that five people had escaped. So we had to calm him with that by saying things like, oh, you know what the media is like, they just lie, they're exaggerating. Only three people have escaped. Now, this was important for us in the room because when those three first three had escaped, he told us all that if anyone else escaped, he'd kill someone. So we're all on high alert. In a day that was already like ultra tense. That just
sort of added to the tension. So every time the news reports were coming through, we had to calm him down by just saying, you know, the media lie, but they were reporting a fact as it was true. However, it was impacting on us in the room, and if he had kind of like figured it out, then we could have really been in a dire situation.
The media had no idea that you had access or did they, And how did you have access to media.
On everyone's phones? You know, we all have media in our pockets now.
So he didn't take everyone's phone.
He did.
What he did was he asked us right up front and he said, put your ID and your wallets and your phones on the table in front of us, you know, where we were all sitting. So we all did that. So of course, but everyone had phones, and so as the day went on and he progressively was trying to get us to get him media attention, using our phones become a thing.
Yeah.
So yeah, we all had you know, information all day, and everything that was being reported was being reported into us. So it's an interesting kind of thing for us to think about, especially for the media. How do we address this from a global situation. Whatever is being said in the media will of course, we've just got to assume that it does that we'll be impacting on a live situation. For example, very late in the night early morning in London,
BBC were reporting on what was happening in Sydney. So they were saying, we're listening to the report, and it was one of those moments when the BBC London saying, and we're watching live in Sydney the hostage situation there, and we can see that the police are surrounding the cafe. And I remember absolutely holding my breath because he thought
that there were no police. He really thought that there were no police surrounding the cafe, that they're all off at a distance, because that's what he's demanded being So of course we're hearing that, and I could actually hear my heart thumping in my chest because I knew that if he realized that the police were surrounding the caf from a report from London, the other side of the world, that once again we're all at risk. Fortunately, and I
do not know how he missed it. It may have been he didn't catch the lady's accent, or he didn't he was fatiguing, or he was distracted somehow and he did not hear that, and he did not react. But it certainly put me on edge.
And mum, everybody, really, when did you first become aware on that morning that it wasn't just a regular cup of hot chocolate.
You know likes just such a strange circumstance. I was actually I decided that, you know, it was time to go, and I went to pay for our breakfast and the young girl who was serving me I think it was April, and she said she was just there taking my money, and her mouth is a gast. I'm thinking, this young girl is not paying attention, you know, but of course I'm paying her. And she could see, you know, behind me, and she could see him standing up, starting to make
his proclamation and putting his bandana on. And so by the time I turned around to go back to sit down, like I said, putting his bandanna on, and he's adjusting himself. He's making his speech. He's saying, I want you to know Australia is under attack and I want to speak to the Prime Minister on national radio, and I've got a bomb in my backpack, and I'm thinking in my head, I actually thought, oh, this is ridiculous.
It's a joke.
You know, we're across the road from Channel seven. This must be some sort of like perverted kind of candid camera. But when he pulled out the gun, it was then mea that I just like went, it's real. You know, this is real. And of course you think in that moment, well, this is a terrorist action, and what to terrorists do?
They kill you?
Right, You're dead. So it's just that oh adjustment of your reality. You know, one minute I'm thinking about the rest of our morning, and the next minute, right here, right now, we're dead. But of course that wasn't what he did.
Did people react in different ways.
I think we're all just a little bit stunned. And everyone was very quiet and listening, trying to pay attention. The gun himself was busy trying to articulate very clearly. He was obviously aware of his accent and was trying to articulate very clearly what his demands were and what he was expecting of us. So we all just were like in a state of shock. Really, so there was no kind of screaming or anything like that.
It was just, yeah, did he sort of try to organize you very quickly or did you organize yourselves?
No, he was well, he was instantly in control. Obviously the gun, threat of bombs, all that kind of thing. You know, the average Australian doesn't really have to do with those things. So we were, you know, all trying to work out how to do that. And of course you must remember, apart from the staff, we were all random strangers, so it was just that really bizarre sort of circumstance. So we're all sort of listening, trying to
hear what he's saying, doing what he's telling us. You know, I'm thinking, oh, he's going to line us up and shoot us in my head. But of course, like obviously he didn't do that, so he was quickly he started to say things like keep your eyes closed, so it was very controlling of everything. Close your eyes, open your eyes,
you stand here, you stand there. He quickly arranged people around the room, had people stand up on the bench seat and there in the cafe so that they could be seen out the big windows, and people you know, across the front, so it was pretty full on and intense and the immediate sort of starting and then we waited.
Did he get the chance to talk amongst yourself. No, he was very controlling of all of that for the whole day.
Yes, so that kind of laxed a little when we all got with the program, and that we all realized that what he wanted was media attention, so therefore we needed to be the ones to get that attention for him. So we're all just then scrambling, you know. Initially at one stage he had me ring triple O and he was happy with his with the phone call and he said, oh, you can be my secretary, I mean, like seriously. And then then later on from that he told me to
find ABC Radio on the phone. Well, so technically challenged. Not the best with the phone at the you know, most times, but in particular because I had forgotten my own phone that day and so it was my mother's phone that was on the table, and so I'm trying to scramble and find ABC Radio on the phone, and I found ABC Radio book Club, but he wasn't interested in the book club. So, you know, in that moment, young Jared quickly said, I'll do it hand me the phone.
So when I handed over the phone to Jared, it was like everything shifted and Jared very much become the lead in the room. And so he quickly found radio on the phone and did all that kind of thing, and so the attention shifted very much to Jared, and Jared become in a way like the man for the gunman. So it was really interesting that dynamic, and I was so grateful because you know, like technology is not really my friend.
Pressure.
So Jared worked there, Yes, Jared young. Jared was one of the young workers. He was nineteen at the time. Many of them were only young, as was Fiona Marshall, only nineteen. So you know, yeah, they're just well I wouldn't like me to say it, but they're just babies, you know what I mean.
Yeah, yeah, you need a millennial to get that job.
Yeah, that's right. So they were there.
Could you communicate to each other with your eyes?
Well, obviously we were, but he was onto that. He was quickly onto that, and he was saying, who's looking at who? And certainly because once he realized that, you know, Robin was my mother was totally separating us and no talking with your eyes and if he thought someone was looking too long at someone else, he was what are you doing?
You know?
So he was certainly definitely in the early stages, he was definitely onto all of that kind of thing.
The people then that escaped in little groups, how did they coordinate that?
You know? I think that they were just quick And the three men who escaped, initially they were sitting at the front, they were lined up the front together on individual seats, and so they obviously were able to have little communications because their backs were to the inside of the cafe and they were facing out near the front door. So they're obviously able to have little communications together. And they quickly organized how they're going to do it, and
they just did it. I mean, like how brave were they?
And so yeah, if you couldn't, I mean, you had a lot of time to feel in your mind, did you kind of try to work out who was who and what their story was about.
We were all in our little groups, and so he separated us out from our groups really and put everybody everywhere. So that kind of like style build communication between us.
But as the.
Day went on, and also because we were having toilet breaks.
How did that work? I was going to ask about the toilet.
Well, so thank goodness, you know, really, I mean one could almost say inverted commas. That was a kindness that worked because he just decided that we needed to and I think really because it was obvious that because he had kicked away my walking stick from me to start with, and when it was time to go to the bathroom, I said, can I have my walking stick?
No?
No, And then he said, Fiona, you take Louisa because he worked out our names Louisa to the bathroom. So Fiona took me to the bathroom and then we started this whole routine of lint workers taking us to the bathroom, predominantly Fiona or Jared, and so we were able to communicate in that way as well. So they were kind of like a conduit between us.
When we're going to it, would you whispered to them?
Yeahroom was you know, a little bit of a distance, so there was a degree of privacy there. I feel like, gosh, so weird, but yeah, that's how we were kind of like talking to each other. But we didn't have any kind of grand plan for escape or anything like that. We were just kind of like, I think, going to the bathroom and young Fiona, Ma, my goodness, he told us all to give over our phones. Well she kept
hers in her pocket, brave as that little girl. And you know, so when we got down to the bathroom, she says, I've got my phone.
Do you want to ring anyone?
You know?
But I mean, who remembers anybody's phone number these days? So I'm like, I'd love to, but I haven't got clue anybody's number. So yeah, there you go, and that's how the day went.
I was also told that people became agitated at different times, and around the time of school pickup became quite agitated.
Is that true? Aware?
Like she was aware, and you know, different ones with children were aware of their children, would mention their children, you know, just different little things. I want to, you know, and try and negotiate a bit with, you know, the gunment. There was just constant talk about who was going to get out and who was going to stay, you know,
and all that kind of thing. So yes, of course, there was that whole awareness of people and their children, and the stress of all of that, you know, just made the whole thing worse.
I think did anything sway him. I mean, you were you have ms and you had a cane, and then you know, people had children, Julie was pregnant. There were all sorts of different people with different reasons to be allowed to go. Was everyone sort of looking for what his vulnerabilities might be or what his kindnesses might be?
Yeah, definitely. You know, there was a lot of discussion. At one stage, he said that he would really hostage and which hostage would he release. So of course, you know, naturally you would think in a circumstance like that, everyone might be saying me me, pick me, putting up the hand, saying I'll go, you know, let me release me. But
it wasn't like that. Actually, everyone was saying things like, well, you should release Robin and Louisa because Robin's old, right, and we're saying, no, no, you should release Julie because Julie's pregnant, or Harriet who was pregnant at the time, And then you know, he was saying, but who's going to be my best spokesperson when they get out, and so you know, then we're saying, well, like Jared, you know, he'd be
really good at that. So there was all those kind of conversations, each of us trying to say you know, release this one or that one, and particularly we're I think we're all trying really to get the pregnant girls out if we possibly could. But at the same time it was obviously his choice. He was just messing with us, maybe, you know. But there was a lot of coming and going and discussion, and of course no one was released by him in the end, because he wanted the media attention.
We wanted to be able to get a direct connection to a media outlet so that he could say I'm being so good and so kind by releasing somebody, and he wanted to get the credit for that rather than oh, he said, the media could just say.
They've escaped if I don't get.
Direct live coverage, So you know, that whole idea of somebody being released. Eventually, when we realized we had exhausted all opportunity for the media, it was like he said, why should I bother because I won't get the credit for it. The insanity of it.
Tell me about Toy Tory.
Tory was the manager of the cafe, and unlike everybody else, he referred to to Toy as the manager, which of course he was the manager.
And you know, this man who's still with me every day.
You know. He was very much highly regarded by his staff. They really loved him, you know. But he on the day he went on, he was aware that my mother was becoming more and more agitated, which she was. She was back chatting the gunman and I was she oh, and I was becoming more and more anxious. What was she doing, Robin, Well, she was, oh, dear mate, So she was.
Well.
At one stage she stood up and hands on hips and said, I want to go to the bathroom and my daughter needs her medication. Oh, mom, just keep everything on the down low, you know. I'm trying to mom, you know. And you know when you hear your mother's angry voice, I could hear it coming. I'm thinking, oh, man, are you in trouble? Anyway, she just had that moment, And so he sends her off to the bathroom with Fionna, and then he wants to know all about my MS.
What's MS?
So yeah, so he calls me over sit next to him, and he gives me twenty questions about what's the why have you got MS? How do you get it?
What to do?
And I'm trying to explain very soundly and reasonably the intricacies of MS, and I'm thinking, gosh, you know.
That's quite a human moment. It's accusing to you, Like, I imagine that's confusing because he was showing interest and yeah, exact.
And this is the thing about this man, right, And this is the thing that I keep coming back to and I keep talking about, and that is the fact that he was a bad man doing a bad thing. What he was doing was just so wrong and violent, a violent act to hold somebody against the will with a gun. But at the same time, there were flashes of his kindness and his humanity, So we kind of go, what is that? Who is that? This duplicitous, double minded man.
Here he is letting us have toilet brakes and later on cups of tea and food and uh, you know.
Water, inquiring about your health.
I know, exactly exactly, and he was sincerely interested.
I'm sure of that.
There was no need for him to kind of like do a little deviation into his plan to have a chat about my MS. And then you know, he's very interested in it. And then he says to me, at any time, Louisa, you want to have your medication, you just do it. You don't have to.
Ask me, I thank you, thank you brother, you know. But so here we go.
Here's this man explain, you know, expressing two different parts of his personality, and you think, what is that? Double minded, duplicitous and you sort of think to yourself, well, that's that man who assaults his wife, bashes it to a pulp, and then at the same time tells her he loves her. So, you know, we think that we cannot imagine what a terrorist is like, but we experience in our ordinary, everyday life that kind of man or that kind of person.
So it's ay, and I say this because whilst ever we throw our hands in there and say he's not us, we're.
Not that he's a madman.
Yeah, that's right, he's a madman. He's a lunatic, he's crazy. Then what we're doing is actually surrendering our opportunity to understand what this is all about. How does the violent mind really work? And so for me personally, I kind of have been on a little bit of a crusade in saying we have to grab this circumstance and actually get beyond our fear and start to do some real research to come to real understanding, because it's only in that that we're going to undo what this thing is.
And so you know, there we were in that circumstance with him all those hours, and this was the reality of him, no different to us in many ways.
Do you now see him as crazy? Mentally ill? Evil? How do you see him?
All of those words are too easy. Actually, we need a little bit more of nuanced kind of understanding of him. And I see him as a very flawed human being whose primary motivator was his own self delusion and his narcissistic frame of obviously his existence, because you know, there's
lots of other things in this man's history. I mean, at the inquest, we found out that he had forty eight separate individual sexual assault charges against him, and of course there was his involvement in the death of his ex wife, which was horrendous. And so you know, the man was one could very easily call him evil, but that was not the only cloak that he wore. So we have to get in and nutted out to see
what he really is. You know, yes, even madman can be sane and to sort of box and die somebody into a little hole like that too simple and of no value to us.
Now so there he was asked inquiring about your mss. Your mama demanded to be taken to the bathroom. And where was Tory through all of this.
Well, Tory he had placed mostly the women around him close and all the men at a bit of a distance.
So as so to use the women as human shields because he felt that there was less likely to be someone firing through the window.
Yeah, well you know that.
And also women he was assuming, obviously, and obviously the way he's dealt with women, he was probably feeling more confident that he could keep control of us. So anyway, Mama had you know, a few bit of backchat towards him. And then as a day went on, a little bit later, Tory had gone for bathroom break and he came back, and normally we came back and sat back in normal seats where we were last seated, but Tory actually come
back and positioned himself sitting right next to Mom. And what happened then was that they were sitting on the seated on the bench seat with a table in front of them, and I was on an individual seat separated slightly from them. But where he positioned himself next to Mom, I could hear them just quietly whispering, having little jokes. I could hear little giggles, and when I had got another bathroom break myself come back, I could see them
holding hands under the table. So Tory had used that as an opportunity to sit next and position himself next to my mother to calm her. And I could see that that worked because Mum was far better because it was one stage when the gunman actually said to me, Louisa, keep your mother quiet, and in the moment, I thought, you're crazy. How am I going to do that? Keep my mother quiet and ask for a daughter? Yeah, exactly, And so you know, like I hear, I am a
growing up. But I had that moment where I had to say to mom, Mum, you know you're an old lady, just keep quiet. And I could see her looking at me, and I'm thinking, you know, she's kind of like, wait till you get home. You're in big trouble kind of thing, and I'm just sort of thinking, we've got it. But I knew that we just had to keep her calm.
And Tory obviously read that too, because he come back after that, and like I said, he positioned himself next to her, and of course at the end, at the end, when everyone else escapes, and I had had my eyes closed. I was in this intense place of prayer actually, and then I'd heard this big bang and I'd opened my eyes and all of the others that escaped, all the other hostages, and I went, all, right, this is it.
We're going.
So I stood up and I started to go towards the door, but Mum and Tory were not moving, and I was trying to catch their eye, kept turning around, you know, not wanting to speak because I didn't know where the gunman was, didn't know what was happening with him. So I'm kind of trying to indicate to them, come come, you know, we're right at the end now, and I'm trying to get their attention, but they weren't moving. I'm thinking,
why isn't Tory moving, Why isn't Mum moving? They're just not shifting, And so in that moment, I just thought, well, I can't leave my mother. So I lay down on the floor and thought, oh, you know, the government will kill me. But and then that situation went on. But later after, after twelve months, later, after the first anniversary, Mom and I were having a quiet moment at home, and I said to her, mom, do you remember at the end, And I got up and was going towards
the door. I said to her, why didn't you and Tory run? Because I could never understand why Toy didn't run. And my mom said to me, oh, well, I was saying to Toy, you know, you go, you go, and she's making this motion. She was like she was ill, bowing him in the side, saying you go to it, you go, and he said to her, no, I'll stay,
I'll stay with you. So in that moment, twelve months after the event, I suddenly realized that Tory Johnson had made a deliberate choice to stay, to stay and look after my mother, which you know is for our whole family.
That is.
Profound, and I understand the grief that his family must feel that his brave heart made that choice in that moment, ah, because if he had not, he would not have been there to be the one who was killed. So, you know, it's just, you know, it's hard, and I feel for his family. But I think to myself, what an amazing brave young man. And you know, his his parents, his mother and of course his partner Thomas. His bravery doesn't
replace him for them. But you know, our family, we are forever grateful because in lots of ways, you know, that gave us three and a half more years with our mother and m It's you know, it's in my heart.
Why do you think that the gunman chose Toy Because Tory was the last man in the cafe and he was the final authority figure.
So he called Tory to. You know, he positioned Mum and I either side of him and told us to keep our eyes closed and we wouldn't get hurt. How many ridiculous really is if you do that? But then he called Tory over.
You mean, as if you'd keep your eyes So you didn't keep your eyes.
No, it's dark in the cafe and we're either side of him, Mum and I. And then he called Toy over and said you manager, kneel on the floor and put your hands on your head. And it was just that moment of oh my god.
You know, I don't want to ask you to relive that moment, but lais, how do you get over any of this? Like I look at you sitting in front of me, and I know people go to war and that's essentially what you did. How do you do it? How do you recover?
Everyone's experience is different, and trauma and we talk about post traumatic stress, and you know, trauma is a really bizarre kind of thing. And for me personally, I think that this is my experience. Mum's experience was very different.
But for me, I went into a place of post trauma, like I was so overwhelmed with the gratitude, so grateful that I'd been spared in that moment, so grateful that there was a few future, and so grateful you know, Mum was still alive and you know, and also that I could have a refocus, and I just had that determination that we were going to get something good out of that awful situation. So for me, I feel in hindsight now that I went into a kind of post
euphoria and that pushed me forward. And that, of course, I have to say, comes from you know, my practice, my practice of prayer, my practice of faith, and all those things that were already in my life and were part of you know, my inner life, and so all of those things built into that. But at the same time, and equally as potent, I have to say, is the overwhelming anxiety. Now, this is really interesting how we think about anxiety. But for me, I understood how I felt
immediately in those final moments. And when I say the adrenaline was dripping out of me physically, I could feel like my entire body was engaged in the adrenaline and I could feel it and I was just maxed out, there's no other way to describe it. Maxed out. And it was almost like my brain was expanding. And so what happens for me now, five years later, still I can find that I can I can be some sort of circumstance. It could be traffic, or it could be
any little moment, no random reason. But anxiety comes instantly from like zero to one hundred in an instant, and I can recognize it's in my body and I go, yes, I know my body has gone from zero to one
hundred to one thousand to flight exactly right there. It's the same feeling that I experienced in that moment at the end, and I haven't worked out how to turn it off yet, but I have worked out how to steal my heart and just control myself as opposed to Okay, I'm here, and then I'm there, and some days I can be good at it, and some days I'm not so good at it, And I'm very blessed because I'm surrounded by a family who understand and friends who are
under control. And sometimes it's a moment where a friend will sit and just have a little quiet sit and will have a prey. And sometimes it's a moment where I go into a meditative state or you just do the breathing that's associated with calming myself. There's all little tricks that you can use for that, but it's very real. The thing is, anxiety knows no level in that. So I had an experience that was pretty tense and out there.
But you know, anxiety is the same for the woman who's just been assaulted in her own home, or for somebody who's facing a traffic accident or somebody who's having a stroke. Anxiety is no respector of persons, and we all experience it in our own individual way, but the same. So you know, if someone tells me they've got anxiety, I can really relate. And it doesn't matter what caused, it doesn't matter, it's all the same. So, you know,
we need to be kind to each other. Sometimes you know, because we don't know what someone else is going through.
There's something that happens. I always assume that anyone who experiences a tragedy has post traumatic stress and post traumatic syndrome. But I learned through reading Lee Sales's book that and actually through people that I know, not everyone has that.
Some people have post traumatic growth, which is a little bit like the euphoria is probably a different stage, but the post traumatic growth is when my friend who had a stillborn baby described it to me as that the death of her daughter turned the light up in her life, not down, and she didn't expect that. Would you say that that's been what this experience has done to you? You has it turned the light up in your life?
God bless your friend.
You know.
That is such a beautiful way to express that, And that's really exactly how it really feels.
I have found that.
I found that for me, I felt like I expanded as a human, as a person, so that my capacity was more. So, you know, I equally feel that expansion of self and my capacity to cope with more in many ways coupled with the balancing effect of oh yeah, all that random anxiety and distress and pressure, so it's very finely tuned and needs to be very finely balanced. But if I look forward and focus myself that way, it very much is about that. So now I feel like, Okay,
what else is out there that we need to fix? Change, grow, evolve? What other other things need to be looked at post siege? That business that we need to do as a society, within our institutions, and of course for me as well being involved with the nurses. So you know, it's just I feel like there's no there's no place to say no anymore. We just got to go forward.
You started a foundation, oh to help nurses. Tell me about your time in hospital after the scene? Wow?
Well hospital, okay.
You were there for a long time. It just was full on seems unfair after what you went through.
I know it was that kind of you just don't imagine that, you know, Like seriously, I thought, okay, well once I because really I thought I was going to lose my foot. I really had that moment. We had a hole in it it certainly, did you know. And
what did it look like when I looked at it? Well, you know, it was pretty when it was first done, it was just like horrendous, like I used to get in a little state of shock whenever they redressed the wound, because it was just the shock of seeing it, you know. But of course now it looks now, it looks like I describe it as someone's got the barmacs.
And gone on my foot.
It's just it's a classic honeycome wound and it's some messy just to say the least. But you know, three months in hospital was not what I expected. I thought i'd be there two weeks, you know, by the time Chris, I'll be out, and I thought it'd be out for New Year Christmas. That didn't happen, and it just kind of extended.
It extends.
You needed operations, reconstruction.
That's why I had three surgeries and then and then of course rehabilitation, and so I went from Prince of Wales to a private hospital in the Eastern suburbs and so that was a long time in hospital. But that time gave me well, really, you don't think about it in the moment, but in hindsight I realized it was like a blessing because it insulated me from the world immediately after the siege, and it gave me time for reflection and to think forward. And also my experience with
the nurses then sent me on that journey. And so when sixty Minutes we're discussing, you know, if we're going to talk to them, And like my mother and I knew from the go get that we would have to share with everyone because we knew that if we'd been on the outside, we would have wanted to know what happened to the people on the inside. So we understood that.
And also because I personally felt that we were all part of what happened that day, like this was not something that happened to just me and my mother and my fellow hostages. It happened to the whole country, so we
had to be accountable for that. So anyway, when sixty Minutes generously gave me that twenty five thousand dollars and Mike bed matched that money, had a little fifty grand in my hand, and I kind of thought, right, I know what I wanted to do with it, because I was going to do a little I thought originally that I just do a little fundraiser for the nurses within my own community, and we get a few grand and I give it to the nurses on my ward. But
fifty grand was a whole lot more money. And so I went to the foundation at Prince of Wales and the Lulu Salapa, who was the CEO there, brilliant, amazing. That foundation runs like a machine, I've got to tell you. So of course, Lulu had been a nurse in a previous life, and so she knew exactly what I was saying when I said I don't want this to go for a carpet or for a new paint in the hospital or anything, or in the boardroom or anything. I
wanted to be for nurse initiated projects. And she absolutely got that. She knew exactly how to create that make it happen, and so that's what happened. And of course once I started to see what the nurses were doing with the money, I couldn't stop, you know, I just had to keep trying to raise money and raise awareness to the nurses and what they do for us. So, you know, I could rave on about this for hours because it's my happy place.
But yeah, that's part of your post traumatic growth also, right, finding a way to channel this thing that happened to you that was so shocking into something positive.
Well, you know, it really was an answer to my prayer in many ways, because I so wanted something good to come out of this, and now I realize that the good is not going to come through me. It's going to come through the nurses and the work that they are doing. Because the nurses, all of their projects are about, you know, how to help us as patients, and that of course is the universal focus of nurses, and so yeah, I just have the privilege of being
involved in that. I'm just like, my goodness, how blessed am I?
You know, it's funny what you just said about how you recognize that it's something that happened to all of us, not just the people in the cafe, which sounds almost arrogant when you particularly when you think about Tory and Katrina and the families that they left behind and all of you that were in there. How did you sort of become aware that we do all sort of need to process and to tell you where we were that
day and what our connections. I mean, the first thing I did when I met you this morning was tell you how I had connections to Tory and how I had connections to Katrina. It's a lot to take on how that affected the kind of the national psyche. How did you become aware of it?
You know, when I think that, like I said, you know, I was very aware. Well, you know, like I know how we would have been, my mother and I. We would have been outside the cafe praying for people. We would have stayed up all night, We would have waited with them. A nurse once said to me, you know, about a week and a half into my state at the hospital, she said, even though I was on morning shift, I had to stay up to the very end and watch on the television. She said, I couldn't leave you
in there alone. And I thought, oh, yes, I understand what she's saying.
Yeah, that none of us wanted to go to sleep that night.
Yeah, see, you know we're all we're all leaving, that's right. And so I think that we if we recognize, this is something that happened to all of us. And when you think about what happened in Martin Place after, you know, I was in hospital and it was on a self imposed media blackout, but friends were bringing me news and
telling me stories and photographs, flowers, flowers and people. They're telling me about random strangers sitting and talking and praying and you know, Muslim people being there and everyone sharing together, and you know, of course the Ride with Me campaign that happened afterwards, So all of that stuff you kind of I think it very clearly made it obvious that we were all in this together. So therefore we had
to find a way to recover together. So for me, that's really important, and part of that is telling our stories to each other. And so I have great respect you know, people come and tell me.
And you know.
Lesa Eyes's book, of course, you know she talks about things like that where but we all had an ownership, did we not?
In Threadbow and.
What happened to poor with Arthur, So we all have a part of it. And if we think that it's just oh yeah, something that happened on a news cycle, well actually it's not, because we're all impacted by these things. So how do we recover together?
That's incredibly gracious of you to understand that and acknowledge it. And I'm going to guess that people would have two reactions in terms of the hostages. Some I imagine, would want to stay in touch and feel very bonded, and others would want to just walk away and never look back. Is that how it's panned out with those of you who were there and lived through.
That definitely, you know, all separate individuals with individual lives and stories, and you know, sometimes contact is a reminder of that day and that's just too hard. And you know, I totally respect that, and you know, my heart's always you know, are you okay and how are you doing and all that kind of stuff, But I also am aware that I myself don't want to be an inflictor of further pain. So you know, it's really hard to kind of just walk that fine line between respect and care.
So yes, you just have to welp, hands off and wait really.
So yeah, do you stay in touch?
And a few of them I too, Yes, definitely, and I value that so much and I'm always keen for any news of anyone else, but just so don't want to invade them, you know, because we're five years and so, you know, so aren't we inverted commas over that already? But it's just it's not like that. It's never over, actually, and so I don't never be over for the families. But equally, you know, you stand up and you dust yourself off and you get on, but it's always.
There, Louisa. I just want to thank you. I mean, I understand that so many of the survivors from that day and the families have wanted to retreat and you haven't. You've kept being out there and speaking to be of service and to help us collectively process this, as well as trying to use it for good and raise money for your foundation and to help nurses. You are such
a force of good in the world. Like for everything that he was a force of dark, you are that opposite and that equalizing and you know, exceptional force of good. And I just wanted to say thank you, thank you, ma'a. I hope that the incredible I don't know luminescence of Louisa came through in that interview in the same way
that it did in the room. We were all in tears, my producer, our person behind the camera, and the guy that came along with Louisa as her sort of support person because she walks with the cane and sher foot's bandaged, but she had this beautiful, bright orange patent leather strappy sandals around her foot, and she was wearing this gorgeous floral dress and she was telling me this amazing story of how the day before she'd been in the city and she'd fallen over, and she said, that's something that
happens not infrequently because of her foot, and she's some times loses her footing. And she was in the middle of the street and a guy came to help her and he said, oh, he noticed that she had a bandage on her foot, and he said, oh, were you okay? What happened? And she said, oh, I was in the siege and I got some shrapnel in my foot. And he said, oh, my god, my son is best friends with Katrina Dawson's son, and I just dropped both the
boys at camp. And of all the people who could have come to help her in the middle of a city on an ordinary day, I don't know. Makes you wonder as you heard towards the end of the siege,
Louisa was injured. She got shrapnel in her foot from all the gunfire, and afterwards she was taken to the Prince of Wales Hospital here in Sydney, where she spent three months as a patient, and she was so moved by the care and the compassion that she received there she decided to take this tragedy and turn it into something positive and she created the Louisa Hope Fund for Nurses as part of the Prince of Wales Hospital Foundation.
To donate to the Prince of Wales Hospital Foundation Louisa Hope Fund for Nurses, please visit POWHF dot org dot au and we'll put a link in our show notes. This episode was produced by bridget Northeast and to the families of Katrina Dawson and Tory Johnson, we extend all our love and our deepest sympathies. Katrina and Tory are not forgotten.
Hey, it's me just jumping back into your ears with no voice now. Since we recorded that interview with Louisa last week, we've also done another interview about the Sydney Link Cafe siege more generally with a journalist called Debra Snow who's written a book on it. We did it
on our podcast through Crime Conversations. Jesse Stevens did that interview and it feels in a lot of the blanks that you might have and a lot of the questions that you might have after listening to Louise's incredible story, because I really had to make a decision when I was talking to her what I would talk to her about, like I could have talked to her for one hundred years, really,
she was so interesting. But there were things about the gunman, about his history, about the police response, about some of the TikTok, and what happened step by step during the day that we just didn't cover. So this other interview on our podcast, True Crime Conversations, you might want to listen to it. You'll find it wherever you find your podcasts.
And we've actually done it in two parts. The first part is a little bit about the gunman, or a lot about the gunment actually and what happened before the siege, and then there's a lot about the siege itself in our second part.
So I have a listen to that