Bondi Terror book launched at Bondi Pavilion

A book reconstructing the December 14 attack at Bondi Beach minute by minute was launched at Bondi Pavilion on Thursday night, before an audience of survivors, bereaved families, first responders and political leaders gathered metres from where 15 people were killed.

Bondi Terror: The Tragedy, the Courage, the Aftermath, by News24 host Sharri Markson and ECAJ co-CEO Alex Ryvchin, was written in nine months and draws on dozens of hours of testimony from survivors, witnesses and first responders.

Markson said the idea came while she was moving between hospitals interviewing the wounded and the bereaved. “The truth is there were just too many stories to capture, and I deeply wanted to do them justice,” she said. Her sister Rikki and journalist Samantha Maiden both urged her to write a book, she said, and her first reaction was that she had no time.

Ryvchin said he agreed immediately. “It would be a vital recording of Australian history, and I felt that we could do it justice,” he said. “Even though in our lives at that time we were utterly consumed by work and by concern for the community, we knew this book just had to be written.”

The pair presented the book to the families who lost everything, to the hundreds with wounds that do not heal, and, as Markson put it, “to our country that we both love”.