Limerick woman Rebecca Jordan, who moved to Bondi Junction in Sydney last July, was back in Ireland for a wedding when she heard about the shootings.
When she turned on her phone there were dozens of texts from worried friends.
“It was terrifying to wake up to those messages,” she said.
Although she was at the wedding in Co Tipperary, her partner , who is from Co Cavan, was back in Sydney. “He was out and about and heard all the shots being fired,” Ms Jordan said.
RM Block
“He said the streets are empty, everyone is staying at home.”
Ms Jordan said one of the reasons she moved to Sydney was “everything felt so safe there. What happened is really scary, but unfortunately these things are happening everywhere.
“I have a big circle of friends in the area and thankfully everyone is fine.”
There was at least one close call, though, she said. “One friend who lives close to the beach heard the shots and had to hide behind a bar.”
The popular Sydney area is steeped in Irishness to the point of often being referred to as Co Bondi. It, and nearby Coogee, have been at the heart of Irish immigrant life in Sydney for more than three decades.
On St Patrick’s Day 2003, then Irish president Mary McAleese attended Mass at St Patrick’s Church in Bondi, which was overflowing with young Irish backpackers, many wearing their county colours.
More than two decades on, if anything, the beachside suburbs in east Sydney are even more Irish, with local supermarkets stocking Tayto crisps and Barry’s tea, and Irish restaurants selling spice bags and curry chips.
The target of Sunday’s shootings were people attending a Jewish celebration on Bondi beach – the most Jewish area of Sydney – and the massacre has shocked that community to its core.
Dr Dvir Abramovich, chair of the Anti-Defamation Commission who has lived in Australia for 38 years, said he chose this country as a place where Jews could live openly, gather freely and celebrate without fear.
“Tonight, that belief is gone. What happened at Bondi was a deadly terrorist massacre. A Hanukkah celebration was turned into a killing field,” he said in the aftermath.
“Families and children who came to light candles were met with murder. Jews were hunted and killed because they were Jewish, in public, in Australia, in full view of a society that had been warned,” he said.
Dr Abramovich said he now “no longer feels safe” in Australia and said he had warned of the increasing levels of anti-Semitism for years.
“That truth is brutal, and it should be said without hesitation. This massacre did not come out of nowhere,” he said.
“Deadly hatred does not erupt spontaneously. It grows when anti-Semitism is tolerated, excused, minimised and explained away. It grows when incitement is normalised and warnings are ignored. What happened at Bondi is what that process looks like at its end point: murder, bloodshed and irreversible loss.”
