Port Arthur Massacre: Off duty Sydney policeman Justin Noble’s actions saved lives including that of his pregnant wife
OFF-DUTY NSW police officer Justin Noble was on holiday with his pregnant wife when he heard gunshots ring out at Port Arthur. His police training instinct told him something was wrong.
NSW
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BEFORE everyone else sitting beside him at Port Arthur’s picnic tables sensed the danger they were in, Justin Noble realised something was very wrong.
Tourists visiting the historic site on April 28, 1996, didn’t first feel spooked by the sudden flurry of gunfire. Many later would say they believed it was a re-enactment of the horrors which live inside the former convict settlement’s history.
Justin was different. An experienced NSW police officer holidaying with his pregnant wife, Kathryn, he too heard the gunshots coming from the direction of the site’s Broad Arrow Cafe — he also heard the pauses.
It’s 1.28pm, on a sleepy Sunday. The couple had intended to leave the spot to join a 1.30pm tour, starting at the information office, but stalled upon hearing the shots.
Shot one, shot two, shot three, silence. Still sitting at the picnic table a few hundred metres away from the cafe, Justin starts to time the seconds before the next shot.
He hears another three blasts, then again comes a pause. Two shots, a pause, and then another single shot.
‘SOMETHING IS WRONG’
For an assumed harmless historical demonstration, this seems like a lot of gunfire.
After the noise comes movement, a stream of at least 50 people heading away from the sounds. Justin notices most are walking quickly but some run as their heads dart back to track what is going on, just who is holding that gun.
Justin sees one man dart towards the toilet block.
“That guy just took off like a rocket,” he says to his wife.
“Something is wrong.”
When human instinct is to flee, a police officer is trained to stay near to the danger, creep closer into its path. As more and more people run in his direction, Justin slowly moves toward the café.
And then he sees him.
Blonde hair down to his shoulders, fair skinned and dressed in long blue pants. In his arms is a long rifle, the butt of the weapon resting against him. The muzzle of the gun points down, away from him.
BABY FACED KILLER
Martin Bryant, aged 28 with the intellect of an 11-year-old, would become Australia’s worst mass murderer. The man who would become the reason for strict gun ownership laws applauded the world over, ground-breaking reform former Prime Minister John Howard would label “one of our great achievements”.
Justin watches as the man, who to him looks no older than 25, raise the rifle until it is straight, and take aim. It is then fired rapidly, a round of shots into the oval area just outside the café.
“He’s looking for targets,” Justin realises. He can now see it’s a high-powered, semi-automatic rifle in the arms of a very dangerous man. Two more shots are fired in rapid succession.
He thinks of his wife, still at the exposed, wide-open picnic area. He goes back to his original spot, fixes Kathryn to his side. He yells at those in the picnic area to get down, out of sight.
“Run, run, move it, the guy’s got a high-powered gun, he’s shooting people,” he shouts.
“Get out of the park; he will kill you where you are.”
Under Justin’s instruction, Kathryn Noble and the group move toward the Port Arthur Motel, which is up a slope. On their way they see others walking into the line of fire.
“The guy has a high-powered gun, he will kill you down there,” Justin urges them.
A car drives past them and Justin signals with his hand for him to stop.
“There’s a guy down there with a rifle shooting people,” he says.
“No shit,” the guy replies.
LOCAL POLICE WERE ON A HOAX TIP
Inside Justin’s wallet is his NSW police identification, a badge he didn’t expect to pull out on his holiday. He fixes it to his jeans and tells the man he is a serving police officer.
“I want you to get to a phone and ring the police,” he instructs.
“Tell them there is a male who has gone berserk and is shooting people. Will you do that?”
Only moments earlier, unbeknown to Justin, the first phone calls had been placed to emergency services.
On the small peninsula, 60km from Hobart, there were two police officers stationed that day. When the urgent reports came through the radio scanner, they were investigating what turned out to be a hoax tip at Saltwater River, about 30 minutes drive away from Port Arthur.
Back at the site, another car tries to drive past Justin and a growing group of people fleeing the sound of gunfire.
“I’m trying to get out of here but the road is blocked,” the driver, with two female passengers in the back, tells Justin.
“If you can’t drive then get out and run,” he tells him.
“You can’t sit here, the guy has a high-powered rifle and he can kill you from where he is down there.”
People, assured by the badge on Justin’s jeans, do what he says. He asks to use a phone to try to call police again and connects to the radio service. With Tasmanian officers on the way, the officer asks if Justin will man a traffic stop and block cars from continuing north, a route that would lead them directly to Port Arthur’s heart.
With the noise of the continuing gunfire in his ear, Justin works to keep as many people out of sight, away from the man with the shoulder-length hair and the rifle resting against his shoulder.
A SCENE OF OBLITERATION
Inside the Broad Arrow Café, where the rampage began, are the bodies of 12 people, 10 more badly wounded. Seconds of madness by Bryant had torn apart so much.
Nurses who were inside the café, used to seeing the end of life, would later say nothing could prepare them for the devastation and loss.
One later described it as a scene of obliteration perhaps only soldiers had seen.
Amid the food trays and soft drink bottles, casually consumed only moments before, now lay stories of courage against all odds.
The power of love pitted against the ferocity of the rifle’s bullet. A mother who tried to shield her daughter from harm. Husbands who lay on top of their wives, dying from shots to the head as they protected the women’s lives.
Still in contact with the police radio, Justin is asked if he will re-enter the crime scene, with reports now that Bryant is semi-contained at the local Fox and Hound Motel. There were no other officers to help inside the historic site area, Justin is told.
Aware of the comfort his badge is bringing to the terrified, with one woman saying “we will be okay” to her husband upon seeing it, he agrees.
As he continued along the road, attempting to stop anyone in his path from moving any further into the town, Justin was confronted by the sight of three bodies; a woman and two little girls.
Nanette Mikac had been trying to flee the area with six-year-old Alannah and three-year-old Madeleine. Mother and her youngest child were killed first, followed by Alannah who had tried to hide behind a tree.
Amid the chaos of directing others to safety, Justin will never forget that sight.
He was instructed by the Tasmanian force to ensure everyone was out of the southern area of the site. During his time in the site, after assisting with the landing of the emergency helicopter, Justin would speak to three women whose husbands were dead inside the café.
FIGHT FOR RECOGNITION
He later learned that one person he stopped from going past the roadblock area was a manager of the Fox and Hound motel, at the very time Bryant was nearby shooting at people in cars.
Justin has long wanted a formal recognition from the NSW police, but despite his own attempts, as well as efforts from his superiors in the Hunter Valley area command, to this day has been sent only a letter of congratulations.
When he requested special leave from the force to attend a commemoration ceremony in Port Arthur to mark the one-year anniversary of the massacre, he was knocked back and told his experience was no more significant than attending a bad car accident.
Permission was ultimately given following intervention by the NSW Police Association.
His hurt was compounded further when he learned that NSW police officers who were sent to Tasmania in the aftermath of the shooting were rewarded with NSW Police Force commendations for their brave conduct — an honour Justin believes they deserve but an award that has been so consistently denied to him.
“To this day I have regrets as to what I should or could have done to add value and perhaps a slightly different outcome to what occurred but it was my police training that took over that day,” he said.
“Upon the firepower that Bryant had in his possession that I knew I was outgunned so to speak and there was no way I could bridge the gap between myself and him and prevent him from shooting other people.
“The best thing I assessed that I could do was take control of people that were within my capability of controlling and moving them to safety.”
THE AFTERMATH
Noble, as do others in the Tasmanian police, believes anyone who had tried to be a hero by attempting to tackle or stop Bryant would have become a victim themselves.
He was congratulated for receiving a Commonwealth bravery decoration by then NSW Police Commissioner Peter Ryan.
“My attention was drawn to your role in endeavouring to save life, preserve the crime scene and assist Tasmanian emergency services under the most trying of conditions,” Commissioner Ryan wrote to him in October 1997.
“I applaud your performance under these circumstances and trust the award is received with as much pleasure as I had in being informed of your commendable actions.”
In just over a year’s time the 20th anniversary of the massacre will pass. The tourist site at Port Arthur is once again thriving, despite the eerie sense of loss that will haunt it always.
In 2006, the 10-year anniversary, the site held its last commemorative service for the massacre.
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The gunman’s name is not spoken by those who live in the town. April 28, 1996, is not mentioned when tourists take a guided tour of the site.
Justin left the NSW police force in the years after the shooting, and says he and his wife have both suffered a path of “ups and downs” since the shooting.
They now live in Tasmania, a lifelong connection to the state forged by a day no one will ever forget
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