Sydney siege: Amazing scenes as Sydneysiders empty florists to fill Martin Place with flowers
MARTIN Place — the scene of so much destruction and despair during the Lindt café siege was transformed as mourners created an extraordinary floral tribute to the victims of Sydney’s hostage crisis.
NSW
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THERE was a steady stream all day. Of tears. People laying flowers. And eulogies for the dead.
Martin Place — the scene of so much destruction and despair during the Lindt cafe siege was transformed yesterday as mourners created an extraordinary floral tribute to the victims of Sydney’s hostage crisis.
They came all day, forming huge queues to lay flowers, sign condolence books and pay their respects.
By sundown the air, which just a few hours prior had been filled with gunshots, was thick with blossoming scent. People of all faiths, backgrounds and ages mixed like the mountain of gerberas, lilies and peonies on the piazza.
A woman handed tissues to wellwishers, many overcome with grief and no longer able to hold back the tears.
One man among them bows his shaved head, dutifully crosses his chest, and stands solemnly.
And after staring at the forest of flowers that were mounting on the Martin Place bricks, Michael Marzano goes to turn away, to face the day, and becomes undone.
“I’m feeling bloody scared. It’s awful, that someone would perpetrate that, just over there,’’ the 49-year-old manager says, through piercing sobs.
A young boy pauses and lays a floral tribute in Martin Place. https://t.co/yG9vlBt0FJ (@dan_murphy)
— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) December 15, 2014
His moment of sorrow is standard, here, today. Everyone is having a moment — and holding together as hard as they can.
“I couldn’t afford to get here but I just told the taxi driver that I had to get to Martin Place and he replied: ‘Get in — I’ll take you’,” one mourner explained.
It was, as many suggested, the way it should be. Life must go on. It’s the only way we win, the only way to prove that such heinous, evil acts will never break us, contain us, nor define us.
“This is our way of fighting back. Getting on with things. Being strong. We have to do it for these guys who lost their lives,’’ Mr Marzano said.
If Man Haron Monis’s intention had been to divide Australians, he failed. The Australian Grant Mufti, Professor Ibrahim Abu Mohammed was among those who lay flowers at the makeshift shrine.
He signed the condolence book before condemning Monis’s cowardly siege. “Today we are here, all of us, Australians grieving our great loss,” a spokesman for the Mufti, Sheikh Aref Chaker said.
“We will be standing united and strong with our fellow citizens and we will not allow anyone to rob us of our values of tolerance and peace.”
In the morning rush hour, the masses gathering at Martin Place mostly range from high-powered lawyers and banking executives to secretaries and cafe staff, who all have interrupted their usual quick march to work, to take in the realities of terror. To pause. To pray. To lay some flowers at the colourful shrine that is steadily painting the bleak grey pavers.
By lunch, that collection was on the verge of spilling onto Castlereagh St. .
Today no one has their face engrossed in their smartphones, and ears are predominantly free from earphones. People are watching, they are quiet, their background instead is the eerie silence of a shocked city, plus a few arbitrary jackhammers from the pair of building sites that stare across Martin Place from each other.
No cars are honking their horns in indignation. There is no hurry, this day.
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