‘I don’t want anyone to know what I know’: London bombing survivor says Australia needs to deal with extremism

LONDON bombing survivor Gill Hicks, from Adelaide, says her loss of both legs should teach Australia something about extremism.

GILL Hicks was a high-powered Aussie design consultant making waves in London when she got on the Tube on the morning of July 7, 2005.

It’s a day that’s carved into her mind as clearly as if it happened yesterday.

Gill, who now lives in Adelaide with partner Karl Falzon and their three-year-old daughter Amelie, lost both legs in the devastating terror attacks.

She almost didn’t make it at all. The now 47-year-old was technically dead for just under half an hour, and none of her rescuers believed she would make it.

“I absolutely knew I had lost both my legs,” she told news.com.au, ahead of her appearance at TEDxSydney on Wednesday. “I remember death being very beautiful, just something very difficult to resist. Death for me was a very different calling. Do I want to do this or is there something else for me to stay in this world for?”

Eleven years on, she is constantly reminded of that life-changing experience, as she copes with the challenges of having two missing limbs.

“There’s a never a day I can push it aside,” she says. “The body changes continuously. I suffer quite a lot of excruciating nerve pain because the nerves continue to grow.

“What does the life of a double amputee look like? One day I’m fantastic, I could walk a marathon. The next day, I couldn’t get my legs on. It’s very unpredictable.”

The 47-year-old with her daughter Amelie, 3. Picture: Calum Robertson

Gill was devoted to her design job, and prided herself on being the team member who was first in the office and last to leave. Her attitude totally shifted that day.

She threw herself into her recovery, telling herself: “I’m alive, and that’s the best possible outcome. I’m still Gill. I’ve got to stay focused on that.

“It’s not easy. It takes a lot of mental effort. If someone had said the day before, you will live life without legs, I’d have said, no way. We are capable of far bigger, greater things than we think.”

She founded not-for-profit organisation MAD For Peace, which connects people fighting extremism across the world and moved back to Adelaide, where she gave birth to her daughter.

She still battles to find ways around her limitationsand “protect against disappointment”.

It isn’t the life Gill used to expect for herself.

“I don’t want anyone to know what I know,” she says. “That’s the power of experience. It’s important to share. It’s the connection we have as human beings.

“It’s incredibly lonely doing this work and living with so many deep insights into humanity.

“The people who saved me put their own lives at risk going back into that tunnel. Feeling so much love from whole experience of the rescue, that’s what’s protected me and shielded me, and brought me through without so much hatred, or desire for retribution.”

She says her anger has only grown over the years, but she’s chosen to turn it into something that motivates her rather than “eats away” at her. She works with experts, survivors and even former extremists to try to stop the devastating cycle of terrorist attacks.

The 7/7 survivor hugs one of her rescuers, PC Andy Maxwell, at the 10-year anniversary of the bombings.

In trying to understand the 7/7 bomber’s motives, she says she’s learned a valuable lesson about the danger of generalising about a group of people.

“He dehumanised me,” she says of her attacker. “He didn’t know me. He made the decision to push that button. It was all about me being the ‘other’.

“What’s frustrating about this particular form of terrorism is that person is now dead. That person and their choices are gone.”

Gill is determined to use her experience to deter others from doing the same, and while she remains closely connected to London, where her “second life” began, she thinks there is much she can do here.

“Australia can absolutely leadin exploring how we can deal with our own emerging extremisms.

We’ve got a very healthy, multicultural balance.

“Australian communities are really quite different. It feels like a great opportunity to do some extraordinary things here to stop discord bubbling up.

“We’re built on communities from all over world, with the first people from the land. The mixture is quite unique.

“People want Australia to flourish. We want this to work. That’s quite fresh.

“We don’t feel like a tired nation.”

Gill Hicks will be speaking at TEDxSydney 2016 — an annual ideas festival taking place at the Sydney Opera House on Wednesday, May 25. Her talk will be available to view online after the event or you can live stream the talks from 9.00am via tedxsydney.com/live or the TEDxSydney mobile app.