No business, no pleasure as Bondi Junction Westfield reopens for community reflection and solace
As the doors of Bondi Junction Westfield opened for the first time since six people were killed in Saturday’s knife attack, the community gathered to pay respect, in a city changed by tragedy.
The mood outside Westfield Bondi Junction was sombre but hopeful as crowds gathered to pay their respects on Thursday when the shopping centre officially reopened for a “day of reflection”.
Families and couples held back tears as they wandered through the eerily quiet complex, with tissues offered at the door and black ribbons displayed on screens usually lit up with advertisements.
Westfield employee Kim Boyd, 28, from Bellevue Hill, said returning to the site of Saturday’s deadly violence was “unnerving” but necessary given her colleague, security guard Faraz Tahir, 30, was one of six people killed in the knife attack on Saturday.
“I just came down to get some flowers,” she said. “It’s just awful, it happened so near to me and for the company I work for as well, as one of our employees died.
“My office is in the city but I would always (visit) this shopping centre, I do my groceries there, Woolies is in there, I go in there multiple times a week and it’s just crazy because it could have happened to any of us.
“It will be weird going back in there knowing what happened.”
The reflection day comes after Westfield management decided to reopen the centre, without trade, for the first time since Saturday.
Quiet music, shuttered stores, and a floral memorial on Level 4 at the Oxford Street site gave hundreds of visitors an opportunity to grieve and pay respects, including friends Kai Taberner, 23, and Holly Fleming, 21.
Although not personally connected to the incident, Mr Taberner and Ms Fleming had travelled across the city in a testament to the wide-reaching impact of the tragedy on the community.
“I wanted to come down to pay my respects because it obviously is a very sad tragedy and even though for me, personally, I haven’t been to Bondi Junction in a while, it used to be somewhere I would go through every day,” Mr Taberner said. “So I very much have fond memories of this place and this area, and to know something like this tragedy has occurred is very sad.”
The friends commended the quiet respectfulness of reflection day and while they admitted the city had changed, they were hopeful the community would come together in the wake of the attack.
“I’m very grateful with how everything has been set up (for people) to pay respects,” Mr Taberner said.
“In some ways, no (Bondi will not be the same), it’s a tragedy and these sorts of things have an effect and leave a mark on everyone.
“But I also think over time everyone will be stronger for it – not to say that what happened will be forgotten, absolutely not.”
Scentre Group (Westfield Australia and New Zealand) CEO Elliott Rusanow said members of the victims’ families had been consulted about the reflection day after they visited the shopping centre earlier in the week.
Mr Rusanow also confirmed regular trading hours will resume at the major retailers on Friday, but some business owners said they needed more time to process the tragedy.
On the street outside the Westfield entrance, Dubbo couple Alan and Colleen Blacker shared their disbelief over the attack, a sign that certain questions may remain unanswered on the road to rebuilding the sense of public safety and trust shattered on Saturday.
“I just can’t get my head around it,” Ms Blacker said. “We just thought we would come down and look at the flowers, and I went and bought a flower and put a rose down … I feel quite sad about it, I’m very emotional.”
“It has brought us all together somehow but it’s just hard to believe though, isn’t it, that it happened,” Mr Blacker said.
NSW Premier Chris Minns and Police Commissioner Karen Webb were among the first people to walk through the reopened shopping centre on Thursday.
Mr Minns signed a condolence book in honour of the victims and encouraged people to attend a candlelight vigil, supported by local Waverley Council and the NSW government, on Sunday to allow the community to “come together and honour the victims of the Bondi Junction tragedy”.
Joel Cauchi, 40, stabbed 18 people – killing five women and male security guard Tahir – at the shopping centre in Sydney’s east on Saturday afternoon before he was shot dead by Inspector Amy Scott.
The victims include mother Dr Ashlee Good, 38, Dawn Singleton, 25, daughter of millionaire businessman John Singleton, mother of two Jade Young, 47, artist Pikria Darchia, 55, Chinese national Yixuan Cheng, 27, and Tahir, 30.
Six stabbing victims are recovering in hospital from their injuries, including a nine-month-old girl in a serious but stable condition and a woman in a serious but stable condition in intensive care. Two men and two women are in a stable condition.
The state government has committed $18m to expedite and expand a coronial inquest – similar to actions in the aftermath of the 2014 Lindt Cafe siege.
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