With memories of last weekend looming, Bondi reopens for business

Fantasia had recognised the sound of gunshots from living for a decade in Los Angeles, where knowing first aid and how to stanch the bleeding of a gunshot wound was routine for hospitality workers. Restaurants, there, are regarded as sanctuaries.

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He got everyone inside and told them to stay away from the windows and doors. He then ventured as far as the edge of Archer Park where the shooting happened, only to be confronted with images familiar to anyone who watched the news or read a newspaper last week.

He returned to the restaurant and told patrons service had been suspended and that the restaurant was in lockdown, but stressed it wasn’t a prison. Anyone was free to go.

Nobody did. They hid throughout the restaurant. Many have emailed to thank him and staff over the past days.

Ahead of its reopening, counselling was offered to staff by the restaurant’s owners, Solotel, and only those staff who felt up to returning did so.

The fish restaurant is located under the North Bondi RSL, where hundreds of people sought refuge last Sunday.

Yesterday, the RSL was still doing that, with most of its premises turned into a NSW Government support hub where people offered financial help.

Counsellors from Lifeline and others were offering help. On the beach and parks, chaplains and mental health workers roamed.

People needed it. When a chopper went overhead on Saturday morning, everyone presumed the worst. A photographer for this masthead said he now pulls his long lens out of his bag so everyone can see it is not some high-powered rifle.

Standing in front of his pizza ovens, Ali Haider, the manager of Doughboy Pizza near the beach, recounted how terrifying last Sunday had been.

“Everyone was just running. They were scared. They came from other suburbs, like Parramatta,” he said. The buses had stopped, and nobody knew where to go or how or if they could get home.

“We have to give them escape, and hide them,” Haider said. They hid people in the back of the restaurant in a locked storeroom. Like others, he spoke of children separated from parents.

Ali Haider witnessed families separated during flight from the attack.Credit: Oscar Colman

A pharmacist in North Bondi who didn’t want to be named refused to shut his doors because his shop was full of first aid. He stayed open until 11pm on Sunday night.

A week later, normally busy restaurants are slow. Queues for ice-creams, smoothies and food are short, and getting a choice table with a view of the beach at the Pavilion is comparatively easy.

Impromptu shrines are everywhere, many people carry bouquets, and the local supermarket said they were selling many flowers. Many groups are huddled together in tears.

But the sounds of normality have returned: a dad calling to his partner to hang on while he took a kid for a much-needed wee, a couple playing guitar in the park where it all happened, and two women talking about how to cook roast potatoes for family this week.

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