Sydney Under Siege: As It Happened 15 December 2014

by Justin Cahill

Overview

I work in the building next to the Lindt Café. Shortly after news of the Siege broke, I found myself locked out. Gradually, I realised my usual day had been pulled out from under me. For the first time, I had become a witness to history. This is my account of the day terrorism returned to Sydney. It is based partly on contemporaneous notes I scribbled on the day.

I thought about writing this as 'gonzo journalism', the form pioneered by Hunter S Thompson where events and thoughts are supposedly written down as they happen with no revision. But it's too artificial: there is always revision. Simply typing out my notes wasn't enough. They left out a lot, especially what I felt and things I remembered later.

So this is part-recollection and part-reconstruction. I've included some afterthoughts in parentheses, but kept them to a minimum.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940046469103
Publisher:	Justin Cahill
Publication date:	12/17/2014
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	697,495
File size:	54 KB

About the Author

Welcome to my Smashwords profile.

I am a New Zealand-born writer, based in Sydney. My main interests are nature and history.

My thesis was on the negotiations between the British and Chinese governments over the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997. It was used as a source in Dr John Wong's Deadly Dreams: Opium, Imperialism and the Arrow War (1856-1860) in China, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998, the standard work on that conflict.

I wrote a column on the natural history of the Wolli Creek Valley for the Earlwood News (sadly, now defunct) between 1992 and 1998.

My short biography of the leading Australian ornithologist, Alfred North (1855-1917), was published in 1998.

I write regular reviews on books about history for my blog,' Justin Cahill Reviews' and Booktopia. I'm also a regular contributor to the Sydney Morning Herald's 'Heckler' column.

My current projects include completing the first history of European settlement in Australia and New Zealand told from the perspective of ordinary people and a study of the extinction of Sydney's native birds.

After much thought, I decided to make my work available on Smashwords. Australia and New Zealand both have reasonably healthy print publishing industries. But, like it or not, the future lies with digital publishing.

So I'm grateful to Mark Coker for having the vision to establish Smashwords and for the opportunity to distribute my work on it.