Love and other bruises

Happy Valentines day - without the hype and pink hearts. I only realised what day it was when I saw a van selling roses parked on the M4. Anyone stopping on the freeway with B-Double's speeding past at 110k must be desperate.

This is Romeo and Juliet from the Shakespeare Place sculpture opposite the Mitchell Library. It's an island also surrounded by roads or "an isolated wasteland between on and off ramps of the Cahill Expressway." Nicely put. It is an interesting monument to explore if you are willing to negotiate the traffic.

Yesterday was an historic occasion that has been recorded and written about in many media - I watched Kevin Rudd's historic speech and applauded his Government's prompt resolution of an outstanding wrong.


Yesterday was also the 30th anniversary of the Hilton Bombing.

February 13th, 1978; I was on a bus travelling to work in a Sandwich bar in the CBD. I didn't understand the enormity of the event at the time - it just meant that I got to work late because my bus was held up. I had been in the city for 2 weeks and was heading back to Dunedin the following week to finish my final year at Otago Varsity. Coming to Sydney was a good way to make a bit of money to fund that year and to experience life in the big city.

Several years later I worked as a Guide for the Opera House (among many jobs I've held in this place) with Rosamund Dallow-Smith. I didn't know then that she had been on the street at the time and had narrowly missed being injured herself. I also didn't know that "it was the Hilton Hotel bombing that finally led to the formation of the Australian Federal Police on October 19, 1979."

The cause of the bombing was never satisfactorily resolved and resulted in the arrest and subsequent acquittal of several members of the Ananda Marga sect - an easy target.

"There was a lot of rumour and innuendo going around at the time we were on the scene. The strongest being that ASIO had stuffed up. It was common comment around at the time that ASIO had in fact planted the device and planned to find it for whatever purpose, but the garbage men were early that morning. " Keith Burley

Today I was very pleased to read; "a new plaque will be unveiled in Sydney's George Street today at the site of a bomb blast outside the Hilton Hotel 30 years ago that marked Australia's entry into the age of terrorism" or the age of Conspiracy.