December 14, 2024 • 56 mins
When Louisa Hope walked into Sydney’s Lindt Cafe 5 years ago she didn't expect her life would change forever.
Louisa is one of the Sydney Siege survivors. She and her mother were held at gunpoint and trapped for 17 hours before the gunman executed cafe manager Tori Johnston on his knees in front of her. Another hostage, Katrina Dawson was killed moments later in gunfire when police stormed the cafe.
Louisa joins Mia Freedman to talk through what happened that day and how she feels five years on.
Towards the end of the siege, Louisa was shot in the foot and went to The Prince of Wales Hospital where she spent 3 months as a patient.
CREDITS:
Host: Mia Freedman
With thanks to Louisa Hope
Producer: Bridget Northeast
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to a Muma Mea podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Mumma Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on high Quickie friends Clare
Murphy here back in your ears today to share a
special listening recommendation from our good mate Mere Friedman over
on the No Filter podcast. Not sure if you're aware,
but today marks the ten year anniversary of the Lint
Cafe siege. On this day in twenty fourteen, Man harn Monis,
(00:35):
a refugee from Iran who'd become an Australian citizen, took
eighteen people hostage at the Sydney cafe. Hostages were forced
to stand in front of the windows to shield the
terrorist inside, who'd put a black Islamic flag up to
make it clear that this was a politically motivated terror attack.
For more than sixteen hours, Australia watched on as the
(00:57):
siege was beamed into our lound rooms courtesy of Channel seven,
whose studios were situated directly across the mall from the cafe.
We held our breath as we watched some of the
hostages make a quick escape out of kitchen door safety.
It felt like a physical blow when we learned that
cafe manager Torrey Johnston had been shot and killed by
the terrorist. When police finally decided to move in after
(01:19):
a hail of bullets, Man Haran Monas would be dead.
Barrister Katrina Dawson would also be killed, caught in the crossfire.
If you ask most Australians, they'll be able to recall
where they were at the time of this siege. For
most of us, it was the first time that terrorism
was this close to home and not in some far
flung place. For Luisa Hope, one of the hostages, it
(01:42):
was the day her life would change forever. Mia Friedman
sat down with Luisa on the fifth anniversary of the siege,
reflecting on how she felt in that moment and in
the years it followed, including the overwhelming care and compassion
that she received after being shot and injured during the
events of December fifteenth, twenty fourteen.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Take a listen. You have that moment where you go, well,
this is it. I remember thinking, survived this whole day
and now we're going to die right.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Now From Mamma Mia, I'm Meya Friedman, and you're listening
to No Filter, a podcast about people with fascinating stories
to tell. When Louisa Hope walked into Sydney's Link Cafe
five years ago, she never expected her life would change
within minutes. It began as a very ordinary day, but
(02:29):
over the next seventeen hours, Louisa and her mother were
held at gunpoint and trapped along with sixteen other hostages,
before the siege ended in gunfire and tragedy. If you're
anything like me, I bet you remember exactly what you
were doing that day when you heard that a terrorist
was holding people hostage in a cafe in the middle
(02:49):
of the Sydney CBD, mere meters from a TV station.
But what went on inside the Link Cafe that long
day and dark night, and what happened afterwards to the survivors?
How did they recover? Did they recover? Louisa Hope is
one of those rare people I've met only a few
(03:10):
times in my life. It's like it's like she's lit
from within. I'm not sure what it is, but this
is honestly one of the most extraordinary conversations I've ever had,
and Louisa is quite simply one of the most riveting
people I've interviewed. In the four years since this podcast, began.
Here is the very aptly named Louisa Hope. I know
(03:34):
that Lee Sales interviewed you for her book An Ordinary Day.
It was an ordinary day, yes, so everybody that was there.
There was nothing special about it at all in the beginning.
How did the day start for you and your mum?
Speaker 3 (03:47):
So, Mum and I were we had come to town
the night before actually because we had an appointment at
the lawyer who happened to be in the same building
as the lint upstairs. And we are Mom's out near
the Blue Mountains living at the time, so we decided
that we'd come in on the Sunday night. We stayed
down at the Hilton and we just decided, rather than
deal with the traffic on the Monday morning, that we
(04:09):
would do that. And we had a lovely time together anyway.
And so in the morning we had that moment where
we went, will we go to the Link for breakfast
or will we just stay here at the Hilton? What
will we do? You know, tossing and turning the idea,
and decided we only wanted something small, so we went,
of course to the Link. We just you know, that's
sliding all moment. But yeah, so just random, random but
(04:33):
you know, really, Mum and I probably were the people
who should have least been there because you know.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
It wasn't your town, it was in your area.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
No, that's right. We were in the Yeah, very much
in that wrong kind of place and the wrong story
for us actually at that time. But there you go,
that's what happens.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
I'm so sorry about your mum. You lost your mum last.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Year and yeah, that's right. She died in September, and
it for us as a family, we all feel that
Mum was never the same after the cafe, and we're
very aware of that. But you know, we're comforted by
the fact that she had a really glorious death and
(05:16):
that was it was lovely really to all be together
for that. But yes, we imagined that we were going
to have it for quite a lot longer because she's
very vital and you know, go go kind of woman.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Having come so close to death on that day, How
was it different when you know, because the sliding doors moments, again,
you could have both lost your lives so easily in
the cafe that day. How did it go in the end, Well.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
You know, the the concluding moments, I don't know you know,
some people would have watched it right to the end
on television, but for us inside, the intensity and the
you know, the adrenaline that just rushes through your body,
it's so overwhelming. It's like you drip adrenaline in that moment,
and I think that, well, actually, Mum and I both
(06:09):
came out of the cafe we were related to discover
assuming that the other was dead, because we couldn't imagine
how anyone could have survived. And you know, in the
fact of the matter is is that all of us
were injured in the cafe at the end, anyone who
was in the actual cafe was injured, and sadly, of course,
(06:30):
Katrina's injuries led to her death. So you know, but
the moment of thinking that you're absolutely going to die
right there and then it's very real. You know, you
just sort of kind of have that moment where you go, well,
this is it, this is really going to be it.
I remember thinking survived this whole day and now we're
going to die right now, and so that's kind of
(06:52):
like it just stops you in your in your heart
and in your in your tracks.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Really, does your life flash before your eyes like they
say did you think of a person.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Did you think of her?
Speaker 1 (07:02):
What did you think?
Speaker 3 (07:03):
No? I just thought, well, actually what I thought was, oh, well, god,
here I'm coming, ready or not? You know, this is
me and there's no time now to make any addressments
or amends or try and do things different.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
For a bucket list.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
That's right. It definitely was too late for that bucket list.
And it was kind of like, yes, well here we are,
it's going to end like this, just the shock of
that idea.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
But where were you in that moment?
Speaker 3 (07:28):
I was on the floor. I was on the floor actually,
and having been standing right next to the gunman, I
kind of suddenly found myself on the floor. So and
I had my hands covering my eyes because the gunfire
was so intense and it was just full on, and
I actually had that thought, oh, well, I'm going to
(07:49):
die right here, right now, and those will watch, you know.
So I took my hands away and opened my eyes,
but could hardly see a thing because the gun smoke
in the room, and of course it was dark, but
it's so intense it was very hard to see. But
you know, I figured I mos will watch. It was
going to die.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
What happened when the gunshots stopped.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
You know, that was really interesting because that's just how
it was. It was this intense which felt like you
know ages, you know, just like a car accident, fast
and slow at the same time. But when it stopped,
it just stopped suddenly, just oh, okay, it's over. And
I had that oh I'm still alive, and I'm kind
(08:29):
of feeling my head thinking, am I okay? And because
I had seen my foot in the hole on my
foot already and I realized that, and I thought, okay,
it's just my foot, I'm okay. Everywhere else okay, And
then you kind of start I'm starting to slowly get
myself up. In the next minute, one of the tag
team guys is over the top of me shouting, shouting,
get up, get up, run run, and I'm like, oh,
(08:49):
I can't run my foot and he hauls me up
and at the same time he says to me, can
you hop? And I went, okay, I guess only I can.
So you know, it was one of those crazy kind
of moments. But you know, the tack guy says hop
and you you hop? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
So you know, did you know where your mum was
at that stage?
Speaker 3 (09:09):
No?
Speaker 1 (09:09):
How would you two become separated.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Well, we had been positioned on either side of him,
so Mum was on the right side of him, closest
to the kitchen at the lint, and I was on
the left, closest to martin place side of him, and
so we had gotten separated in the you know, the
furor of what was happening at the end, So that
separation was just like added to the So once you
(09:34):
kind of do the check, yes, I'm all in one piece,
and then you know, they come behind me, actually two
of the tack guys because I was obviously slow, and
scooped me up and took me out and just gently
placed me on the on the you know road there
in Philip Street, and you know, I kind of had
that moment of oh, I'm alive and the overwhelming gratitude like,
(09:58):
thank God, I am still alive, and at the same time,
but Mum must be dead. There's no way she could
have survived, because you know, I actually I didn't know
at that stage that Katrina was still in the cafe.
I thought you'd escaped with all the others, and in
a flash of a moment, I saw that Marcia was
(10:18):
still there. But I just had assumed that it was
just my mother and I and Tory that was still
left there. That was all that he realized. Was there
the gunman, and so.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Was everyone else hiding everyone else.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Had escaped, So they'd all escaped and the escape. I'm
so grateful that they had escaped, because you know, if
there had been more of us in the cafe, there
perhaps would have been more, definitely more injury, and perhaps
more may have died.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
I'm told that the people who did escape, many of
them lived with tremendous guilt.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Oh if I could only just say to all of them,
you know, please don't be guilty. I'm so grateful that
you got out when you did. And I think, in hindsight,
that was the smartest thing to do. I mean, certainly
Mum and I, you know, we talked about it afterwards,
but we were all just waiting because we assumed the
police were coming. So we're just waiting the police will come.
(11:15):
And so yes, those who took the initiative to run
to escape the way they did, that was the wisest
thing to do.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
How did the gunman react every time he found out
people escaped or did he not realize.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Well, he was very aware that the first three escaped. Originally,
like all of us in that moment, he thought that
the police were coming in. And it was only the
quick thinking of young Jared Malton Hoffman who said that no, no,
they've escaped that we all suddenly went from like off
the Richter, you know, tension and you know, everything was
(11:52):
going nuts at the moment. In the moment, then he
just suddenly calmed down, realizing that that escaped and that
the police weren't coming. But what he didn't know was
that the other two young girls had quietly escaped, just
ever so quiet. It was amazing really, So he didn't
know that there were actually five that had escaped. He
(12:15):
only thought that three, three men had escaped. However, and
this is an important thing to be thinking about. On
the day, the media were reporting every hour on the
hour that five people had escaped. So we had to
calm him with that by saying things like, oh, you
know what the media is like, they just lie, they're exaggerating.
(12:38):
Only three people have escaped. Now, this was important for
us in the room because when those three first three
had escaped, he told us all that if anyone else escaped,
he'd kill someone, so we're all on you know, high
alert in a day that was already like ultra tense.
That just sort of added to the tension. So every
time the news reports were coming through, we had to
(13:00):
calm him down by just saying, you know, the media lie,
but they were reporting a fact as it was true. However,
it was impacting on us in the room, and if
he had kind of like figured it out, then we
could have really been in a dire situation.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
The media had no idea that you had access or
did they, And how did you have access to media.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
On everyone's phones? You know, we all have media in
our pockets now.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
So he didn't take everyone's phone. He did.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
What he did was he asked us right up front,
he said, put your ID and your wallets and your
phones on the table in front of us, you know,
where we were all sitting. So we all did that.
So of course, but everyone had phones. And so as
the day went on and he progressively was trying to
get us to get him media attention, using our phones
become a thing. Yeah. So yeah, we all had you know,
(13:53):
information all day, and everything that was being reported was
being reported into us. So it's an interesting kind of
thing for us to think about, especially for the media,
how do we address this from a global situation. Whatever
is being said in the media will of course, we've
just got to assume that it does that'll be impacting
on a live situation. For example, very late in the
(14:13):
night early morning in London, BBC were reporting on what
was happening in Sydney. So they were saying, we're listening
to the report, and it was one of those moments
when the BBC London saying, and we're watching live in
Sydney the hostage situation there, and we can see that
the police are surrounding the cafe. And I remember absolutely
holding my breath because he thought that there were no police.
(14:38):
He really thought that there were no police surrounding the cafe,
that they're all off at a distance, because that's what
he's demanded being So of course we're hearing that, and
I could actually hear my heart thumping in my chest
because I knew that if he realized that the police
were surrounding the cave from a report from London, the
(15:00):
other side of the world, that once again we're all
at risk. Fortunately, and I do not know how he
missed it. It may have been he didn't catch the
lady's axe, or he didn't he was fatiguing, or he
was distracted somehow, and he did not hear that, and
he did not react. But it certainly put me on edge.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
And mum, everybody, really, when did you first become aware
on that morning that it wasn't just a regular cup
of hot chocolate.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
You know, likes just such a strange circumstance. I was
actually I decided that, you know, it's time to go,
and I went to pay for a breakfast and the
young girl who was serving me, I think it was April,
and she said she was just there taking my money,
and her mouth is a ghast. I'm thinking, this young
girl is not paying attention, you know, but of course
(15:48):
I'm paying her. And she could see, you know, behind me,
and she could see him standing up, starting to make
his proclamation and putting his bandana on. And so by
the time I turned around to go back to sit down, he's,
like I said, putting his bandana on, and he's adjusting himself.
He's making his speech. He's saying, I want you to
know Australia is under attack and I want to speak
(16:09):
to the Prime Minister. On National radio and I've got
a bomb in my backpack, and I'm thinking in my head,
I actually thought, oh, this is ridiculous. It's a joke.
You know, we're across the road from Channel seven. This
must be some sort of like perverted kind of candid camera.
But when he pulled out the gun, it was then
me and that I just like went, it's real. You know,
(16:31):
this is real. And of course you think in that moment, well,
this is a terrorist action, and what to terrorists do?
They kill you? Right, You're dead. So it's just that
adjustment of your reality. You know, one minute I'm thinking
about the rest of our morning, and the next minute,
right here, right now, we're dead. But of course that
(16:51):
wasn't what he did.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Did people react in different ways.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
I think we're all just a little bit stunned, And
everyone was very quiet and listening, trying to pay attention.
The gunman himself was busy trying to articulate very clearly.
He was obviously aware of his accent and was trying
to articulate very clearly what his demands were and what
he was expecting of us. So we all just were
like in a state of shock, really, So there was
(17:18):
no kind of screaming or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
It was just, yeah, did he sort of try to
organize you very quickly or did you organize yourselves?
Speaker 3 (17:28):
No, he was well, he was instantly in control. Obviously
the gun, threat of bombs, all that kind of thing.
You know, the average Australian doesn't really have to do
with those things. So we were, you know, all trying
to work out how to do that. And of course
you must remember, apart from the staff, we were all
random strangers, so it was just that really bizarre sort
(17:51):
of circumstance. So we're all sort of listening, trying to
hear what he's saying, doing what he's telling us. You know,
I'm thinking, oh, he's going to line us up and
shoot us in my head. But of course, like obviously
he didn't do that, so he was quickly he started
to say things like keep your eyes closed, so it
was very controlling of everything. Close your eyes, open your eyes,
(18:12):
you stand here, you stand there. He quickly arranged people
around the room, had people stand up on the bench
seat and there in the cafe so that they could
be seen out the big windows, and people you know,
across the front. So it was pretty full on and
intense and the immediate sort of starting and then we waited.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Did you get the chance to talk amongst Jesselle. No,
he was very controlling of all of that for the
whole day.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Yes, so that kind of laxed a little when we
all got with the program, and that we all realized
that what he wanted was media attention, so therefore we
needed to be the ones to get that attention for him.
So we're all just then scrambling, you know. Initially at
(18:58):
one stage he had me ring triple O and he
was happy with his with the phone call and he said, oh,
you can be my secretary, I mean, like seriously. And
then later on from that he told me to find
ABC Radio on the phone. Well, so technically challenged. Not
(19:18):
the best with the phone at the you know, most times,
but in particular because I had forgotten my own phone
that day and so it was my mother's phone that
was on the table, and so I'm trying to scramble
and find ABC Radio on the phone, and I found
ABC Radio book Club, but he wasn't interested in the
book club. So you know, in that moment, young Jared
(19:39):
quickly said, I'll do it, hand me the phone. So
when I handed over the phone to Jared, it was
like everything shifted and Jared very much become the lead
in the room. And so he quickly found radio on
the phone and did all that kind of thing, and
so the attention shifted very much to Jared, and Jared
(19:59):
become in a way like the main man for the gunman.
So it was really interesting, that dynamic, and I was
so grateful because you know, like technology is not really
my friend and the pressure.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
So Jared worked there.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Yes, Jared young. Jared was one of the young workers.
He was nineteen at the time. Many of them were
only young, as was Fiona marsha Do only nineteen, so
you know, yeah, they're just well I wouldn't like me
to say it, but they're just babies, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Yeah, yeah, you need a millennial to.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Get that job. Yeah, that's right. So they were there.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Could you communicate to each other with your eyes?
Speaker 3 (20:36):
Well, obviously we were, but he was onto that. He
was quickly onto that, and he was saying, who's looking
at who? And certainly because once he realized that, you know,
Robin was my mother was totally separating us and no
talking with your eyes and if you thought someone was
looking too long at someone else. He was what are
you doing? You know, So he was certainly definitely in
(20:57):
the early stages, he was definitely onto all of that
kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
The people then that escaped in little groups, how did
they coordinate that?
Speaker 3 (21:06):
You know? I think that they were just quick And
the three men who escaped, initially they were sitting at
the front, they were lined up the front together on
individual seats, and so they obviously were able to have
little communications because their backs were to the inside of
(21:27):
the cafe and they were facing out near the front door.
So they're obviously able to have little communications together. And
they quickly organized how they're going to do it, and
they just did it. I mean, like how brave were they?
Speaker 1 (21:38):
And so yeah, if you couldn't, I mean, you had
a lot of time to feel in your mind, did
you kind of try to work out who was who
and what their story was about.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
We were all in our little groups, and so he
separated us out from our groups really and put everybody everywhere.
So that kind of like stifled communication between us. But
as the day went on, and also because we were
having toilet breaks.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
How did that work? I was going to ask about
the toilet.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Well, so thank goodness, you know, really, I mean one
could almost say inverted commas. That was a kindness that
worked because he just decided that we needed to and
I think really because it was obvious that because he
had kicked away my walking stick from me to start with,
(22:31):
and when it was time to go to the bathroom,
I said, can I have my walking stick?
Speaker 4 (22:34):
No?
Speaker 3 (22:35):
No, And then he said, Fiona, you take Louisa, because
he worked out our names Louisa to the bathroom. So
Fiona took me to the bathroom, and then we started
this whole routine of lint workers taking us to the bathroom,
predominantly Fiona or Jared, and so we were able to
communicate in that way as well. So they were kind
(22:55):
of like a conduit between us when we're going to it.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Would you whisper to them?
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Yeah, Well the bathroom was you know, a little bit
of a distance, so there was a degree of privacy
there if you like. Gosh, so weird, but yeah, that's
how we were kind of like talking to each other.
But we didn't have any kind of grand plan for
escape or anything like that. We were just kind of like,
I think, going to the bathroom and young Fiona, Ma,
(23:22):
my goodness, he told us all to give over our phones.
Well she kept hers in her pocket, brave as that
little girl. And you know, so when we got down
to the bathroom, she says, I've got my phone. Do
you want to ring anyone?
Speaker 1 (23:34):
You know?
Speaker 3 (23:34):
But I mean, who remembers anybody's phone number these days?
So I'm like, I'd love to, but I haven't got
clue anybody's number. So yeah, there you go, and that's
how the day went.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
I was also told that people became agitated at different times,
and around the time of school pickup, Katrina became quite agitated,
is that true?
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Aware? Like she was aware, and you know, different ones
with children were aware of their children, would mention their children,
you know, just different little things. I want to, you know,
and try and negotiate a bit with you know, the gunment.
There was just constant talk about who was going to
get out and who was going to stay, you know,
and all that kind of thing. So yes, of course
there was that whole awareness of people and their children,
(24:26):
and the stress of all of that, you know, just
made the whole thing worse.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
I think did anything sway him? I mean, you were
you have MS, and you had a cane, and then
you know, people had children, Julie was pregnant. There were
all sorts of different people with different reasons to be
allowed to go. Was everyone sort of looking for what
(24:52):
his vulnerabilities might be or what his kindnesses might be?
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Yeah, definitely. You know, there was a lot of discussion.
At one stage, he said that he would release a
hostage and which hostage would he release. So of course,
you know, naturally you would think in a circumstance like that,
everyone might be saying me me, pick me, putting up
the hands, saying I'll go, you know, let me release me.
But it wasn't like that. Actually, everyone was saying things like, well,
(25:19):
you should release Robin and Louisa because Robin's old, right,
and we're saying no, no, you should release Julie because Julie's pregnant,
or Harriet who was pregnant at the time, And then
you know, he was saying, but who's going to be
my best spokesperson when they get out, and so you know,
then we're saying, well, like Jared, you know, he'd be
really good at that. So there was all those kind
(25:41):
of conversations each of us trying to say, you know,
release this one or that one, and particularly we're I
think we're all trying really to get the pregnant girls
out if we possibly could. But at the same time
it was obviously his choice. He was just messing with us, maybe,
you know. But there was a lot of coming and
going and discussion, and of course no one was released
by him in the end, because he wanted the media attention.
(26:04):
We wanted to be able to get a direct connection
to a media outlet so that he could say I'm
being so good and so kind by releasing somebody, and
he wanted to get the credit for that rather than oh,
he said, the media could just say they've escaped if
I don't get direct live coverage. So you know, that
(26:25):
whole idea of somebody being released. Eventually, when we realized
we had exhausted all opportunity for the media, it was
like he said, why should I bother because I won't
get the credit for it. The insanity of it.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Tell me about Toy.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Tory. Tory was the manager of the cafe, and unlike
everybody else, he referred to to Toy as the manager,
which of course he was the manager. And you know
this man who's still with me every day. You know.
(27:06):
He was very much highly regarded by his staff. They
really loved him, you know. But he on the day
he went on, he was aware that my mother was
becoming more and more agitated, which she was. She was
back chatting the gunman and I was she oh, and
(27:28):
I was becoming more and more anxious. What was she doing, Robert, Well,
she was, oh, dear mate, So she was well. At
one stage she stood up and hands on hips and said,
I want to go to the bathroom and my daughter
needs her medication. Oh, mom, just keep everything on the
down low. You know. I'm trying to mom, you know.
(27:48):
And you know when you hear your mother's angry voice.
I could hear it coming. I'm thinking, oh, man, are
you in trouble? Anyway, she just had that moment, and
so he sends her off to the bathroom with Fionna,
and then he wants to know all about my mss.
What's a mess? So yeah, so he calls me over
sitting next to him, and he gives me twenty questions
about what's the way you got a mess, how do
(28:09):
you get it?
Speaker 4 (28:10):
What to do?
Speaker 3 (28:11):
And I'm trying to explain very soundly and reasonably the
intricacies of MS.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
And I'm thinking, gosh, you know, that's quite a human moment.
It's acfusing to you, Like I imagine that's confusing because he
was showing interest and yeah, and.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
This is the thing about this man, right, And this
is the thing that I keep coming back to and
I keep talking about, and that is the fact that
he was a bad man doing a bad thing. What
he was doing was just so wrong and violent, violent
act to hold somebody against the will with a gun.
But at the same time, there were flashes of his
(28:48):
kindness and his humanity, So we kind of go, what
is that? Who is that? This duplicitous, double minded man.
Here he is letting us have toilet brakes and later
on cups of tea and food and uh, you.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Know water, inquiring about your health.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
I know exactly exactly, and he was sincerely interested. I'm
sure of there was no need for him to kind
of like do a little deviation into his plan to
have a chat about my MS. And then you know,
he's very interested in it. And then he says to me,
at any time, Louisa, you want to have your medication,
you just do it. You don't have to ask me.
I thank you, thank you brother, you know. But so
(29:27):
here we go. Here's this man explain, you know, expressing
two different parts of his personality, and you think, what
is that? Double minded, duplicit us And you sort of
think to yourself, well, that's that man who assaults his wife,
bashes it to a pulp, and then at the same
time tells her he loves her. So, you know, we
think that we cannot imagine what a terrorist is like,
(29:50):
but we experience in our ordinary, everyday life that kind
of man or that kind of person. So it's say,
and I say this because whilst ever we throw our
hands in the air and say he's not us, we're
not that he's a madman. Yeah, that's right, he's a madman.
He's a lunatic, he's crazy. Then what we're doing doing
is actually surrendering our opportunity to understand what this is
(30:14):
all about. How does the violent mind really work? And
so for me personally, I kind of have been on
a little bit of a crusade in saying we have
to grab this circumstance and actually get beyond our fear
and start to do some real research to come to
real understanding, because it's only in that that we're going
to undo what this thing is. And so you know,
(30:37):
there we were in that circumstance with him all those hours,
and this was the reality of him, no different to
us in many ways.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Do you now see him as crazy? Mentally ill? Evil?
How do you see him?
Speaker 3 (30:59):
All of those words are too easy. Actually, we need
a little bit more of nuanced kind of understanding of him.
And I see him as a very flawed human being
whose primary motivator was his own self delusion and his
(31:20):
narcissistic frame of obviously his existence, because you know, there's
lots of other things in this man's history. I mean,
at the inquest, we found out that he had forty
eight separate individual sexual assault charges against him, and of
course there was his involvement in the death of his
ex wife, which was horrendous, And so you know, the
(31:44):
man was one could very easily call him evil, but
that was not the only cloak that he wore. So
we have to get in and nut it out to
see what he really is. You know, yes, even madmen
can be sane, and to sort of box and die
(32:05):
somebody into a little hole like that too too simple.
And of no value to us now.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
So there he was asked inquiring about your mss. Your
mama demanded to be taken to the bathroom. And where
was Tory through all of this.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
Well, Tory he had placed mostly the women around him
close and all the men at a bit of a distance.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
So as so to use the women as human shields
because he felt that there was less likely to be
someone firing through the window.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Yeah, well you know that. And also women he was assuming, obviously,
and obviously the way he's dealt with women, he was
probably feeling more confident that he could keep control of us.
So anyway, Mum and had you know, a few bit
of backchat towards him. And then as a day went on,
a little bit later, Tory had gone for bathroom break
and he came back. And normally we came back and
(32:55):
sat back in normal seats where we were last seated,
but Tory actually come back and positioned himself sitting right
next to Mum. And what happened then was that they
were sitting on the sit it on the bench seat
with a table in front of them, and I was
on an individual seat separated slightly from them. But where
(33:17):
he positioned himself next to Mom. I could hear them
just quietly whispering, having little jokes. I could hear little giggles,
and when I had got another bathroom break myself come back,
I could see them holding hands under the table. So
Tory had used that as an opportunity to sit next
(33:39):
and position himself next to my mother to calm her.
And I could see that that worked because Mum was
far better because it was one stage when the gunman
actually said to me, Louisa, keep your mother quiet, and
in the moment, I thought, you're crazy. How am I
going to do that? Keep my mother quiet?
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Ask for a daughter?
Speaker 3 (33:59):
Yeah, exactly, And so you know, like here, I am
a growing up. But I had that moment where I
had to say to Mum, you know, you're an old lady,
just keep quiet. And I could see her looking at me,
and I'm thinking, you know, she's kind of like wait
till you get hime and you're in big trouble kind
of thing, and I'm just sort of thinking we've got it.
But I knew that we just had to keep her calm.
And Tory obviously read that too, because he come back
(34:21):
after that, and like I said, he positioned himself next
to her. And of course at the end, at the end,
when everyone else escaped and I had had my eyes closed,
I was in this intense place of prayer, actually, and
then I'd heard this big bang and I'd opened my
eyes and all of the others that escaped, all the
(34:45):
other hostages, and I went, all, right, this is it.
We're going. So I stood up and I started to
go towards the door, but Mum and Tory were not moving,
and I was trying to catch their eye, kept turning around,
you know, not wanting to speak because I didn't know
where the gunman was, didn't know what was happening with him.
So I'm kind of trying to indicate to them, come come,
(35:06):
you know, we're right at the end now, and I'm
trying to get there, but they weren't moving. I'm thinking,
why isn't Toy moving, Why isn't Mum moving. They're just
not shifting, And so in that moment, I just thought, well,
I can't leave my mother. So I lay down on
the floor and thought, oh, you know, gum, and I'll
kill me. But and then that situation went on. But
(35:26):
later after, after twelve months, later, after the first anniversary,
Mom and I were having a quiet moment at home
and I said to her, Mom, do you remember at
the end, and I'd got up and was going towards
the door. I said to her, why didn't you and
(35:48):
Tory run? Because I could never understand why Tori didn't run.
And my mom said to me, oh, well, I was
saying to Toy, you know, you go, you go, and
she's making this motion. She was like she was elbowing
him in the side, saying, you go to it, you go,
and he said to her, no, I'll stay, I'll stay
(36:08):
with you. So in that moment, twelve months after the event,
I suddenly realized that Tory Johnson had made a deliberate
choice to stay, to stay and look after my mother,
which you know is for our whole family. That is profound,
(36:29):
and I understand the grief that his family must feel
that his brave heart made that choice in that moment,
because if he had not, he would not have been
there to be the one who was killed. So, you know,
it's just, you know, it's hard, and I feel for
(36:54):
his family, But I think to myself, what an amazing
brave young man. And you know, his parents, his mother
and of course his partner Thomas. His bravery doesn't replace
him for them. But you know, our family, we are
(37:14):
forever grateful because in lots of ways, you know, that
gave us three and a half more years with our
mother and m It's you know, it's in my heart.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Why do you think that the gunman chose Tori Because
Tory was the last man in the cafe and he
was the final authority figure.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
So he called Tory to. You know, he positioned Mum
and I either side of him and told us to
keep our eyes closed and we wouldn't get hurt. How
many ridiculous really is if you do that? But then
he called Tory over.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Do you mean as if you'd keep your eyes? So
you didn't keep your eyes?
Speaker 3 (37:56):
No, it's dark in the cafe and we're either side
of him, Mumm and I. And then he called Tori
over and said you manager kneel on the floor and
put your hands on your hand. And it was just
that moment of oh my god.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
You know, I don't want to ask you to relive
that moment, but the ways are, how do you get
over any of this? Like I look at you sitting
in front of me, and I know people go to
war and that's essentially what you did. How do you
do it? How do you recover?
Speaker 3 (38:26):
Everyone's experience is different, and trauma and we talk about
post traumatic stress, and you know, trauma is a really
bizarre kind of thing. And for me personally, I think
that this is my experience. Mum's experience was very different.
But for me, I went into a place of post trauma.
(38:54):
Like I was so overwhelmed with the gratitude, so grateful
that I'd been spared in that moment, so grateful that
there was a future, and so grateful you know, Mum
was still alive and you know, and also that I
could have a refocus and I just had that determination
that we were going to get something good out of
that awful situation. So for me, I feel in hindsight
(39:18):
now that I went into a kind of post euphoria
and that pushed me forward. And that, of course, I
have to say, comes from you know, my practice, my
practice of prayer, my practice of faith, and all those
things that were already in my life and were part
(39:39):
of you know, my inner life, and so all of
those things built into that. But at the same time
and equally as potent I have to say, is the
overwhelming anxiety. Now, this is really interesting how we think
about anxiety. But for me, I understood how I felt
(40:02):
immediately in those final moments. And when I say, the
adrenaline was dripping out of me physically, could feel like
my entire body was engaged in the adrenaline and I
could feel it and I was just maxed out, There's
no other way to describe it, maxed out. And it
was almost like my brain was expanding. And so what
(40:24):
happens for me now five years later, still I can
find that I can I can be some sort of circumstance.
It could be traffic, or it could be any little moment,
no random reason. But anxiety comes instantly from like zero
to one hundred in an instant, and I can recognize
(40:46):
it's in my body and I go, yes, I know
my body has gone from zero to one hundred to
one thousand exactly right there. It's the same feeling that
I experienced in that moment at the end, and I
haven't worked out how to turn it off yet, but
I have worked out how to steal my heart and
(41:06):
just control myself as opposed to okay, I'm here and
then I'm there, And some days I can be good
at it, and some days I'm not so good at it,
And I'm very blessed because I'm surrounded by a family
who understand and friends who are under control. And sometimes
it's a moment where a friend will sit and just
have a little quiet sit and will have a prey.
(41:28):
And sometimes it's a moment where I go into a
meditative state or you know, just do the breathing that's
associated with calming myself. There's all little tricks that you
can use for that, but it's very real. The thing is,
anxiety knows no level in that. So I had an
experience that was pretty tense and out there, but you know,
(41:50):
anxiety is the same for the woman who's just been
assaulted in her own home, or for somebody who's facing
a traffic accident or somebody who's having a stroke. Anxiety
is no respector of persons, and we all experience it
in our own individual way, but the same. So you know,
if someone tells me they've got anxiety, I can really relate.
(42:11):
And it doesn't matter what caused, it doesn't matter, it's
all the same. So you know, we need to be
kind to each other sometimes, you know, because we don't
know what someone else is going through.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
There's something that happens. I always assume that anyone who
experiences a tragedy has post traumatic stress and post traumat syndrome.
But I learned through reading Lee Sales's book that and
actually through people that I know, not everyone has that.
Some people have post traumatic growth, which is a little
(42:41):
bit like the euphoria is probably a different stage, but
the post traumatic growth is when my friend who had
a stillborn baby, described it to me as that the
death of her daughter turned the light up in her life,
not down, and she didn't expect that. Would you say
that that's been what this experience has done to you?
(43:02):
Has it turned the light up in your life?
Speaker 3 (43:04):
God bless your friend?
Speaker 4 (43:05):
You know.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
That is such a beautiful way to express that, And
that's really exact exactly how it really feels. I have
found that. I found that for me, I felt like
I expanded as a human, as a person, so that
my capacity was more. So, you know, I equally feel
that expansion of self and my capacity to cope with
(43:30):
more in many ways coupled with the balancing effect of
oh yeah, all that random anxiety and distress and pressure.
So it's very finely tuned and needs to be very
finely balanced. But if I look forward and focus myself
that way, it very much is about that. So now
(43:53):
I feel like, Okay, what else is out there that
we need to fix? Change, grow, evolve? What are the
other things that need to be looked at postiege that
business that we need to do as a society, within
our institutions, and of course for me as well being
involved with the nurses. So you know, it's just I
(44:15):
feel like there's no there's no place to say no anymore.
We just got to go forward.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
You started a foundation, oh to help nurses. Tell me
about your time in hospital after the scene?
Speaker 3 (44:26):
Wow?
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Well hospital, okay, you were there for a long time.
It just was full on seems unfair after what you
went through.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
I know it was that kind of you just don't
imagine that, you know, Like seriously, I thought, okay, well
once because I really I thought I was going to
lose my foot. I really had that moment. We had
a hole in it it certainly, did you know?
Speaker 1 (44:46):
And what do it look like when I looked at it?
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Well, you know, it was pretty when it was first done.
It was just like horrendous. Like I used to get
in a little state of shock whenever they redressed the wound,
because it was just the shock of seeing it, you know.
But of course now it looks now, it looks like
I describe it as someone's got the barmacs and gone
on my foot. It's just it's a classic honey home
wound and it's some messy, just to say the least.
(45:11):
But you know, three months in hospital was not what
I expected. I thought i'd be there two weeks, you know,
by the time Chris, I'll be out, and I thought
it'd be out for New Year Christmas. That didn't happen,
and it just kind of extended. It extends.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
You needed operations, reconstruction.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
That's why I had three surgeries and then and then
of course rehabilitation, and so I went from Prince of
Wales to a private hospital in the Eastern suburbs and
so that was a long time in hospital. But that
time gave me well, really, you don't think about it
in the moment, but in hindsight I realized was like
a blessing because it insulated me from the world immediately
(45:47):
after the siege, and it gave me time for reflection
and to think forward, and also my experience with the
nurses then sent me on that journey. And so when
sixty minutes we're discussing, you know, if we're going to
talk to them, and like my mother and I knew
(46:10):
from the go get that we would have to share
with everyone, because we knew that if we'd been on
the outside, we would have wanted to know what happened
to the people on the inside. So we understood that.
And also because I personally felt that we were all
part of what happened that day, like this was not
something that happened to just me and my mother and
my fellow hostages. It happened to the whole country. So
(46:32):
we had to be accountable for that. So anyway, when
sixty Minutes generously gave me that twenty five thousand dollars
and Mike bed matched that money, had a little fifty
grand in my hand, and I kind of thought, right,
I know what I wanted to do with it, because
I was going to do a little I thought originally
that I just do a little fundraiser for the nurses
(46:52):
within my own community, and we get a few grand
and I give it to the nurses on my ward,
But fifty grand was a whole lot more money, and
so I went to the foundation at Prince of Wales
and the Lulu Salapa, who was the CEO there, brilliant, amazing.
That foundation runs like a machine, I've got to tell you.
So of course Lulu had been a nurse in a
(47:14):
previous life, and so she knew exactly what I was
saying when I said I don't want this to go
for a carpet or for a new paint in the
hospital or anything, or in the boardroom or anything. I
wanted to be for nurse initiated projects. And she absolutely
got that. She knew exactly how to create that make
it happen, and so that's what happened. And of course
once I started to see what the nurses were doing
(47:34):
with the money, I couldn't stop, you know, I just
had to keep trying to raise money and raise awareness
to the nurses and what they do for us. So,
you know, I could rave on about this for hours
because it's my happy place.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
But yeah, that's part of your post traumatic growth also, right,
finding a way to channel this thing that happened to
you that was so shocking into something positive.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
Well, you know, it really was an answer to my
prayer in many ways, because I so wanted something good
to come out of this, and now I realized that
the good is not going to come through me. It's
going to come through the nurses and the work that
they are doing. Because the nurses, all of their projects
are about, you know, how to help us as patients,
and that of course is the universal focus of nurses,
(48:16):
and so yeah, I just have the privilege of being
involved in that. I'm just like, my goodness, how blessed
am I?
Speaker 1 (48:23):
You know, it's funny what you just said about how
you recognize that it's something that happened to all of us,
not just the people in the cafe, which sounds almost
arrogant when you particularly when you think about Tory and
Katrina and the families that they left behind and all
of you that were in there. How did you sort
(48:45):
of become aware that we do all sort of need
to process and to tell you where we were that
day and what our connections. I mean, the first thing
I did when I met you this morning was tell
you how I had connections to Tory and how I
had connections to Katrina. It's a lot to take on
how that affected the kind of the national psyche? How
did you become aware of it?
Speaker 3 (49:06):
You know, when I think that, like I said, you know,
I was ware well, you know, like I know how
we would have been, my mother and I. We would
have been outside the cafe praying for people. We would
have stayed up all night, we would have waited with them.
A nurse once said to me, you know, about a
week and a half into my stay at the hospital,
she said, even though I was on morning shift, I
had to stay up to the very end and watch
(49:27):
on the television. She said, I couldn't leave you in
there alone. And I thought, oh, yes, I understand what
she's saying.
Speaker 1 (49:33):
Yeah, that none of us wanted to go to sleep
that night.
Speaker 3 (49:36):
Yeah see, you know we're all we're all leaving, that's right,
And so you I think that we if we recognize,
this is something that happened to all of us. And
when you think about what happened in Martin Place after,
you know, I was in hospital and it was on
a self imposed media blackout, but friends were bringing me
news and telling me stories and photographs, flowers, flowers and people.
(49:59):
They're telling me about random strangers sitting and talking and praying,
and you know, Muslim people being there and everyone sharing together,
and and of course the Ride with Me campaign that
happened afterwards. So all of that stuff you kind of
I think it very clearly made it obvious that we
were all in this together. So therefore we had to
(50:19):
find a way to recover together. So for me, that's
really important, and part of that is telling our stories
to each other. And so I have great respect you know,
people come and tell me. And you know Lisa ELS's book,
of course, you know she talks about things like that
where but we all had an ownership, did we not?
(50:40):
In Threadbow and what happened to poor with Arthur, So
we all have a part of it. And if we
think that it's just oh yeah, something that happened on
a news cycle, well actually it's not. Because we're all
impacted by these things. So how do we recover together?
Speaker 1 (50:55):
That's incredibly gracious of you to understand that and acknowledge it.
And I'm going to guess that people would have two
reactions in terms of the hostages. Some, I imagine, would
want to stay in touch and feel very bonded, and
others want to just walk away and never look back.
Is that how it's panned out with those of you
who were there and lived through that?
Speaker 3 (51:17):
Definitely, you know, all separate individuals with individual lives and stories,
and you know, sometimes contact is a reminder of that
day and that's just too hard. And you know, I
totally respect that, and you know, my heart's always you know,
are you okay? And how you doing and all that
kind of stuff. But I also am aware that I
(51:39):
myself don't want to be an inflictor of further pain.
So you know, it's really hard to kind of just
walk that fine line between respect and care. So yes,
you just have to well hands off and wait really, so, yeah,
do you stay in touch a few of them? I do, Yes, definitely,
(52:00):
and I value that so much, and I'm always keen
for any news of anyone else, but just so don't
want to invade them, you know, because we're five years
and so, you know, so aren't we inverted commas over
that already? But it's just it's not like that. It's
(52:21):
never over, actually, and so I don't never be over
for the families. But equally, you know, you stand up
and you dust yourself off and you get on.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
But It's always there, Louisa. I just want to thank you.
I mean, I understand that so many of the survivors
from that day and the families have wanted to retreat
and you haven't. You've kept being out there and speaking
to be of service and to help us collectively process this,
(52:54):
as well as trying to use it for good and
raise money for your foundation and to help nurses. You
are such a force of good in the world. Like
for everything that he was a force of dark, you
are that opposite and that that equal and you know,
exceptional force of good. And I just wanted to say
(53:15):
thank you, Thank you, ma'a. I hope that the incredible
I don't know luminescence of Louisa came through in that
interview in the same way that it did in the room.
We were all in tears, my producer, our person behind
the camera, and the guy that came along with Louisa
(53:38):
as her sort of support person because she walks with
a cane and sher foot's bandaged, but she had this
beautiful bright orange patent leather strappy sandals around her foot,
and she was wearing this gorgeous floral dress and she
was telling me this amazing story of how the day
before she'd been in the city and she'd fallen over,
and she said, that's something that happens not infrequently because
(54:00):
of her foot and she sometimes loses her footing. And
she was in the middle of the street and a
guy came to help her, and he said, oh, he
noticed that she had a bandage on her foot, and
he said, oh, were you okay?
Speaker 3 (54:10):
What happened?
Speaker 1 (54:11):
And she said, oh, I was in the siege and
I got some shrapnel in my foot. And he said, oh,
my god, my son is best friends with Katrina Dawson's son,
and I just dropped both the boys at camp. And
of all the people who could have come to help
her in the middle of a city on an ordinary day,
I don't know. Makes you wonder as you heard towards
(54:34):
the end of the siege, Louisa was injured. She got
shrapnel in her foot from all the gunfire, and afterwards
she was taken to the Prince of Wales Hospital here
in Sydney, where she spent three months as a patient,
and she was so moved by the care and the
compassion that she received there she decided to take this
tragedy and turn it into something positive and she created
(54:57):
the Louisa Hope Fund for Nurses as part of the
Prince of Wales Hospital Foundation. To donate to the Prince
of Wales Hospital Foundation Louisa Hope Fund for Nurses, please
visit pow HF dot org dot au and we'll put
a link in our show notes. This episode was produced
by bridget Northeast and to the families of Katrina Dawson
(55:19):
and Tory Johnson, re extend all our love and our
deepest sympathies. Katrina and Tory are not forgotten.
Speaker 4 (55:30):
Hey, it's me just jumping back into your ears with
no voice now. Since we recorded that interview with Louisa
last week, we've also done another interview about the Sydney
Link Cafe siege more generally with a journalist called Debra
Snow who's written a book on it. We did it
on our podcast through Crime Conversations. Jesse Stevens did that
(55:51):
interview and it feels in a lot of the blanks
that you might have and a lot of the questions
that you might have after listening to Louisa's incredible story,
because I really had to make a decision when I
was talking to her what I would talk to her about,
like I could have talked to her for one hundred years, really,
she was so interesting. But there were things about the
gun about his history, about the police response, about some
(56:13):
of the TikTok, and what happened step by step during
the day that we just didn't cover. So this other
interview on our podcast, True Crime Conversations, you might want
to listen to it. You'll find it wherever you find
your podcasts. And we've actually done it in two parts.
The first part is a little bit about the gunman,
or a lot about the gunment actually and what happened
before the siege, and then there's a lot about the
(56:35):
siege itself in our second part, So have a listen
to that.
Speaker 2 (56:39):
I hope you enjoyed this episode of No Filter with Louisa.
Hope you can find a link to follow No Filter
in the show notes, as well as the quickie too.
And I'll be back here tomorrow morning getting you up
to speed on the biggest news stories of the day
from six am.
Speaker 3 (56:51):
See you then,
You're listening to a Muma Mea podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Mumma Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on high Quickie friends Clare
Murphy here back in your ears today to share a
special listening recommendation from our good mate Mere Friedman over
on the No Filter podcast. Not sure if you're aware,
but today marks the ten year anniversary of the Lint
Cafe siege. On this day in twenty fourteen, Man harn Monis,
(00:35):
a refugee from Iran who'd become an Australian citizen, took
eighteen people hostage at the Sydney cafe. Hostages were forced
to stand in front of the windows to shield the
terrorist inside, who'd put a black Islamic flag up to
make it clear that this was a politically motivated terror attack.
For more than sixteen hours, Australia watched on as the
(00:57):
siege was beamed into our lound rooms courtesy of Channel seven,
whose studios were situated directly across the mall from the cafe.
We held our breath as we watched some of the
hostages make a quick escape out of kitchen door safety.
It felt like a physical blow when we learned that
cafe manager Torrey Johnston had been shot and killed by
the terrorist. When police finally decided to move in after
(01:19):
a hail of bullets, Man Haran Monas would be dead.
Barrister Katrina Dawson would also be killed, caught in the crossfire.
If you ask most Australians, they'll be able to recall
where they were at the time of this siege. For
most of us, it was the first time that terrorism
was this close to home and not in some far
flung place. For Luisa Hope, one of the hostages, it
(01:42):
was the day her life would change forever. Mia Friedman
sat down with Luisa on the fifth anniversary of the siege,
reflecting on how she felt in that moment and in
the years it followed, including the overwhelming care and compassion
that she received after being shot and injured during the
events of December fifteenth, twenty fourteen.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Take a listen. You have that moment where you go, well,
this is it. I remember thinking, survived this whole day
and now we're going to die right.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Now From Mamma Mia, I'm Meya Friedman, and you're listening
to No Filter, a podcast about people with fascinating stories
to tell. When Louisa Hope walked into Sydney's Link Cafe
five years ago, she never expected her life would change
within minutes. It began as a very ordinary day, but
(02:29):
over the next seventeen hours, Louisa and her mother were
held at gunpoint and trapped along with sixteen other hostages,
before the siege ended in gunfire and tragedy. If you're
anything like me, I bet you remember exactly what you
were doing that day when you heard that a terrorist
was holding people hostage in a cafe in the middle
(02:49):
of the Sydney CBD, mere meters from a TV station.
But what went on inside the Link Cafe that long
day and dark night, and what happened afterwards to the survivors?
How did they recover? Did they recover? Louisa Hope is
one of those rare people I've met only a few
(03:10):
times in my life. It's like it's like she's lit
from within. I'm not sure what it is, but this
is honestly one of the most extraordinary conversations I've ever had,
and Louisa is quite simply one of the most riveting
people I've interviewed. In the four years since this podcast, began.
Here is the very aptly named Louisa Hope. I know
(03:34):
that Lee Sales interviewed you for her book An Ordinary Day.
It was an ordinary day, yes, so everybody that was there.
There was nothing special about it at all in the beginning.
How did the day start for you and your mum?
Speaker 3 (03:47):
So, Mum and I were we had come to town
the night before actually because we had an appointment at
the lawyer who happened to be in the same building
as the lint upstairs. And we are Mom's out near
the Blue Mountains living at the time, so we decided
that we'd come in on the Sunday night. We stayed
down at the Hilton and we just decided, rather than
deal with the traffic on the Monday morning, that we
(04:09):
would do that. And we had a lovely time together anyway.
And so in the morning we had that moment where
we went, will we go to the Link for breakfast
or will we just stay here at the Hilton? What
will we do? You know, tossing and turning the idea,
and decided we only wanted something small, so we went,
of course to the Link. We just you know, that's
sliding all moment. But yeah, so just random, random but
(04:33):
you know, really, Mum and I probably were the people
who should have least been there because you know.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
It wasn't your town, it was in your area.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
No, that's right. We were in the Yeah, very much
in that wrong kind of place and the wrong story
for us actually at that time. But there you go,
that's what happens.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
I'm so sorry about your mum. You lost your mum last.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Year and yeah, that's right. She died in September, and
it for us as a family, we all feel that
Mum was never the same after the cafe, and we're
very aware of that. But you know, we're comforted by
the fact that she had a really glorious death and
(05:16):
that was it was lovely really to all be together
for that. But yes, we imagined that we were going
to have it for quite a lot longer because she's
very vital and you know, go go kind of woman.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Having come so close to death on that day, How
was it different when you know, because the sliding doors moments, again,
you could have both lost your lives so easily in
the cafe that day. How did it go in the end, Well.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
You know, the the concluding moments, I don't know you know,
some people would have watched it right to the end
on television, but for us inside, the intensity and the
you know, the adrenaline that just rushes through your body,
it's so overwhelming. It's like you drip adrenaline in that moment,
and I think that, well, actually, Mum and I both
(06:09):
came out of the cafe we were related to discover
assuming that the other was dead, because we couldn't imagine
how anyone could have survived. And you know, in the
fact of the matter is is that all of us
were injured in the cafe at the end, anyone who
was in the actual cafe was injured, and sadly, of course,
(06:30):
Katrina's injuries led to her death. So you know, but
the moment of thinking that you're absolutely going to die
right there and then it's very real. You know, you
just sort of kind of have that moment where you go, well,
this is it, this is really going to be it.
I remember thinking survived this whole day and now we're
going to die right now, and so that's kind of
(06:52):
like it just stops you in your in your heart
and in your in your tracks.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Really, does your life flash before your eyes like they
say did you think of a person.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Did you think of her?
Speaker 1 (07:02):
What did you think?
Speaker 3 (07:03):
No? I just thought, well, actually what I thought was, oh, well, god,
here I'm coming, ready or not? You know, this is
me and there's no time now to make any addressments
or amends or try and do things different.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
For a bucket list.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
That's right. It definitely was too late for that bucket list.
And it was kind of like, yes, well here we are,
it's going to end like this, just the shock of
that idea.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
But where were you in that moment?
Speaker 3 (07:28):
I was on the floor. I was on the floor actually,
and having been standing right next to the gunman, I
kind of suddenly found myself on the floor. So and
I had my hands covering my eyes because the gunfire
was so intense and it was just full on, and
I actually had that thought, oh, well, I'm going to
(07:49):
die right here, right now, and those will watch, you know.
So I took my hands away and opened my eyes,
but could hardly see a thing because the gun smoke
in the room, and of course it was dark, but
it's so intense it was very hard to see. But
you know, I figured I mos will watch. It was
going to die.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
What happened when the gunshots stopped.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
You know, that was really interesting because that's just how
it was. It was this intense which felt like you
know ages, you know, just like a car accident, fast
and slow at the same time. But when it stopped,
it just stopped suddenly, just oh, okay, it's over. And
I had that oh I'm still alive, and I'm kind
(08:29):
of feeling my head thinking, am I okay? And because
I had seen my foot in the hole on my
foot already and I realized that, and I thought, okay,
it's just my foot, I'm okay. Everywhere else okay, And
then you kind of start I'm starting to slowly get
myself up. In the next minute, one of the tag
team guys is over the top of me shouting, shouting,
get up, get up, run run, and I'm like, oh,
(08:49):
I can't run my foot and he hauls me up
and at the same time he says to me, can
you hop? And I went, okay, I guess only I can.
So you know, it was one of those crazy kind
of moments. But you know, the tack guy says hop
and you you hop? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
So you know, did you know where your mum was
at that stage?
Speaker 3 (09:09):
No?
Speaker 1 (09:09):
How would you two become separated.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Well, we had been positioned on either side of him,
so Mum was on the right side of him, closest
to the kitchen at the lint, and I was on
the left, closest to martin place side of him, and
so we had gotten separated in the you know, the
furor of what was happening at the end, So that
separation was just like added to the So once you
(09:34):
kind of do the check, yes, I'm all in one piece,
and then you know, they come behind me, actually two
of the tack guys because I was obviously slow, and
scooped me up and took me out and just gently
placed me on the on the you know road there
in Philip Street, and you know, I kind of had
that moment of oh, I'm alive and the overwhelming gratitude like,
(09:58):
thank God, I am still alive, and at the same time,
but Mum must be dead. There's no way she could
have survived, because you know, I actually I didn't know
at that stage that Katrina was still in the cafe.
I thought you'd escaped with all the others, and in
a flash of a moment, I saw that Marcia was
(10:18):
still there. But I just had assumed that it was
just my mother and I and Tory that was still
left there. That was all that he realized. Was there
the gunman, and so.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Was everyone else hiding everyone else.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Had escaped, So they'd all escaped and the escape. I'm
so grateful that they had escaped, because you know, if
there had been more of us in the cafe, there
perhaps would have been more, definitely more injury, and perhaps
more may have died.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
I'm told that the people who did escape, many of
them lived with tremendous guilt.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Oh if I could only just say to all of them,
you know, please don't be guilty. I'm so grateful that
you got out when you did. And I think, in hindsight,
that was the smartest thing to do. I mean, certainly
Mum and I, you know, we talked about it afterwards,
but we were all just waiting because we assumed the
police were coming. So we're just waiting the police will come.
(11:15):
And so yes, those who took the initiative to run
to escape the way they did, that was the wisest
thing to do.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
How did the gunman react every time he found out
people escaped or did he not realize.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
Well, he was very aware that the first three escaped. Originally,
like all of us in that moment, he thought that
the police were coming in. And it was only the
quick thinking of young Jared Malton Hoffman who said that no, no,
they've escaped that we all suddenly went from like off
the Richter, you know, tension and you know, everything was
(11:52):
going nuts at the moment. In the moment, then he
just suddenly calmed down, realizing that that escaped and that
the police weren't coming. But what he didn't know was
that the other two young girls had quietly escaped, just
ever so quiet. It was amazing really, So he didn't
know that there were actually five that had escaped. He
(12:15):
only thought that three, three men had escaped. However, and
this is an important thing to be thinking about. On
the day, the media were reporting every hour on the
hour that five people had escaped. So we had to
calm him with that by saying things like, oh, you
know what the media is like, they just lie, they're exaggerating.
(12:38):
Only three people have escaped. Now, this was important for
us in the room because when those three first three
had escaped, he told us all that if anyone else escaped,
he'd kill someone, so we're all on you know, high
alert in a day that was already like ultra tense.
That just sort of added to the tension. So every
time the news reports were coming through, we had to
(13:00):
calm him down by just saying, you know, the media lie,
but they were reporting a fact as it was true. However,
it was impacting on us in the room, and if
he had kind of like figured it out, then we
could have really been in a dire situation.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
The media had no idea that you had access or
did they, And how did you have access to media.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
On everyone's phones? You know, we all have media in
our pockets now.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
So he didn't take everyone's phone. He did.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
What he did was he asked us right up front,
he said, put your ID and your wallets and your
phones on the table in front of us, you know,
where we were all sitting. So we all did that.
So of course, but everyone had phones. And so as
the day went on and he progressively was trying to
get us to get him media attention, using our phones
become a thing. Yeah. So yeah, we all had you know,
(13:53):
information all day, and everything that was being reported was
being reported into us. So it's an interesting kind of
thing for us to think about, especially for the media,
how do we address this from a global situation. Whatever
is being said in the media will of course, we've
just got to assume that it does that'll be impacting
on a live situation. For example, very late in the
(14:13):
night early morning in London, BBC were reporting on what
was happening in Sydney. So they were saying, we're listening
to the report, and it was one of those moments
when the BBC London saying, and we're watching live in
Sydney the hostage situation there, and we can see that
the police are surrounding the cafe. And I remember absolutely
holding my breath because he thought that there were no police.
(14:38):
He really thought that there were no police surrounding the cafe,
that they're all off at a distance, because that's what
he's demanded being So of course we're hearing that, and
I could actually hear my heart thumping in my chest
because I knew that if he realized that the police
were surrounding the cave from a report from London, the
(15:00):
other side of the world, that once again we're all
at risk. Fortunately, and I do not know how he
missed it. It may have been he didn't catch the
lady's axe, or he didn't he was fatiguing, or he
was distracted somehow, and he did not hear that, and
he did not react. But it certainly put me on edge.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
And mum, everybody, really, when did you first become aware
on that morning that it wasn't just a regular cup
of hot chocolate.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
You know, likes just such a strange circumstance. I was
actually I decided that, you know, it's time to go,
and I went to pay for a breakfast and the
young girl who was serving me, I think it was April,
and she said she was just there taking my money,
and her mouth is a ghast. I'm thinking, this young
girl is not paying attention, you know, but of course
(15:48):
I'm paying her. And she could see, you know, behind me,
and she could see him standing up, starting to make
his proclamation and putting his bandana on. And so by
the time I turned around to go back to sit down, he's,
like I said, putting his bandana on, and he's adjusting himself.
He's making his speech. He's saying, I want you to
know Australia is under attack and I want to speak
(16:09):
to the Prime Minister. On National radio and I've got
a bomb in my backpack, and I'm thinking in my head,
I actually thought, oh, this is ridiculous. It's a joke.
You know, we're across the road from Channel seven. This
must be some sort of like perverted kind of candid camera.
But when he pulled out the gun, it was then
me and that I just like went, it's real. You know,
(16:31):
this is real. And of course you think in that moment, well,
this is a terrorist action, and what to terrorists do?
They kill you? Right, You're dead. So it's just that
adjustment of your reality. You know, one minute I'm thinking
about the rest of our morning, and the next minute,
right here, right now, we're dead. But of course that
(16:51):
wasn't what he did.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Did people react in different ways.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
I think we're all just a little bit stunned, And
everyone was very quiet and listening, trying to pay attention.
The gunman himself was busy trying to articulate very clearly.
He was obviously aware of his accent and was trying
to articulate very clearly what his demands were and what
he was expecting of us. So we all just were
like in a state of shock, really, So there was
(17:18):
no kind of screaming or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
It was just, yeah, did he sort of try to
organize you very quickly or did you organize yourselves?
Speaker 3 (17:28):
No, he was well, he was instantly in control. Obviously
the gun, threat of bombs, all that kind of thing.
You know, the average Australian doesn't really have to do
with those things. So we were, you know, all trying
to work out how to do that. And of course
you must remember, apart from the staff, we were all
random strangers, so it was just that really bizarre sort
(17:51):
of circumstance. So we're all sort of listening, trying to
hear what he's saying, doing what he's telling us. You know,
I'm thinking, oh, he's going to line us up and
shoot us in my head. But of course, like obviously
he didn't do that, so he was quickly he started
to say things like keep your eyes closed, so it
was very controlling of everything. Close your eyes, open your eyes,
(18:12):
you stand here, you stand there. He quickly arranged people
around the room, had people stand up on the bench
seat and there in the cafe so that they could
be seen out the big windows, and people you know,
across the front. So it was pretty full on and
intense and the immediate sort of starting and then we waited.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Did you get the chance to talk amongst Jesselle. No,
he was very controlling of all of that for the
whole day.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Yes, so that kind of laxed a little when we
all got with the program, and that we all realized
that what he wanted was media attention, so therefore we
needed to be the ones to get that attention for him.
So we're all just then scrambling, you know. Initially at
(18:58):
one stage he had me ring triple O and he
was happy with his with the phone call and he said, oh,
you can be my secretary, I mean, like seriously. And
then later on from that he told me to find
ABC Radio on the phone. Well, so technically challenged. Not
(19:18):
the best with the phone at the you know, most times,
but in particular because I had forgotten my own phone
that day and so it was my mother's phone that
was on the table, and so I'm trying to scramble
and find ABC Radio on the phone, and I found
ABC Radio book Club, but he wasn't interested in the
book club. So you know, in that moment, young Jared
(19:39):
quickly said, I'll do it, hand me the phone. So
when I handed over the phone to Jared, it was
like everything shifted and Jared very much become the lead
in the room. And so he quickly found radio on
the phone and did all that kind of thing, and
so the attention shifted very much to Jared, and Jared
(19:59):
become in a way like the main man for the gunman.
So it was really interesting, that dynamic, and I was
so grateful because you know, like technology is not really
my friend and the pressure.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
So Jared worked there.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Yes, Jared young. Jared was one of the young workers.
He was nineteen at the time. Many of them were
only young, as was Fiona marsha Do only nineteen, so
you know, yeah, they're just well I wouldn't like me
to say it, but they're just babies, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Yeah, yeah, you need a millennial to.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Get that job. Yeah, that's right. So they were there.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Could you communicate to each other with your eyes?
Speaker 3 (20:36):
Well, obviously we were, but he was onto that. He
was quickly onto that, and he was saying, who's looking
at who? And certainly because once he realized that, you know,
Robin was my mother was totally separating us and no
talking with your eyes and if you thought someone was
looking too long at someone else. He was what are
you doing? You know, So he was certainly definitely in
(20:57):
the early stages, he was definitely onto all of that
kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
The people then that escaped in little groups, how did
they coordinate that?
Speaker 3 (21:06):
You know? I think that they were just quick And
the three men who escaped, initially they were sitting at
the front, they were lined up the front together on
individual seats, and so they obviously were able to have
little communications because their backs were to the inside of
(21:27):
the cafe and they were facing out near the front door.
So they're obviously able to have little communications together. And
they quickly organized how they're going to do it, and
they just did it. I mean, like how brave were they?
Speaker 1 (21:38):
And so yeah, if you couldn't, I mean, you had
a lot of time to feel in your mind, did
you kind of try to work out who was who
and what their story was about.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
We were all in our little groups, and so he
separated us out from our groups really and put everybody everywhere.
So that kind of like stifled communication between us. But
as the day went on, and also because we were
having toilet breaks.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
How did that work? I was going to ask about
the toilet.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Well, so thank goodness, you know, really, I mean one
could almost say inverted commas. That was a kindness that
worked because he just decided that we needed to and
I think really because it was obvious that because he
had kicked away my walking stick from me to start with,
(22:31):
and when it was time to go to the bathroom,
I said, can I have my walking stick?
Speaker 4 (22:34):
No?
Speaker 3 (22:35):
No, And then he said, Fiona, you take Louisa, because
he worked out our names Louisa to the bathroom. So
Fiona took me to the bathroom, and then we started
this whole routine of lint workers taking us to the bathroom,
predominantly Fiona or Jared, and so we were able to
communicate in that way as well. So they were kind
(22:55):
of like a conduit between us when we're going to it.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Would you whisper to them?
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Yeah, Well the bathroom was you know, a little bit
of a distance, so there was a degree of privacy
there if you like. Gosh, so weird, but yeah, that's
how we were kind of like talking to each other.
But we didn't have any kind of grand plan for
escape or anything like that. We were just kind of like,
I think, going to the bathroom and young Fiona, Ma,
(23:22):
my goodness, he told us all to give over our phones.
Well she kept hers in her pocket, brave as that
little girl. And you know, so when we got down
to the bathroom, she says, I've got my phone. Do
you want to ring anyone?
Speaker 1 (23:34):
You know?
Speaker 3 (23:34):
But I mean, who remembers anybody's phone number these days?
So I'm like, I'd love to, but I haven't got
clue anybody's number. So yeah, there you go, and that's
how the day went.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
I was also told that people became agitated at different times,
and around the time of school pickup, Katrina became quite agitated,
is that true?
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Aware? Like she was aware, and you know, different ones
with children were aware of their children, would mention their children,
you know, just different little things. I want to, you know,
and try and negotiate a bit with you know, the gunment.
There was just constant talk about who was going to
get out and who was going to stay, you know,
and all that kind of thing. So yes, of course
there was that whole awareness of people and their children,
(24:26):
and the stress of all of that, you know, just
made the whole thing worse.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
I think did anything sway him? I mean, you were
you have MS, and you had a cane, and then
you know, people had children, Julie was pregnant. There were
all sorts of different people with different reasons to be
allowed to go. Was everyone sort of looking for what
(24:52):
his vulnerabilities might be or what his kindnesses might be?
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Yeah, definitely. You know, there was a lot of discussion.
At one stage, he said that he would release a
hostage and which hostage would he release. So of course,
you know, naturally you would think in a circumstance like that,
everyone might be saying me me, pick me, putting up
the hands, saying I'll go, you know, let me release me.
But it wasn't like that. Actually, everyone was saying things like, well,
(25:19):
you should release Robin and Louisa because Robin's old, right,
and we're saying no, no, you should release Julie because Julie's pregnant,
or Harriet who was pregnant at the time, And then
you know, he was saying, but who's going to be
my best spokesperson when they get out, and so you know,
then we're saying, well, like Jared, you know, he'd be
really good at that. So there was all those kind
(25:41):
of conversations each of us trying to say, you know,
release this one or that one, and particularly we're I
think we're all trying really to get the pregnant girls
out if we possibly could. But at the same time
it was obviously his choice. He was just messing with us, maybe,
you know. But there was a lot of coming and
going and discussion, and of course no one was released
by him in the end, because he wanted the media attention.
(26:04):
We wanted to be able to get a direct connection
to a media outlet so that he could say I'm
being so good and so kind by releasing somebody, and
he wanted to get the credit for that rather than oh,
he said, the media could just say they've escaped if
I don't get direct live coverage. So you know, that
(26:25):
whole idea of somebody being released. Eventually, when we realized
we had exhausted all opportunity for the media, it was
like he said, why should I bother because I won't
get the credit for it. The insanity of it.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Tell me about Toy.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Tory. Tory was the manager of the cafe, and unlike
everybody else, he referred to to Toy as the manager,
which of course he was the manager. And you know
this man who's still with me every day. You know.
(27:06):
He was very much highly regarded by his staff. They
really loved him, you know. But he on the day
he went on, he was aware that my mother was
becoming more and more agitated, which she was. She was
back chatting the gunman and I was she oh, and
(27:28):
I was becoming more and more anxious. What was she doing, Robert, Well,
she was, oh, dear mate, So she was well. At
one stage she stood up and hands on hips and said,
I want to go to the bathroom and my daughter
needs her medication. Oh, mom, just keep everything on the
down low. You know. I'm trying to mom, you know.
(27:48):
And you know when you hear your mother's angry voice.
I could hear it coming. I'm thinking, oh, man, are
you in trouble? Anyway, she just had that moment, and
so he sends her off to the bathroom with Fionna,
and then he wants to know all about my mss.
What's a mess? So yeah, so he calls me over
sitting next to him, and he gives me twenty questions
about what's the way you got a mess, how do
(28:09):
you get it?
Speaker 4 (28:10):
What to do?
Speaker 3 (28:11):
And I'm trying to explain very soundly and reasonably the
intricacies of MS.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
And I'm thinking, gosh, you know, that's quite a human moment.
It's acfusing to you, Like I imagine that's confusing because he
was showing interest and yeah, and.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
This is the thing about this man, right, And this
is the thing that I keep coming back to and
I keep talking about, and that is the fact that
he was a bad man doing a bad thing. What
he was doing was just so wrong and violent, violent
act to hold somebody against the will with a gun.
But at the same time, there were flashes of his
(28:48):
kindness and his humanity, So we kind of go, what
is that? Who is that? This duplicitous, double minded man.
Here he is letting us have toilet brakes and later
on cups of tea and food and uh, you.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Know water, inquiring about your health.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
I know exactly exactly, and he was sincerely interested. I'm
sure of there was no need for him to kind
of like do a little deviation into his plan to
have a chat about my MS. And then you know,
he's very interested in it. And then he says to me,
at any time, Louisa, you want to have your medication,
you just do it. You don't have to ask me.
I thank you, thank you brother, you know. But so
(29:27):
here we go. Here's this man explain, you know, expressing
two different parts of his personality, and you think, what
is that? Double minded, duplicit us And you sort of
think to yourself, well, that's that man who assaults his wife,
bashes it to a pulp, and then at the same
time tells her he loves her. So, you know, we
think that we cannot imagine what a terrorist is like,
(29:50):
but we experience in our ordinary, everyday life that kind
of man or that kind of person. So it's say,
and I say this because whilst ever we throw our
hands in the air and say he's not us, we're
not that he's a madman. Yeah, that's right, he's a madman.
He's a lunatic, he's crazy. Then what we're doing doing
is actually surrendering our opportunity to understand what this is
(30:14):
all about. How does the violent mind really work? And
so for me personally, I kind of have been on
a little bit of a crusade in saying we have
to grab this circumstance and actually get beyond our fear
and start to do some real research to come to
real understanding, because it's only in that that we're going
to undo what this thing is. And so you know,
(30:37):
there we were in that circumstance with him all those hours,
and this was the reality of him, no different to
us in many ways.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Do you now see him as crazy? Mentally ill? Evil?
How do you see him?
Speaker 3 (30:59):
All of those words are too easy. Actually, we need
a little bit more of nuanced kind of understanding of him.
And I see him as a very flawed human being
whose primary motivator was his own self delusion and his
(31:20):
narcissistic frame of obviously his existence, because you know, there's
lots of other things in this man's history. I mean,
at the inquest, we found out that he had forty
eight separate individual sexual assault charges against him, and of
course there was his involvement in the death of his
ex wife, which was horrendous, And so you know, the
(31:44):
man was one could very easily call him evil, but
that was not the only cloak that he wore. So
we have to get in and nut it out to
see what he really is. You know, yes, even madmen
can be sane, and to sort of box and die
(32:05):
somebody into a little hole like that too too simple.
And of no value to us now.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
So there he was asked inquiring about your mss. Your
mama demanded to be taken to the bathroom. And where
was Tory through all of this.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
Well, Tory he had placed mostly the women around him
close and all the men at a bit of a distance.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
So as so to use the women as human shields
because he felt that there was less likely to be
someone firing through the window.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Yeah, well you know that. And also women he was assuming, obviously,
and obviously the way he's dealt with women, he was
probably feeling more confident that he could keep control of us.
So anyway, Mum and had you know, a few bit
of backchat towards him. And then as a day went on,
a little bit later, Tory had gone for bathroom break
and he came back. And normally we came back and
(32:55):
sat back in normal seats where we were last seated,
but Tory actually come back and positioned himself sitting right
next to Mum. And what happened then was that they
were sitting on the sit it on the bench seat
with a table in front of them, and I was
on an individual seat separated slightly from them. But where
(33:17):
he positioned himself next to Mom. I could hear them
just quietly whispering, having little jokes. I could hear little giggles,
and when I had got another bathroom break myself come back,
I could see them holding hands under the table. So
Tory had used that as an opportunity to sit next
(33:39):
and position himself next to my mother to calm her.
And I could see that that worked because Mum was
far better because it was one stage when the gunman
actually said to me, Louisa, keep your mother quiet, and
in the moment, I thought, you're crazy. How am I
going to do that? Keep my mother quiet?
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Ask for a daughter?
Speaker 3 (33:59):
Yeah, exactly, And so you know, like here, I am
a growing up. But I had that moment where I
had to say to Mum, you know, you're an old lady,
just keep quiet. And I could see her looking at me,
and I'm thinking, you know, she's kind of like wait
till you get hime and you're in big trouble kind
of thing, and I'm just sort of thinking we've got it.
But I knew that we just had to keep her calm.
And Tory obviously read that too, because he come back
(34:21):
after that, and like I said, he positioned himself next
to her. And of course at the end, at the end,
when everyone else escaped and I had had my eyes closed,
I was in this intense place of prayer, actually, and
then I'd heard this big bang and I'd opened my
eyes and all of the others that escaped, all the
(34:45):
other hostages, and I went, all, right, this is it.
We're going. So I stood up and I started to
go towards the door, but Mum and Tory were not moving,
and I was trying to catch their eye, kept turning around,
you know, not wanting to speak because I didn't know
where the gunman was, didn't know what was happening with him.
So I'm kind of trying to indicate to them, come come,
(35:06):
you know, we're right at the end now, and I'm
trying to get there, but they weren't moving. I'm thinking,
why isn't Toy moving, Why isn't Mum moving. They're just
not shifting, And so in that moment, I just thought, well,
I can't leave my mother. So I lay down on
the floor and thought, oh, you know, gum, and I'll
kill me. But and then that situation went on. But
(35:26):
later after, after twelve months, later, after the first anniversary,
Mom and I were having a quiet moment at home
and I said to her, Mom, do you remember at
the end, and I'd got up and was going towards
the door. I said to her, why didn't you and
(35:48):
Tory run? Because I could never understand why Tori didn't run.
And my mom said to me, oh, well, I was
saying to Toy, you know, you go, you go, and
she's making this motion. She was like she was elbowing
him in the side, saying, you go to it, you go,
and he said to her, no, I'll stay, I'll stay
(36:08):
with you. So in that moment, twelve months after the event,
I suddenly realized that Tory Johnson had made a deliberate
choice to stay, to stay and look after my mother,
which you know is for our whole family. That is profound,
(36:29):
and I understand the grief that his family must feel
that his brave heart made that choice in that moment,
because if he had not, he would not have been
there to be the one who was killed. So, you know,
it's just, you know, it's hard, and I feel for
(36:54):
his family, But I think to myself, what an amazing
brave young man. And you know, his parents, his mother
and of course his partner Thomas. His bravery doesn't replace
him for them. But you know, our family, we are
(37:14):
forever grateful because in lots of ways, you know, that
gave us three and a half more years with our
mother and m It's you know, it's in my heart.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Why do you think that the gunman chose Tori Because
Tory was the last man in the cafe and he
was the final authority figure.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
So he called Tory to. You know, he positioned Mum
and I either side of him and told us to
keep our eyes closed and we wouldn't get hurt. How
many ridiculous really is if you do that? But then
he called Tory over.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Do you mean as if you'd keep your eyes? So
you didn't keep your eyes?
Speaker 3 (37:56):
No, it's dark in the cafe and we're either side
of him, Mumm and I. And then he called Tori
over and said you manager kneel on the floor and
put your hands on your hand. And it was just
that moment of oh my god.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
You know, I don't want to ask you to relive
that moment, but the ways are, how do you get
over any of this? Like I look at you sitting
in front of me, and I know people go to
war and that's essentially what you did. How do you
do it? How do you recover?
Speaker 3 (38:26):
Everyone's experience is different, and trauma and we talk about
post traumatic stress, and you know, trauma is a really
bizarre kind of thing. And for me personally, I think
that this is my experience. Mum's experience was very different.
But for me, I went into a place of post trauma.
(38:54):
Like I was so overwhelmed with the gratitude, so grateful
that I'd been spared in that moment, so grateful that
there was a future, and so grateful you know, Mum
was still alive and you know, and also that I
could have a refocus and I just had that determination
that we were going to get something good out of
that awful situation. So for me, I feel in hindsight
(39:18):
now that I went into a kind of post euphoria
and that pushed me forward. And that, of course, I
have to say, comes from you know, my practice, my
practice of prayer, my practice of faith, and all those
things that were already in my life and were part
(39:39):
of you know, my inner life, and so all of
those things built into that. But at the same time
and equally as potent I have to say, is the
overwhelming anxiety. Now, this is really interesting how we think
about anxiety. But for me, I understood how I felt
(40:02):
immediately in those final moments. And when I say, the
adrenaline was dripping out of me physically, could feel like
my entire body was engaged in the adrenaline and I
could feel it and I was just maxed out, There's
no other way to describe it, maxed out. And it
was almost like my brain was expanding. And so what
(40:24):
happens for me now five years later, still I can
find that I can I can be some sort of circumstance.
It could be traffic, or it could be any little moment,
no random reason. But anxiety comes instantly from like zero
to one hundred in an instant, and I can recognize
(40:46):
it's in my body and I go, yes, I know
my body has gone from zero to one hundred to
one thousand exactly right there. It's the same feeling that
I experienced in that moment at the end, and I
haven't worked out how to turn it off yet, but
I have worked out how to steal my heart and
(41:06):
just control myself as opposed to okay, I'm here and
then I'm there, And some days I can be good
at it, and some days I'm not so good at it,
And I'm very blessed because I'm surrounded by a family
who understand and friends who are under control. And sometimes
it's a moment where a friend will sit and just
have a little quiet sit and will have a prey.
(41:28):
And sometimes it's a moment where I go into a
meditative state or you know, just do the breathing that's
associated with calming myself. There's all little tricks that you
can use for that, but it's very real. The thing is,
anxiety knows no level in that. So I had an
experience that was pretty tense and out there, but you know,
(41:50):
anxiety is the same for the woman who's just been
assaulted in her own home, or for somebody who's facing
a traffic accident or somebody who's having a stroke. Anxiety
is no respector of persons, and we all experience it
in our own individual way, but the same. So you know,
if someone tells me they've got anxiety, I can really relate.
(42:11):
And it doesn't matter what caused, it doesn't matter, it's
all the same. So you know, we need to be
kind to each other sometimes, you know, because we don't
know what someone else is going through.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
There's something that happens. I always assume that anyone who
experiences a tragedy has post traumatic stress and post traumat syndrome.
But I learned through reading Lee Sales's book that and
actually through people that I know, not everyone has that.
Some people have post traumatic growth, which is a little
(42:41):
bit like the euphoria is probably a different stage, but
the post traumatic growth is when my friend who had
a stillborn baby, described it to me as that the
death of her daughter turned the light up in her life,
not down, and she didn't expect that. Would you say
that that's been what this experience has done to you?
(43:02):
Has it turned the light up in your life?
Speaker 3 (43:04):
God bless your friend?
Speaker 4 (43:05):
You know.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
That is such a beautiful way to express that, And
that's really exact exactly how it really feels. I have
found that. I found that for me, I felt like
I expanded as a human, as a person, so that
my capacity was more. So, you know, I equally feel
that expansion of self and my capacity to cope with
(43:30):
more in many ways coupled with the balancing effect of
oh yeah, all that random anxiety and distress and pressure.
So it's very finely tuned and needs to be very
finely balanced. But if I look forward and focus myself
that way, it very much is about that. So now
(43:53):
I feel like, Okay, what else is out there that
we need to fix? Change, grow, evolve? What are the
other things that need to be looked at postiege that
business that we need to do as a society, within
our institutions, and of course for me as well being
involved with the nurses. So you know, it's just I
(44:15):
feel like there's no there's no place to say no anymore.
We just got to go forward.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
You started a foundation, oh to help nurses. Tell me
about your time in hospital after the scene?
Speaker 3 (44:26):
Wow?
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Well hospital, okay, you were there for a long time.
It just was full on seems unfair after what you
went through.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
I know it was that kind of you just don't
imagine that, you know, Like seriously, I thought, okay, well
once because I really I thought I was going to
lose my foot. I really had that moment. We had
a hole in it it certainly, did you know?
Speaker 1 (44:46):
And what do it look like when I looked at it?
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Well, you know, it was pretty when it was first done.
It was just like horrendous. Like I used to get
in a little state of shock whenever they redressed the wound,
because it was just the shock of seeing it, you know.
But of course now it looks now, it looks like
I describe it as someone's got the barmacs and gone
on my foot. It's just it's a classic honey home
wound and it's some messy, just to say the least.
(45:11):
But you know, three months in hospital was not what
I expected. I thought i'd be there two weeks, you know,
by the time Chris, I'll be out, and I thought
it'd be out for New Year Christmas. That didn't happen,
and it just kind of extended. It extends.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
You needed operations, reconstruction.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
That's why I had three surgeries and then and then
of course rehabilitation, and so I went from Prince of
Wales to a private hospital in the Eastern suburbs and
so that was a long time in hospital. But that
time gave me well, really, you don't think about it
in the moment, but in hindsight I realized was like
a blessing because it insulated me from the world immediately
(45:47):
after the siege, and it gave me time for reflection
and to think forward, and also my experience with the
nurses then sent me on that journey. And so when
sixty minutes we're discussing, you know, if we're going to
talk to them, and like my mother and I knew
(46:10):
from the go get that we would have to share
with everyone, because we knew that if we'd been on
the outside, we would have wanted to know what happened
to the people on the inside. So we understood that.
And also because I personally felt that we were all
part of what happened that day, like this was not
something that happened to just me and my mother and
my fellow hostages. It happened to the whole country. So
(46:32):
we had to be accountable for that. So anyway, when
sixty Minutes generously gave me that twenty five thousand dollars
and Mike bed matched that money, had a little fifty
grand in my hand, and I kind of thought, right,
I know what I wanted to do with it, because
I was going to do a little I thought originally
that I just do a little fundraiser for the nurses
(46:52):
within my own community, and we get a few grand
and I give it to the nurses on my ward,
But fifty grand was a whole lot more money, and
so I went to the foundation at Prince of Wales
and the Lulu Salapa, who was the CEO there, brilliant, amazing.
That foundation runs like a machine, I've got to tell you.
So of course Lulu had been a nurse in a
(47:14):
previous life, and so she knew exactly what I was
saying when I said I don't want this to go
for a carpet or for a new paint in the
hospital or anything, or in the boardroom or anything. I
wanted to be for nurse initiated projects. And she absolutely
got that. She knew exactly how to create that make
it happen, and so that's what happened. And of course
once I started to see what the nurses were doing
(47:34):
with the money, I couldn't stop, you know, I just
had to keep trying to raise money and raise awareness
to the nurses and what they do for us. So,
you know, I could rave on about this for hours
because it's my happy place.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
But yeah, that's part of your post traumatic growth also, right,
finding a way to channel this thing that happened to
you that was so shocking into something positive.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
Well, you know, it really was an answer to my
prayer in many ways, because I so wanted something good
to come out of this, and now I realized that
the good is not going to come through me. It's
going to come through the nurses and the work that
they are doing. Because the nurses, all of their projects
are about, you know, how to help us as patients,
and that of course is the universal focus of nurses,
(48:16):
and so yeah, I just have the privilege of being
involved in that. I'm just like, my goodness, how blessed
am I?
Speaker 1 (48:23):
You know, it's funny what you just said about how
you recognize that it's something that happened to all of us,
not just the people in the cafe, which sounds almost
arrogant when you particularly when you think about Tory and
Katrina and the families that they left behind and all
of you that were in there. How did you sort
(48:45):
of become aware that we do all sort of need
to process and to tell you where we were that
day and what our connections. I mean, the first thing
I did when I met you this morning was tell
you how I had connections to Tory and how I
had connections to Katrina. It's a lot to take on
how that affected the kind of the national psyche? How
did you become aware of it?
Speaker 3 (49:06):
You know, when I think that, like I said, you know,
I was ware well, you know, like I know how
we would have been, my mother and I. We would
have been outside the cafe praying for people. We would
have stayed up all night, we would have waited with them.
A nurse once said to me, you know, about a
week and a half into my stay at the hospital,
she said, even though I was on morning shift, I
had to stay up to the very end and watch
(49:27):
on the television. She said, I couldn't leave you in
there alone. And I thought, oh, yes, I understand what
she's saying.
Speaker 1 (49:33):
Yeah, that none of us wanted to go to sleep
that night.
Speaker 3 (49:36):
Yeah see, you know we're all we're all leaving, that's right,
And so you I think that we if we recognize,
this is something that happened to all of us. And
when you think about what happened in Martin Place after,
you know, I was in hospital and it was on
a self imposed media blackout, but friends were bringing me
news and telling me stories and photographs, flowers, flowers and people.
(49:59):
They're telling me about random strangers sitting and talking and praying,
and you know, Muslim people being there and everyone sharing together,
and and of course the Ride with Me campaign that
happened afterwards. So all of that stuff you kind of
I think it very clearly made it obvious that we
were all in this together. So therefore we had to
(50:19):
find a way to recover together. So for me, that's
really important, and part of that is telling our stories
to each other. And so I have great respect you know,
people come and tell me. And you know Lisa ELS's book,
of course, you know she talks about things like that
where but we all had an ownership, did we not?
(50:40):
In Threadbow and what happened to poor with Arthur, So
we all have a part of it. And if we
think that it's just oh yeah, something that happened on
a news cycle, well actually it's not. Because we're all
impacted by these things. So how do we recover together?
Speaker 1 (50:55):
That's incredibly gracious of you to understand that and acknowledge it.
And I'm going to guess that people would have two
reactions in terms of the hostages. Some, I imagine, would
want to stay in touch and feel very bonded, and
others want to just walk away and never look back.
Is that how it's panned out with those of you
who were there and lived through that?
Speaker 3 (51:17):
Definitely, you know, all separate individuals with individual lives and stories,
and you know, sometimes contact is a reminder of that
day and that's just too hard. And you know, I
totally respect that, and you know, my heart's always you know,
are you okay? And how you doing and all that
kind of stuff. But I also am aware that I
(51:39):
myself don't want to be an inflictor of further pain.
So you know, it's really hard to kind of just
walk that fine line between respect and care. So yes,
you just have to well hands off and wait really, so, yeah,
do you stay in touch a few of them? I do, Yes, definitely,
(52:00):
and I value that so much, and I'm always keen
for any news of anyone else, but just so don't
want to invade them, you know, because we're five years
and so, you know, so aren't we inverted commas over
that already? But it's just it's not like that. It's
(52:21):
never over, actually, and so I don't never be over
for the families. But equally, you know, you stand up
and you dust yourself off and you get on.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
But It's always there, Louisa. I just want to thank you.
I mean, I understand that so many of the survivors
from that day and the families have wanted to retreat
and you haven't. You've kept being out there and speaking
to be of service and to help us collectively process this,
(52:54):
as well as trying to use it for good and
raise money for your foundation and to help nurses. You
are such a force of good in the world. Like
for everything that he was a force of dark, you
are that opposite and that that equal and you know,
exceptional force of good. And I just wanted to say
(53:15):
thank you, Thank you, ma'a. I hope that the incredible
I don't know luminescence of Louisa came through in that
interview in the same way that it did in the room.
We were all in tears, my producer, our person behind
the camera, and the guy that came along with Louisa
(53:38):
as her sort of support person because she walks with
a cane and sher foot's bandaged, but she had this
beautiful bright orange patent leather strappy sandals around her foot,
and she was wearing this gorgeous floral dress and she
was telling me this amazing story of how the day
before she'd been in the city and she'd fallen over,
and she said, that's something that happens not infrequently because
(54:00):
of her foot and she sometimes loses her footing. And
she was in the middle of the street and a
guy came to help her, and he said, oh, he
noticed that she had a bandage on her foot, and
he said, oh, were you okay?
Speaker 3 (54:10):
What happened?
Speaker 1 (54:11):
And she said, oh, I was in the siege and
I got some shrapnel in my foot. And he said, oh,
my god, my son is best friends with Katrina Dawson's son,
and I just dropped both the boys at camp. And
of all the people who could have come to help
her in the middle of a city on an ordinary day,
I don't know. Makes you wonder as you heard towards
(54:34):
the end of the siege, Louisa was injured. She got
shrapnel in her foot from all the gunfire, and afterwards
she was taken to the Prince of Wales Hospital here
in Sydney, where she spent three months as a patient,
and she was so moved by the care and the
compassion that she received there she decided to take this
tragedy and turn it into something positive and she created
(54:57):
the Louisa Hope Fund for Nurses as part of the
Prince of Wales Hospital Foundation. To donate to the Prince
of Wales Hospital Foundation Louisa Hope Fund for Nurses, please
visit pow HF dot org dot au and we'll put
a link in our show notes. This episode was produced
by bridget Northeast and to the families of Katrina Dawson
(55:19):
and Tory Johnson, re extend all our love and our
deepest sympathies. Katrina and Tory are not forgotten.
Speaker 4 (55:30):
Hey, it's me just jumping back into your ears with
no voice now. Since we recorded that interview with Louisa
last week, we've also done another interview about the Sydney
Link Cafe siege more generally with a journalist called Debra
Snow who's written a book on it. We did it
on our podcast through Crime Conversations. Jesse Stevens did that
(55:51):
interview and it feels in a lot of the blanks
that you might have and a lot of the questions
that you might have after listening to Louisa's incredible story,
because I really had to make a decision when I
was talking to her what I would talk to her about,
like I could have talked to her for one hundred years, really,
she was so interesting. But there were things about the
gun about his history, about the police response, about some
(56:13):
of the TikTok, and what happened step by step during
the day that we just didn't cover. So this other
interview on our podcast, True Crime Conversations, you might want
to listen to it. You'll find it wherever you find
your podcasts. And we've actually done it in two parts.
The first part is a little bit about the gunman,
or a lot about the gunment actually and what happened
before the siege, and then there's a lot about the
(56:35):
siege itself in our second part, So have a listen
to that.
Speaker 2 (56:39):
I hope you enjoyed this episode of No Filter with Louisa.
Hope you can find a link to follow No Filter
in the show notes, as well as the quickie too.
And I'll be back here tomorrow morning getting you up
to speed on the biggest news stories of the day
from six am.
Speaker 3 (56:51):
See you then,
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