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Year View| Summary| Highlights| Month View| Tuesday 15 November 2005 (Day View) – I am evacuated from a train station & fly to Sydney.

Fri 11 Nov | Sat 12 Nov | Sun 13 Nov | Mon 14 Nov |   Tue 15 Nov   Wed 16 Nov | Thu 17 Nov | Fri 18 Nov | Sat 19 Nov |

15.11.2005 – Tuesday 15 November – Terrorism & Sydney

8am

• I got up, having had less than four hours sleep. Joe drove me to the shops, where I did the shopping I had been unable to do yesterday due to stupid bomb threats, and then onto the train station where I caught the train that would have taken me to the airport had not a hundred or so police swamped it at South Bank station. Someone had reported unattended baggage, and in their paranoid way, they evacuated the entire station and several hundred metres all around its perimeter, and filled it with several different types of police, bomb squad, strange federal agents, Queensland Rail agents, and various other exciting people. It was very ridiculous—there were so many various forms of police and security people that it was hard to walk between them; had a bomb gone off, there would have been more security personnel killed than there were passengers on the train. This also had the more serious side effect that I was, for the second time now, stuck at an evacuated train station on my way to the airport. Some demanding, and a $46 taxi fare to the airport (paid by Queensland Rail) later, I found myself at the airport, fortunately still before my flight departed.

12:56pm

• The doors on the Virgin 737-800 were closed, and we departed for Sydney, with me sitting in seat 17C. There are two wheelchairs, and one stroller onboard, which probably isn’t relevant to anything but there’s nothing else to do sitting here so I might as well notice that.

3:20pm

• I land in Sydney, where all the times are an hour wrong. It is quite cold. I am picked up by Bronwen, Brian and Judy, and driven to their place, where I eat dinner and head to bed.