The Port Arthur Tragedy
My life has fallen into a few stages.
As a child, I lived in Box Hill when it was village. I then became pastor to the slums of inner Melbourne for eight years. I was then a country parson and a teacher at a one teacher bush school out at Jackson Creek in Western Victoria and then for 13 years, I was a suburban minister in one of Australia’s largest suburban ministries.
And then, for more than 27 years I’ve been Superintendent in Sydney of Wesley Mission, Australia’s largest church ministry.
I’ve told you stories of people in each of these places.
Tonight I want you to come with me into the heart of the city.
For the owners of the numerous shops and cafés at the Port Arthur Historical site in Tasmania, fine weather usually meant good crowds and Sunday April 28, 1996 was no exception. Once the site of one of the Australia’s most brutal penal settlements, Port Arthur had become the premiere tourist attraction in Tasmania. By 1.00pm, over five hundred visitors were at the site, enjoying the many attractions that the area had to offer.
By 1.30 pm the pace at the “Broad Arrow” café had slowed after the busy lunchtime period but at least sixty people still remained, finishing meals or browsing through gift shops. No one seems to recall seeing the young man with long blond hair enter the café and order a meal, but they do remember his comment when he sat down on the front balcony area to eat his lunch. “There’s a lot of wasps about today,” he said to no one in particular and began to eat his meal. A few minutes later, he made another remark about the lack of Japanese tourists.
He made no further comments as he finished his meal and picked up his bags and went back into the café. Moving towards the back of the room, he lifted a long, blue sports bag onto a vacant table and placed a video camera beside it. For several minutes he stood staring at a group of diners at an adjoining table before turning his attention to an Asian couple that was sitting near him. Before anyone had realised what was happening, he unzipped the larger bag and produced an AK15 semi-automatic rifle and shot the Asian man, Moh Yee Ng, in the neck, killing him instantly. Swinging the rifle from the hip he pointed it towards Soo Leng Chung, the man’s companion, and shot her through the head. Turning his attention back to the first group he lifted the rifle to his shoulder and fired a shot at Mick Sargent, grazing his scalp and knocking him to the floor. Before Mick could shout a warning, the gunman fired a fourth shot that hit Mick’s girlfriend in the back of the head. In a matter of seconds, the young man had claimed three victims.
The fusillade continued as the gunman selected new targets, the acrid smell of gun smoke hanging in the air as his helpless victims dodged for cover. One man at the front of the room who bravely stood to shout a belated warning, died when a bullet tore through his neck. Husbands were killed as they tried to protect their wives and families, one man receiving massive head injuries when a bullet that had passed through a previous victim hit him. Some were killed instantly but many others lay bleeding from their wounds.
Walking towards the front entrance of the café, the gunman fired methodically. Shooting left and right as the terrified crowd scrambled for cover. Fifteen seconds later, a total of twenty people lay dead with fifteen more wounded, many of them seriously. Leaving the Broad Arrow, the gunman walked out into the parking lot where over a hundred people were milling about in confusion. Many, hearing the shots, had started walking in the general direction of the café in the mistaken belief that a re-enactment was in progress. Others, who had been close enough to observe the carnage, ran for cover, screaming warning to anyone with whom they came in contact.
Seeing the crowd gathered in the car park, the gunman opened fire. Several tourists fell as the rest, finally aware of what was happening, screamed and ran. Walking towards a tour bus parked nearby, the gunman shot the driver and three passengers. As the latest fusillade echoed across the parking lot, several tourists who were waiting to board the bus crawled under it for safety but the gunman saw them and calmly squatted down and shot them before walking back to his car, a yellow Volvo 244GL sedan with a surfboard strapped to the roof.
The gunman then drove three hundred yards down the road, to where a young woman and her two children were walking beside the road. Pulling to a stop, he fired two quick shots killing the woman and the child she was carrying. When the older child ran away to take refuge behind a tree, the gunman followed her and killed her with one shot. Returning to his vehicle, the gunman then drove a further two hundred yards towards the entrance gate where a gold coloured BMW was parked. Three shots were fired in rapid succession and the car’s three male occupants lay dead. After dragging the bodies from the car, the gunman transferred his firearms into the BMW and drove away.
A shot distance up the road he saw a couple sitting in a white Toyota and stopped beside them. The female driver froze as the man approached holding a gun and ordered her male companion to get out of the car, the man obeyed, pleading with the gunman not to shoot, but the gunman ignored him and instead, ordered the man to climb into the open trunk of the BMW. The gunman then slammed the lid and returned to the front of the car and fired two shots through the driver’s window killing the young woman instantly. With the man still locked in the trunk, the gunman sped away towards a local guesthouse called the Seascape Cottage where the final chapter of the deadly saga would eventually unfold.
As he drove towards the entrance to Seascape Cottage, the gunman saw another vehicle approaching and opened fire, but his bullets missed their target. Turning his attention to the next vehicle, a four-wheel-drive jeep driven by a holidaying couple from Melbourne, the young man fired two shots, one of which tore into the bonnet, the other smashing the windscreen. A second volley of shots ripped through the side windows showering the occupants with glass and hitting the female driver in the forearm. Realizing the driver was hit, the male passenger leaned over and attempted to drive the vehicle to safety but was unable to do so as the throttle cable had been severed by one of the bullets.
Seconds later, a Ford sedan with two married couples on board, drove towards the cottage and were hit by a hail of bullets that penetrated the windshield, wounding the driver. Bleeding profusely from his wounds, the driver of the Ford continued on to where the jeep was parked and managed to rescue the occupants before speeding away to the Fox and Hounds, another guesthouse further down the road. Another vehicle, approaching along the Arthur Highway, saw the man standing on the road with a gun and rapidly changed direction.
After the Ford drove away, the gunman walked back to the BMW and drove down the entrance road and parked in front of the cottage. He then removed his guns from the car before releasing the man from the trunk. After taking him inside the house and handcuffing him to a stair rail, the gunman returned to the BMW, poured petrol over it and set it alight.
Only minutes after the shooting began at Port Arthur, the first police were summoned to the scene. Hearing the emergency radio call, two young constables, Paul Hyland and Garry Whittle, drove rapidly towards the area. As Constable Hyland approached Seascape Cottage, he saw the damaged vehicles on the side of the road and stopped to investigate. Seeing smoke billowing from the car parked in front of the cottage, he drove back down the high way to set up a roadblock. By this time Constable Whittle had arrived and he also parked his vehicle across the highway on the other side of the entrance to seal off the area.
Soon after two other police arrived, the BMW exploded sending them diving for cover. As they manoeuvred their vehicles into safer positions, shots were fired in their direction from the cottage. The police held their position until members of the Special Operations Group relieved them shortly after dark. As they took up flanking position around the guesthouse, more shots were fired from within the cottage. The operation was further hampered by poor radio reception making it almost impossible for the police to confirm each other’s positions.
As the hours ticked away, information about the gunman began to seep through. The lone gunman was believed to be Martin Bryant, a twenty-eight year old resident of New Town, a suburb of Hobart, Bryant was described as being tall with long blond hair and pale skin, almost albino in appearance and “a little slow.” Another piece of information that filtered through caused greater concern. In addition to the AK15 and FN semi-automatic rifles that Bryant was known to be carrying, he had access to several more firearms that belonged to David and Sally Martin, the owners of Seascape Cottage. Given the additional weapons, at least three hostages and the lack of suitable cover around cottage, a direct assault was ruled out and a specialist negotiation team was summoned.
Off and on for the next six hours, the senior police negotiator, Sergeant Terry McCarthy spoke to Bryant over phone. During the course of the negotiations, Bryant’s only demand was that he be given a “ride” in an army helicopter. Eventually, contact with the cottage was lost when the batteries went flat on the cordless phone that Bryant was using. As the vigil continued, police reinforcements from as far away as Victoria and New South Wales arrived at the scene creating the largest single police action in Australia’s history.
The next morning, Monday, April 29, senior police met to decide the next course of action. Shortly after, smoke was seen billowing from the cottage and at 8.25 am, Martin Bryant ran from the building, his clothing ablaze. As police rushed forward to make the arrest, Bryant tore his clothes from his body and gave himself up. Later, as ambulance officers smothered his skin with ointment, Bryant asked them if it was petrol they were using. He was later conveyed to the same hospital where many of his victims were fighting for their lives. After the fire was put out, more bodies were found inside the cottage. Included in the dead were the Seascape’s owners, David and Sally Martin and Glenn Pears, the man that had been locked in the car. Police would later establish that Pears had been murdered sometime during the negotiations and Bryant killed the Martins prior to his arrival at Port Arthur. In a period of just over nineteen hours, Martin Bryant, a man described by locals as being “a quiet lad and a bit of a loner,” had killed thirty-five men, women and children and wounded another eighteen making him the most notorious spree killer of all time. He is now is solitary confinement in a Hobart psychiatric prison.
As hard as it may be to believe, my Turn ‘Round Australia guest at that time Nesan Kistan, has no room for anger or bitterness in his walk with the Lord.
Nesan’s Journey into faithfulness began when he first heard on the radio of a shooting in Tasmania. Shortly after, he received a phone call from his brother, telling him their father had been shot dead.
“Even though there was a lot of publicity about what Dad said as he was dying,” Nesan reveals, “I struggled with the concept that he actually could have said, ‘I am going to be with the Lord’—he was shot in the back of the head so, according to the coroner’s report, his death would have been instantaneous.”
“I reasoned that he either said it at some point during the shooting or it was a miracle and the Lord allowed him to declare his faith.”
Whatever the reason, the words “I am going with the Lord” came to form an indelible testimony to the faith held by the Kistan family. It was a faith which began its journey in South Africa, a country wracked by internal strife and besieged by international condemnation.
Although Nesan says he can’t remember a lot of the lifestyle in his native country, he admits that the political environment had a great bearing on his father and, subsequently, himself.
He reveals, “My Dad Tony was a political activist and that influences me a lot—we came to Australia because Dad was concerned about the policies of the government at the time.”
It was with such a background that Nesan found himself at school, mixed up and confused.
“Coming from a culture where I was taught I was inferior because of my skin colour and was constantly on the outer, I used to retaliate and be pretty sensitive,” he said.
Then, while he was in the year ten at school, he recognised the need for God in his life.
“I met a Baptist minister from Ashfield and he encouraged me greatly: he gave me a sense of being “built up” that I had never encountered before. To the amazement of my friends and teachers, I decided not to retaliate anymore.”
“I can’t remember his name but I do recall that he was very short and very loving and very caring.”
But it was the Salvation Army which came to have the greatest bearing on Nesan’s growth as a Christian. Through individual relationships and group activities, such as Boy’s Legion, Nesan came to know and love God in a personal and profound way.
“The big attraction with the Salvation Army that it was Christianity with its sleeves rolled up,” he said. “Whenever there was a problem, or people were in need, you could find the Salvation Army—it was always at the forefront.”
Nesan said it was the “practical Christianity” which struck him and his family the most, and encouraged them to shift their denominational allegiance from the Assemblies of God (where they had worshipped in South Africa) to the Salvation Army.
“It was local, it was part of local community and it offered the basic necessities for all Christians—Sunday school, fellowship, Bible study and the like.”
Nesan’s first taste of Christian occurred back in South Africa—through his grandparents. “My father became a Christian after his parents gave their lives to Christ—my grandfather was an incredible example of ministering—he used to walk miles to proclaim the Word.”
The legacy of that upbringing was that Nesan and his brother developed a strong affection for people, regardless of their background or belief system.
Although he is deeply committed to the Salvation Army, Nesan is able to critically assess its strengths and weaknesses.
“The Church, as a whole, has lost the thirst for the Gospel—we rely so much on community funding that we do not want to stir anything up. If the founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth, came back, he would be horrified, I think he would probably seek to close down all the existing structures and try to get away from what it is now.”
If that seems a slightly jaded perspective from a still-youthful 29 year old, do not be fooled. Nesan is still deeply committed to his faith, and his Church.
“The people are ready for God’s message—all they need is someone to lead them,” he said.
The conviction that Christian need to fulfil their God-given potential is a driving force in Nesan’s life. Perhaps, since his father’s death, it has become even more pressing.
“My father’s death has brought to the forefront the passion I feel about my relationship with Jesus. Someone described it like a bottle of fizzy drink which has shaken up and is just waiting to explode. I am now ready to realise what God is placing within me.
“God does not allow things like this to happen—they happen because they are part of life. To really appreciate happiness, you need to experience pain. And we do not have to fear death anymore because Jesus’ death on the Cross has restored us to life.”
An avid sports fan, enjoying squash, touch football and soccer, Nesan is now running in what St Paul described as the “greatest race of life”. In September 1996, he began work with the Salvation Army in Wollongong as he was finishing his study of Political Science, with Honours.
He also is committed to spreading the message of forgiveness in the wake of the Port Arthur tragedy, whose impact is still being felt today. “Dad’s death reminded me that we have a very short time on Earth,” he said.” It is selfish for Christian not to share the Gospel and if we are embarrassed or uncomfortable, that is selfish too. Christians need to speak of the reality of things—our faith is all about life and death and if a person does not have the Gospel when they die, they will go to Hell. That is the reality.” Nesan has become a youth pastor and is now the youth minister at the Salvation Army’s City Citadel where he is an inspiration to other young people.
The city of Sydney would grow to be one of the world’s great cities and Wesley Mission would grow to be one of the world’s great churches and I was privileged to spend each day in the heart of both.