I lived and worked around Bondi for years. The emergency response tells you everything you need to know about the area.
Dec. 15, 2025Updated 4:24 a.m. ET
Scrolling through the videos and photos from the shooting in Bondi Beach, not far from where I lived in Sydney, Australia, until about a year ago, I found myself scanning in fear for faces that I recognized.
I already knew that friends and acquaintances were there, from the WhatsApp groups that I’m still a part of, and, eventually, I saw and heard from a few of them. An hour after the attack, many were still at the beach, alarmed and shocked, but also surrounded by sirens.
The shooting happened within a stone’s throw of the Bondi Surf Lifesaving Club — a beachfront clubhouse built in 1934 that hums every weekend with volunteer lifeguards wearing uniforms of bright yellow and red. When the shooting started, one of the members with military experience was the first to run out, drawing in a number of terrified children.
A friend who was there told me that within seconds of the gunfire ending, a crew of “clubbies” surged to the scene. In videos of the aftermath, I could see the familiar equipment and yellow boards that I had trained with when I became a volunteer in Bronte, a nearby beach.
“We went out with a couple of first-aid kits at first, and it clearly wasn’t enough,” said Matias Bengolea, 41, a lifesaver who had just finished his afternoon patrol when he heard the pop of gunfire. “I ran back and was getting everything — oxygen and defibrillators and boards to carry people, because they didn’t have enough stretchers.”
“It was a bit crazy,” he added. “There were people dressed as Christmas elves because we were having a Christmas party — and they were doing CPR.”
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Curated by Marcus Thompson
