I can remember more from the 12th of September (as it was for us) than any other day in my lifetime...
I had actually gone to bed after midnight, however had decided to turn off the radio and the TV just to get a bit of relaxation.
I woke up at about 6:30 am when my Wallace and Grommit radio alarm clock woke me up to the sounds of The Andrew Denton Breakfast Show on Triple M. Normally Andrew Denton is extremely funny. The only time he was ever serious on the show was when he was talking about South Sydney's case for re-admission into the NRL.
Andrew Denton was not talking about Souths and he was deadly serious. I knew something was up as people were ringing up and crying over the airwaves. I was told that America was under attack. I switched on the TV in my bedroom to Channel 9 where there was footage of a harbour with the insignia "America Under Attack" spewed across the bottom of the screen.
Normally I need a shower to be able to function in the morning, however my eyes were fixated to the screen, I was in a state of shock. Even when I slipped out of shock for a moment I felt that it would be wrong of me not to be shocked. It took me about 30 minutes to get dressed, taking at least a minute to do up each button on my shirt. By this time I had already seen numerous replays of the Towers collapsing, and I knew I had to go downstairs to have some breakfast.
I then raced down the driveway at my place, which takes a good 10 seconds or so as it is a battleaxe block. Upon opening up the Front Page of the Telegraph had a black and white picture of the pane hitting the tower with the headline "ACT OF WAR". I was chilled to the bone and after running out of time to have any cereal I quickly took an apple out of the fridge to eat on the run. I was already running late for my train.
I had to speed up to make sure I got to the station on time. A thousand thoughts were running through my head and I felt like I had a fever and was full of sweat, however I don't think I was actually perspiring. I ended up getting to the station with minutes to spare in the end as without knowing it I had just been compelled to walk faster than I'd ever walked before.
I walked down the platform at Narwee Station to the second last light tower in order to be able to enter the train through the first door of the back carriage like I did every day. I used to see two good friends of mine at the station everyday who I would talk to before catching the train. I didn't want to bring the subject up in case he had not heard about it, so after a long silence he finally broke the silence by "Did you see the World Trade Centre". I gave an uneasy "yeah, it was bad wasn't it" before resuming the silence.
Upon getting on the train I took my regular position in the foyer holding onto the bar as there was no chance of me getting a seat at that time of the moring. A colleague of mine had the Sydney Morning Herald and we started discussing it. I then noticed that unlike at the Station, everybody on the train was talking to anybody about it. There was no other topic of conversation.
As the train trip went on three more people I knew came into my carriage. Normally I only caught the train in with one of my mates. One talked about a book his Mother had been reading that detailed an attack similar to the one we had seen that morning. The other two were good blokes who had the most warped sense of humous. No subject was taboo for them and they proceded to roll of a list of jokes about the subject already. I don't know how many people they offended, but the ability to laugh gave me some relief.
We then got off the train at St. James station, and the next thing I can remember upon getting into town is walking through the front door and thinking the place was a ghost town. I eventually found about 150 people in a room that was better designed to fit 30. Everyone's eyes were focussed on TV. I remember the feeling throughout the room was that World War III had started.
When it was finally time to start work, TV's remained on watching the CNN Feed of the event. There was then a brief memorial service held where prayers were offered and reflections made. Not much work got done on that day.
I remember a few people who either came from America or who had relatives over there not lasting out the first hour as they were just so distraught they had to go home. Eventually it was time for morning tea and a large group of us went up on to the roof to get some fresh air and have a bite to eat. There was amass airing of views. Everybody had an opinion. Talk about every war in the history of man came to the surface. There was also a heated discussion as those with pretty prejudiced views started condemning anything that was closely related to Islam or Muslims ingeneral. It was a real dogfight.
Out of nowhere, without any warning the sky went grey. Two seconds later it was raining, and two seconds after that it was hailing like the banshees. To make a run to the stairs would have seen you get pelted by hail, so instead around 20 of us gathered under the one bit of shelter on the roof that was the permanent umbrella. It was a decent size, however when the lightning came we were starting to worry that some of us were having to lean against the metal pole.
The downpour of hail continued for 10 minutes straight. It just kept coming. Then as quickly as it has come, it was gone. The sun was back out and everybody looked at eachother knowing this wasn't their normal day.
At the end of the day we went home on the train in a rather large group of about 9 or 10. The train was notably rather empty, however it was full of discarded papers. I'd never seen so many papers on a train in my life. Almost all of us were able to pick up and read a paper for ourselves. There had already been two more editions put out since the morning paper I had read screaming "Act Of War". When I got off the train I would by a fourth edition of that day's paper. We had all looked at the side by side pictures of the New York skyline with the Towers and the skyline without the Towers. We were in awe.
I got home and came in the front door to see the TV on CNN. I stayed glued to the Pay TV News channel for the rest of the night. I also made time to go on the internet, which led me to here and this very thread. I read various international newspapers, however my most vivid memory was of going to the Britsh Channel 4 cricket forum where I had been a regular. For about three weeks we'd had one of the best threads going entitled "Hating The Yanks". Every single conceivable thing that Americans could do to get on your nerves had been listed. It goes without saying that there was a couple of messages there saying that it was fair to say this brought an end to the thread. It left a real feeling of guilt in each forummer's chest and this was expressed with quite a few apologies.
However the one thing that sticks out in my mind the most was sitting around the dinner table at around 9:30 on the night that was the 11th of September. A discussion was going on about the issues of the day such as the Tampa crisis, and it jumped to International politics. We got talking about George W. Bush and I said "You know, America haven't had a war for a while. They're about due for one aren't they". The other poeple round the table said that I may just be right, however after talking about Bush being a bit of a trigger happy guy and China being a potential rival power the conversation drfited off into other areas.
I think the reason I was in shock the most was because I vividly remembered making that statement. It wasn't like I had been saying America were ready for a War on a constant basis. The last time I even discussed America and potential war was back in the January of that year when Bush was made President. The fact I made that statement for it to be fulfilled only two hours later still gets the chills running up my spine to this day.
At the time I thought the World has changed forever. And even though it has, it is amazing how life has just continued on and those attacks are now confined to history.
Cheers.
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Delete Message 145 of 728 in Discussion </td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr> <tr> <td colspan=2 width="100%"> <table border=0 cellpadding=4 cellspacing=0 width="100%"> <tbody> <tr> <td nowrap valign=top width="100%">From:Hass</td> <td nowrap valign=top>Sent:12/09/2001 7:21PM</td></tr></tbody></table> <table border=0 cellpadding=10 cellspacing=0 width="100%"> <tbody> <tr> <td> This is my first post on this thread (it's been a long day). And I thought I'd bring it back to a human level. It took me over half an hour to get dressed today. I left for the train station late, yet still managed to get to the station earlier than normal. When I reached my destination it was pointed out to me that I had not put my collar down over my tie......I was shocked.
. But what i saw was the most amazing site of all time. One tower was already down, and i had the misfortune of seeing the other one collapse right before my eyes. From memory, there was a news broadcast going, and in the background, the tower just dropped.
