For many Tasmanians, Port Arthur will always be our "where were you when" memory.

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A uni student living in Hobart, I was watching a soccer game when we heard the news on the radio and saw a helicopter fly overhead.

It was back at our residential college when we got a sense of how many lives those terrible events touched.

Frantic parents from around the country and overseas were ringing their kids' rooms. No one had mobiles back then.

If there was no answer, the calls came through to a common room, and if you were the closest, you picked up the phone.

Only now, as a parent myself, do I have an inkling of the fear that was driving those calls; of the dread they would have felt as the casualty count grew.

Thirty years on, how do we reflect on Australia's worst mass shooting?

Tuesday's commemoration will rightly focus on the enduring impact on survivors, families, staff of the historic site and the local community.

For those who were there, for those who lost loved ones, the trauma and the grief will remain.

For Australians at large, it is impossible for our minds not to go to........

© The Examiner