It is counter-intuitive and possibly wise on a day like this to reflect that Australia is not a nation familiar with massacre on its streets.

The appalling scenes on what is a quintessentially Australian place of ease, Bondi Beach, are shocking not merely for the unthinkable human tragedy visited upon families and a community that was doing nothing but celebrating a sacred festival.

Flowers laid outside Bondi Pavilion on Monday.Credit: Louise Kennerley

It has rocked Australia because it is so desperately abnormal.

There have been mass shooting murders over the past 40 years in Australia – the Hoddle Street and Queen Street massacres, both in Melbourne in 1987, come to mind, and massacres of Aboriginal people were common in early colonial times – but there is only one modern Australian horror that can be compared to the Bondi bloodbath.

The killing of 35 people and the wounding of 23 others by Martin Bryant at Port Arthur, Tasmania, on April 28, 1996, remains lodged deep in the Australian consciousness.

That the Port Arthur massacre retains such dominance in the national memory almost 30 years after it occurred is not simply because of the horrifying toll of dead and injured.

It remains remarkable because Australia’s leaders chose to confront the fact that Bryant used semi-automatic weapons to carry out his........

© The Sydney Morning Herald