Amy Gunia, a CNN features writer, had just flown into Sydney from Hong Kong on Sunday morning for a family holiday with her husband, toddler and baby.
The beach was crowded with people, including families with children, and swimmers enjoying the water after a hot summer day.
Her family had just finished having an early dinner at North Bondi and were walking back south past Bondi Pavilion when they heard “pops.”
“I kind of turned around thinking maybe it was fireworks or something celebratory,” Gunia said.
“We had two kids in strollers and saw people closer to the pavilion running. Very quickly, it just turned into a panic situation where everyone was running, and cars were kind of zooming as fast as they could – sort of a mass panic.”
“We paused for before doing anything … because I thought this is Australia. That doesn’t really happen here,” she said.
“We just kind of stood and turned around and looked to see, tried to figure out what was going on. But people who were a bit closer were running and running very fast.
“So out of an abundance of caution, we decided to run, too, and ran uphill to get away from the away from the noise, as quickly as we could.”
They tossed off their shoes and carried the strollers up several stairs to their AirBnB to get away. The data on her husband’s fitness tracker suggested they started running at 6:40 p.m. local time.
As she spoke on the phone with CNN at around 8 p.m. local time, helicopters were still flying overhead.
