Bondi Junction shopping centre stabbing triggers those affected by Strathfield Plaza massacre in 1991
Lisa Roberts still feels the same dread and grief.
Over the past 33 years, she's learned to live with it.
She knows what the triggers might be, how to manage through them, that this feeling is something she has to process every day.
Warning: This story contains details that may be distressing for some readers.
"It never leaves. I still think of her every year on the 17th of August," Ms Roberts said.
"You have to learn how to process and to just go on."
Enduring trauma
On the afternoon of Saturday, August 17, 1991, a 33-year-old man murdered seven people and injured six others at Strathfield Plaza using a knife and semi-automatic rifle before taking his own life.
One of the victims was friends with Ms Roberts' older sister.
All three attended The McDonald College, a nearby performing arts school, regularly spending time at Strathfield Plaza after class.
In the decades after the Strathfield massacre, Ms Roberts experienced grief and trauma — feelings that were compounded by visions of the perpetrator, guilt, publicised footage, and misinformation about her sister's friend.
Eventually, she was able to live alongside these memories and trauma.
Last Saturday, it all came flooding back when Ms Roberts heard that six people were killed at Westfield Bondi Junction.
"I actually had to go and pick up my sister from Bondi on Saturday, she was working there. And just all that feeling came back of dread and just being absolutely scared."
"It's just as triggering now as it was back then."
Edwina Nelson was 17 and living in Ashfield at the time of the massacre, her younger brother also attending The McDonald College.
"I think because I was a teenager at the time, and there was a teenager involved, it was too close to the bone for us back then," Ms Nelson said.
"The first thing [the Bondi Junction stabbing attack] did was just trigger you back to that memory of your exposure to that event back then."
Gregory Read was awarded The Star of Courage for his role in warning shoppers in Strathfield Plaza to take cover from the attacker, who chased him and shot him twice.
"Whenever you go to a shopping centre and you hear a loud bang, you distinctly think, 'Is that a bullet? The sound of a gun being fired?' You just learn to say, 'No, that's traffic'," he said.
"It was very emotional. And I can't explain it — why I did [cry]."
"But all I know is when I first saw [the Bondi Junction stabbing attack], I said, 'Greg, you got to pull yourself together and put that away in The Hurt Locker'."
'People still talk about it'
Cathy Jones, secretary of the Strathfield Homebush District Historical Society and a lifelong resident of Strathfield, said the massacre left the Strathfield community "shattered".
"I know a lot of people who were there that day, and people still talk about it," Ms Jones said.
"A lot of people just didn't want to go back to the shopping centre. And, in the years afterwards, businesses left the area. Things did change afterwards."
One reason why, Ms Jones speculates, is over where it took place.
"You'd never expect that something like this would actually ever happen at your local shopping centre," she said.
"People always assume a shopping centre is safe."
Outcry about gun laws
These feelings extended beyond Strathfield.
Rebecca Peters was a journalist and law student in 1991 and the Strathfield massacre led her to investigate gun law reform.
"In Sydney, we all just suddenly felt, 'Oh, we are in danger'. This isn't just a policy question … all of us went to the shopping centres," she said.
Ms Peters, who is an adviser with the Transitions Foundation and international gun law reform expert, said while there was "about one mass shooting a year" in Australia at the time, this shooting "brought it home", leading to protests and demands for reform.
"It was, as I recall, the first time in Sydney that I recall seeing a big public outcry about the gun laws."
'Very readily reactivated again'
While what occurred in Bondi Junction is in itself a tragedy, for those who have experienced similar events previously, this attack was a traumatic flashback.
"There's a proportion of people for whom a traumatic event, let's say, going through a mass shooting, has a long lasting effect," UNSW's Traumatic Stress Clinic director Richard Bryant said.
"At a neurobiological level, what's happened is the brain has been rewired to a sense, so that those memories are still being activated on a frequent basis."
Professor Bryant said that this becomes problematic when somebody gets reminded of that experience.
"Those neurobiological processes are then very readily reactivated again," he said.
Professor Bryant encouraged those triggered by the Bondi Junction stabbing attack to seek mental health support.
Beyond Blue CEO Georgie Harman also encouraged those to seek professional support and to "stay in touch with themselves and with others as well" if the feelings continued to linger.
Ms Roberts also encouraged others to seek help if they, like her, were struggling or directly affected.
"Maybe some people feel like they're not directly affected, but if they're still feeling something, they should try and get some help and speak to someone," she told ABC News Radio.
"I think part of the healing process is to sit in that grief and to know that's a very normal part of the healing process."