Who bombed the Hilton? (5 page)

According to Superintendent Reginald Douglas's
notes entitled ‘Policing of the Hilton Hotel', issued on 5 February 1978 to all serving officers, this particular officer would have been in ‘A District', designating the police stationed at the George Street entrance. Their principal job, according to page nine of the notes, is to report any ‘untoward incident'. They would be informed of imminent arrivals of VIPs and if any demonstrations are to be expected. Any eventuality not specifically mentioned was to be ‘dealt with as it occurs with commonsense'.
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Waving away a garbage truck to avoid the potential awkwardness of the Prime Minister of Singapore sitting behind its stinking rear while the Australian Prime Minister watches Snashall and his crew empty the bins on a Sunday morning seems like commonsense to me. This is the only instance of a garbage truck being waved on by police.

The bin, however, is kept busy all day. Jacques Stoupel is vigilant about litter — he finds himself picking up refuse all morning in between assisting the reception of the prime ministers of Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Nauru. Just before lunch he picked up a ‘cardboard milkshake container' and popped it in the bin ‘without any difficulty' — noting that while ‘the refuse in the bin was fairly high … there was sufficient room for me to place the container inside'.

While he has the rubbish under control, he becomes increasingly tetchy about the gathering
demonstrators. He has to shoo away a couple who think it's a good idea to sit down on the footpath blocking the entrance. One of them, Stoupel observes, has hair of a ‘dirty appearance'.

The most prominent demonstrators are anarchists, New Zealand expatriates and feminists protesting against New Zealand Prime Minister Muldoon's abortion laws and his locking up of ‘political prisoners'. Other protesters include members of the Campaign for the Abolition of Political Police and a few members of the Indian sect Ananda Marga, who are protesting against the imprisonment of their leader, Baba. The bulk of the Margiis, however, are stationed at the airport awaiting the arrival of India's Prime Minister Desai. Photographs from the day reveal the demonstrators at the Hilton to be a rather relaxed bunch. They sit and stand in clusters in straw hats, summer dresses or T-shirts and flares, clutching hand-written signs and smiling at the police who hover around them.

As Reg Douglas's meticulous (but ultimately flawed) security plans indicate, the demonstrators are expected and, somewhat more surprisingly, are to be treated with civility, though no demonstrators are to be tolerated within the Hilton itself. If any are detected they are to be escorted outside and released.

Despite the growing irritation of Jacques Stoupel, the atmosphere between police and protesters seems fairly convivial throughout the day. Jacques's annoyance stems from a number of banner-wielding bearded types blocking the entrance and one flag-waving joker who shoves his placard into one of the upright cylinders through which the rope bordering the red carpet is looped. The police then move the barriers further back from the roped entrance, pushing the demonstrators further away.

Jacques keeps cleaning up, noting the bin is full by afternoon.

The bin continues its star turn — Stoupel observes a female protester resting her bum on it, holding a cup above her head. Around 11.30 am, Kevin O'Meara Gleeson, who has taken his kids to town for the day, also sits on the bin to watch the passing dignitaries. He also notices that it's full.
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Just after midday, Edward Patching, the Foreign Affairs liaison officer to the Western Samoan delegation, comes out to watch the arrival of the prime ministers. He immediately
observes that the two bins outside the Hilton ‘near the kerb and between the red carpet and the police barriers, were full of rubbish'. Patching is appalled: ‘I thought that this was unsightly and not in the good interests of the government to have garbage protruding through these cowls, in view of the heads of state'. Taking immediate action, Patching heads over to the middle bin at the side of the red carpet and forces ‘the garbage in through the cowl'. However, owing to the ‘compactness' of the garbage within, it springs back ‘to just below the lip of the cowl'. He does the same thing to the bin next to it. In this endeavour he is more successful as this one is not ‘as compacted as the other'.
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Anthony Cuthbertson, a signwriter and amateur photographer, observes that around 2.30 pm the middle bin starts to overflow. He also sees the demonstrators and their placards: ‘Free all political prisoners in NZ' and ‘Piggy Muldoon'. At one point the protester Carl Maltby stands a sign up in the bin:
Politicians are the pus of a suppurating society.
Cuthbertson adds that he believes that after the barriers were put up ‘a number of the demonstrators used the garbage tin as an excuse to enter the restricted area'. He then adds, ‘I made particular note of the garbage tin during the afternoon, thinking to myself that the overflowing garbage was an eyesore with visiting dignitaries due to arrive.'
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Anthony need not have worried unduly. In order to avoid the demonstrators there is a last-minute
decision to take New Zealand's Prime Minister Muldoon (who arrives at approximately 2 pm) and India's Prime Minister Desai (who arrives around 4.20 pm) in through the Pitt Street entrance. It's only when Jacques rolls up the red carpet and starts to pack up that the demonstrators realise they have been duped and have missed their targets.

At Sydney airport, members of the Ananda Marga present Desai with a petition protesting the imprisonment of their leader, Baba. We know this from the grainy surveillance photographs taken before and during the event. In them, one figure is strikingly distinct — a tall willowy man with a thick black beard and a turban. He looms above the other Margiis at the airport.
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His name is Abhiik Kumar. He is the spiritual leader of the Ananda Marga throughout Australasia. In the archive photographs someone has drawn a circle around his head. He is a man Detective Inspector Norm Sheather will come to know very well in the coming months.

By 5 pm all the leaders (including Desai and Fraser) depart via the George Street entrance for a cocktail party and after that a harbour cruise. The crowds, demonstrators and press depart.

At 10.30 pm the leaders return to the hotel via the George Street entrance. The conference proper is to begin the next morning.

It's a few hours before the bomb will explode. In
the days and years to come each minute will be sifted through minutely and contentiously.

Sunday, 11 pm. Police officers Burmistriw, Griffiths, Hawtin and Withers start their shifts outside George Street.

Between 11.30 pm and 12.30 am Monday morning the street remains moderately busy; people leaving a rock concert hosted by the radio station 2SM at the Opera House head up George Street, and Hilton guests and staff come and go. All pass by the bin.

Monday 13 February 1978

At 12.30 am Bill Ebb drives the Sydney City Council garbage truck north up George Street. Alec Carter is on the back, working the compactor; Bill Favell and John Watson fetch bins and deposit their contents in the back of the truck. Ebb sees that the bins outside the Hilton on the other side of the road are overflowing. He drives on looking for a safe place to perform a U-turn.
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12.35 am. A caller to the
Sydney Morning Herald
asks to speak to an editor. Journalist Tim Vaughan takes the call. A man with a European accent says, ‘You'll be interested in what the police are going to be doing down at the Hilton soon.'
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12.35 am to 12.40 am. Criminal Investigation
Branch (CIB) switchboard operator Suzanne Jones receives a phone call on the 20966 line, Sydney's main police line. A man with a European accent asks to be put through to Special Branch. She rings the line and there is no answer. Jones tells the man, ‘They don't seem to be there.'
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All the Special Branch officers on duty are on the seventh floor of the Hilton — the restaurant and bar level.
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Ebb turns the truck around. It heads towards the Hilton. Carter and Favell clear the bins. To do so they have to remove the circular metal top and then empty the bin into the truck. The compactor is not on. The truck approaches the Hilton. Police, staff and pedestrians mill about.

Jones puts the caller through to the CIB duty officer Cec Streatfield. ‘Listen carefully,' says the caller. ‘There is a bomb in a rubbish bin outside the Hilton Hotel in George Street.'
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John Watson picks up the bin just before the one at the Hilton. He tosses its contents into the maw of the compactor. Alec Carter compacts it, operating the levers as he stands on the tray. Ebb has his foot on the brake.

A policeman walks towards the bin directly out the front of the Hilton and pushes a large McDonald's bag into the full bin. Two Chinese men who work in Chinatown ascend the escalator, heading for the Hilton coffee shop.

Ebb moves the truck forward. The compactor is finished. Favell reaches for the bin directly outside the Hilton. It is overflowing.

Rosamund Dallow pulls up in a cab and heads to the Hilton entrance to start her security shift.

She passes Bill Favell carrying the bin. John Watson then passes him and runs for the one next to it. Favell carries the bin to the back of the truck.

The Hilton night receptionist Manfred Von Gries starts to descend the escalator.

Colin Wayne Nicholls, also a Hilton employee, a waiter on a break, sits outside the staff entrance, to the left of the escalators, as Rosamund enters the hotel.
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12.42 am. Cec Streatfield calls the police stationed at Central station (two blocks away from the Hilton). Sergeant Turner answers the phone.

The bin is emptied into the truck. There is a huge and violent explosion.

The back of the truck is blasted open on both sides. The street lights are blown out and windows shatter up to 16 storeys on both sides of the street.

Carter's right leg is blown off at the pelvis and his stomach split open. Shrapnel lacerates his liver and penetrates his spleen. He is dead.

Favell's torso is blown 40 metres back down George Street.

On the footpath, 15 metres from the truck, is a ‘portion of spinal column and scalp'. There is also
‘spine attached to portion of pelvis and remnants of thighs'. For a further 90 metres north of the truck more human remains are scattered. ‘The largest part identified [is] a right leg found in the front window of the Fletcher Jones store'.
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Manfred Von Gries sees ‘a policeman go up in the air'.
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Constable Burmistriw is hit in the head with shrapnel and swallows his tongue. Sergeant Hawkins clears his airway.

Constable Terry Griffiths has part of his foot blown off and his abdomen perforated by fragments from the blast.

Colin Nicholls's right leg is split from knee to pelvis.

Seven others are injured.

The marble hotel lobby is littered with debris and splashed with blood.

12.44 am. The sirens start. People are wailing, sobbing, screaming. Young coppers are dazed. There are people rushing towards the Hilton to look. A senior Commonwealth policeman takes charge and shoos people away. The first ambulance arrives and they begin frantically working on Burmistriw. The area starts to fill up with uniformed and Special Branch officers, firemen and ambulancemen.

Upstairs, Malcolm Fraser, woken by the explosion, is joined by his press secretary David Barnett
and Foreign Affairs Minister Andrew Peacock. Fraser goes straight down to the main floor of the Hilton in his pyjamas and red dressing gown. He walks down to the scene of the blast. Security will not let him out onto the street, fearing another bomb. He is in a unique position. Upstairs are the leaders of 10 countries (the President of Bangladesh has not yet arrived) and a bomb has just exploded on their doorstep. He is responsible for their safety.

Around 1 am, Fraser calls a meeting of all involved in security from Special Branch, Commonwealth Police, New South Wales police and Hilton security — all are in intense shock.
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The immediate task is to ensure that the Hilton itself is safe. The police search the hotel for further explosives. All remaining garbage bins are checked. The air conditioning is turned off and the ducts searched.

The next thing is to review the security for CHOGRM, due to commence in seven hours. The 12 leaders are expected to travel by train to Bowral, a few hours from Sydney, on the second day of the conference.

1.30 am. Suzanne Jones on the CIB switchboard receives another call from the man with the foreign accent. Again he says, ‘Put me through to Special Branch.' She does but the caller hangs up when the phone is not answered.
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