Our September 11 2001 Experience in Sydney

Our September 11 2001 Experience in Sydney

This is our first time blogging about Our September 11 2001 Experience in Sydney. If you know us close enough, we could have told you our September 11 2001 experience in Sydney. We were in Sydney at that time for a short semester break before flying to Melbourne.

We were in Sydney staying with our cousin in downtown and around midnight, one of our friends who was in town too asked us to switch on the TV. Almost all channels were showing the burning of the World Trade Center of New York. At first we thought it was a movie but then as we watched on, we started to get the chill from the September 11 attack. More coverage on other attacks including Pentagon and so on.

Due to the time zone difference, it is already September 12 during the September 11 attack so we were almost a day ahead.

The newspapers for September 12 were sold out and one of our friends manage to get a copy in Sydney and we only manage to get a few copies on September 13. The mood in Sydney were gloomy as there were lesser people on the street due to fear.

On September 14 2001, Ansett was shut down and we were supposed to fly to Melbourne on the following week. Our flights were cancelled, the other flights to Melbourne were too expensive and we took the 12 hour bus from Sydney to Melbourne with Greyhound.

The flight cancellation also caused us some problems as we are not sure whether we are entitled for the refund and eventually they did refund after a few years.

That summer, we flew back to Malaysia for our summer break and we have to endure two hours of queue due to strict immigration check and we almost missed our flight back to Kuala Lumpur.

In 2007, I flew to New York for work and manage to visit the World Trade Center Ground Zero and it was quite sad to see the actual place of the attack on September 11 2001.

You can actually visit the ground zero and they also put up the timeline of the attack. You can definitely get the chill when you are there.

The September 11 2001 has become an important history in our lifetime and same goes to SARS and COVID-19. There are many negativity in 2020 and we hope everyone can be positive, be safe and we will get out of this mess soon. Thank you for reading Our September 11 2001 Experience in Sydney!

Wilson Ng