As beachgoers fled the Bondi terror attack, viral photo shows lifeguard sprinting ‘pedal to the metal’ towards the scene
Jackson Doolan ran barefoot from Tamarama to Bondi ‘at something that surely every fibre in your being would tell you to go in the other direction’

lexandra Ching has lived in Bondi her whole life, describing the iconic beach nearby as her back yard. On Sunday evening, like many residents in the area, she heard pops echo through the neighbourhood and thought they were fireworks.

“Everyone did, but I thought it was too light and no one could see them, so what’s the point,” Ching tells the Guardian. She left her apartment to see people “streaming up Bondi Road”. When she saw the looks on their faces, she knew something was wrong.

As Ching stood on the road speaking with a couple who had run up the hill, still dripping wet in their swimmers, she heard someone come up behind her. It was a lifeguard sprinting towards Bondi, barefoot, from neighbouring Tamarama beach – about 1.5km away – carrying a defibrillator.

“I heard someone say ‘excuse me’, and as I turned I just saw this flash of blue,” she recounts. “He was just flying past. It was just him running in the direction that everyone was trying to escape from, carrying that big kit and barefoot … He’s running at something that surely every fibre in your being, you know, would tell you to go in the other direction.