Bomb scare

It’s strange, there was a bomb scare at the Perth Train Station last night and I can’t seem to spot any news reports on the event. Perhaps the West Australian will mention it, but I think I will have to buy the paper edition to check.

M and I were in town last night on our regular weekly date. (We go on a pub bookshop crawl and eat junk food, it’s very romantic and I wouldn’t miss it for the world!) As our final stop, at a bit after 8pm, we went to Tim’s White Dwarf Books, which to our horror had closed at 6pm earlier that evening. Dejected, because our money spending plans were thwarted, we headed for the car which was parked at the Citiplace carpark (the one above the train station), only to find that the whole train station was cordoned off, and there were police officers everywhere telling people the station was closed, and to go to Barrack Street to get to our cars.

I saw the unsettling (to me) sight of police officers walking along the train tracks shining torches as if they were looking for something, and officers shining torches into the roofs of the platform shelters. M and I walked to the front of the train station, only to be told by a police man to “GET ACROSS the road, cause if anything happens you don’t want to be caught up in it!” I was already nervous, and having him say that made me more nervous. He wouldn’t say what the problem was, though.

On the Forrest Place side of Wellington Street, directly across from the train station (Perth people can probably visualise where I mean), a small crowd of people gathered, trying to work out what was happening. We made our way up to the Forrest Chase concourse, only to find that that too was blocked off – and the police officer there telling everyone who asked “Yes, there’s been a bomb threat.” When we finally got to Barrack Street there were crowds of people paying for their parking. You could see police officers everywhere as the platforms were all still closed. People didn’t seem unduly worried, though, and I felt like I was just being paranoid. By the time we drove past the station on Roe Street, the station was open again, with people packing the platforms, and Friday night revellers making their way through into Northbridge.

I was thinking about how casual many people seemed about the whole thing – the people standing across the road from the train station could have been injured if a bomb had gone off, but whereas M’s and my first impulse was to try and get away as quickly as we could, they all just stood and gawked. The train station must surely get bomb threats from time to time (I’m sure we have our share of nutcases in Perth), but this was the first time I know of that they actually closed the station. Maybe the authorities were just being careful after the recent events in London.

On a completely different note, the SuperNova shop is completely empty now, all the books gone, and a sign on the door saying that the shop has relocated to 8 Shafto Lane, and that it will be reopening in August 2005.

Categories: Perth train station, Western Australia, bomb scare, Supernova, Tim’s White Dwarf Books, bookshop, fantasy, science fiction