Why Sydney is preserving thousands of flowers after deadly Bondi attack

From the outside, the vacant store on the corner of a busy avenue in central Sydney appears abandoned. Plastic sheets are taped over all the windows and a large padlock hangs on the door handle.

Step inside, though, and you’ll be greeted by stuffed animals, candles, trinkets, and messages of hope scrawled on large sheets.

All come from a makeshift memorial created after the Dec. 14 attack at Bondi Beach that killed 15 people.

So when the Sydney Jewish Museum and the Australian Jewish Historical Society learned that the memorial was going to be removed by the local council, they sprang into action to ensure that everything within it could live on.

Many items now sit in neat squares made of masking tape in the workshop.

One says “bees” – inside are dozens of cuddly, knitted insects – a nod to 10-year-old Matilda Bee, the attack’s youngest victim.

Another has a bunch of deflated foil balloons – again, mostly bees.

There’s also a box of stones – Jewish mourners traditionally place a stone on a grave instead of flowers – as well as flags, books, Christmas decorations and even a Barbie cookie.

Some families who were unable to attend any of the vigils in Bondi also visited the spaces housing the tributes.

“It was too overwhelming being in Bondi, but in that space it was very calm. And I think seeing everything that was laid out and the amount, they found it really moving and meaningful,” said Shannon Biederman, senior curator at the Jewish Museum Sydney.

Families also came to the floral area and received the pressing of flowers, while artists and community members also participated.

For Shannon, commemorating these objects is a deeply personal task.

His family regularly attended Hanukkah by the sea, the holiday targeted by the suspected gunmen. They had bought tickets to go but at the last minute they changed their minds.

They also knew the family of Rabbi Eli Schlanger, one of the 15 victims.

“I work in a Holocaust museum, so the killing of Jews is not something I’m not used to, and I’ve learned to compartmentalize,” she says.

“But it’s different because I’m used to working with history and this is now, and we’re a museum of memory, but we’re still very much alive. [this].

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was among the first to lay a bouquet outside Bondi Pavilion the morning after the attack. For a week, the tributes spread like a wave on the square.

The Bondi massacre was Australia’s worst mass shooting in almost three decades and left the country in shock. People also pointed the finger at the government for allowing such a thing to happen to a community that had repeatedly alerted authorities to a rise in anti-Semitism in recent years.

But the conversation is now trying to focus on bringing people together — a feeling the community wants to see endure in a permanent memorial to the fallen.

On Thursday, monuments across the country will also be illuminated and a minute of silence will be observed in honor of the victims. Australians are also being asked to perform a mitzvah – a daily act of kindness such as checking in on a neighbor or making a donation – a Jewish tradition and a way to bring people together after last month’s attack.

It is not yet clear how the memorial will endure: several artists have come forward, wanting to work with some of the material, but a committee will make the final decisions.

“I started with a lot of anger”

And although the toys and trinkets were cataloged, the biggest challenge was taking care of the flowers left behind.

Volunteers had to keep the three tonnes of bouquets and wreaths loaded into black bags and transported to a separate warehouse in North Sydney.

The process was complex, says Nina Sanadze, a Jewish artist from Melbourne, who oversaw the operation.

“When they brought them here, they looked like 100 bodies,” Nina says. “It was shocking again.”

Once they arrived at the warehouse, dozens of volunteers began the slow process of hanging them on also hastily purchased metal fences.

They also had to wear masks to protect themselves from the large amount of pollen in circulation.

Shannon also worried that the large amount of flowers and the gases they emitted could create a compost fire. Volunteers therefore had to carefully monitor temperatures and brought fans.

“The smell and humidity here in the warehouse was overwhelming,” says Nina. “It was like being in a perfume store.”

Meanwhile, the flowers continued to flow.

“After the council made the decision to clean up this large collection of flowers, people continued to bring them in,” says Nina. “We had volunteers to go pick them up at night, otherwise they would be thrown away.”

The stems were saved for compost – which Nina says she plans to turn into some sort of furniture.

Some of the rose buds had also started to rot, but she dried them and made a resin artwork dotted with salvageable petals.

“There’s a lot of decadence and sadness as well as beauty,” she says of her improvised creation. “[It] brings it right into the story of what happened – it’s not something of perfect beauty but it’s a story, it’s heartbreak and love all rolled into one.”

Although it’s a daunting task, for many volunteers, helping to preserve the mountain of tributes left at the site is a form of therapy.

And while the concept for the memorial is still germinating, Nina has already settled on the title.

“Petal by Petal,” she said confidently. This speaks to how methodically the volunteers had to proceed to preserve the material and symbolizes his own slowness in dealing with the attack.

“I started off with a lot of anger when I came here,” Nina admits. “I feel like I’m leaving in a better mood.”

She hopes the resulting artwork and memorials can help the community do the same.

“It can soften hearts, it can communicate,” she says. “And one of the things about flowers is that not only do they speak to the fragility of humans, but they don’t have language, everyone understands flowers.”