Many still fail to comprehend why Hoddle Street happened. By ‘Hoddle Street‘, one refers to the ‘Hoddle Street Shootings‘ near Clifton Hill railways station in inner northern Melbourne on the night of 9th August 1987.
At the time of writing, Hoddle Street was 36 years ago. The local media at the time within days quickly labelled the shootings as ‘The Hoddle Street Massacre’. That is inflammatory sensationalism typical of tabloid so-called ‘journalism’. Unaccountable Wikipedia is ascribed by hosts of anonymous authors, writing under pseudonyms. They have dominated the Internet record of Hoddle Street thus:
Both of these Wikipedia websites contain information taken from other sources, some verified, others not. Both have many errors of fact, copious omissions of fact, display a distinct lack of journalistic objectivity, and are written by anonymous authors, likely with a hateful gripe, yet ignorant of the truth. But then Wikipedia is free to online readers, so pay ‘peanuts and get monkeys’, and ‘believe what you read online and in the newspapers’.
Such perpetuates public ignorance.
Another dodgy website that seems to salivate in documenting hundreds of murders globally is this one:
The author of this website is (was) one Juan Ignacio Blanco from Spain. Fortunately he died in 2019 aged 63 – so no more crap from this bloke.
Read more:
https://spainsnews.com/juan-ignacio-blanco-dies-criminologist-of-the-alcsser-case-la-provincia/
Yet, convenient Internet topic searching mostly via Google results with these three on page 1. This is typical (and lazy) where the public draws its knowledge of Hoddle Street – by anonymous writers with no accountability. The content of all three should be presumed to be unsubstantiated, hatefully biased and fabricated.
Recommendation: Should anyone seek information about a serious illness or about financial advice, don’t go to Dr Google or to Jimmy Wales’ Wiikipedia fake news.
Factually, without seeking to understate, downgrade nor excuse this horrific crime unprovoked against many innocents, ‘Hoddle Street’ historically in global terms was not of the scale of a ‘massacre’. We have no relish in comparing Hoddle Street to any other ‘mass shootings‘ (a more apt term to what occurred) in Australia or elsewhere.
We provide an Internet link below to enable readers to reflect on what a ‘massacre’ is considered to be:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_events_named_massacres
As stated, many old enough to have been around in 1987, still fail to comprehend why Hoddle Street happened. This is especially the surviving victims who were just going about their evenings at the time along Hoddle Street, their loved ones, their families, friends, witnesses, first responders, police, and the media present at the scene at the time.
Some 36 years hence, sadly yet naturally, increasing numbers of younger Melburnians, Victorians and Australians don’t even know what ‘Hoddle Street‘ means. This is because they have no living memory of the event, that their elders have not told them, educational institutions avoid local history, and few these days take an interest in local history, and regrettable our young have learned about far larger scale massacres, despite our advanced and (mostly) prosperous 21st Century society.
This is dangerous…
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
~ George Santayana [1863-1952], philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist.
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes.
Melburnians fail to comprehend how the heinous mass shooting in Hoddle Street could have happened in their marvellous city – mass shootings are what only happens in gun-crazed America, but not here. Such scale of mass shooting had never happened in Melbourne nor Victoria before. But it had historically happened in Australia, if one chooses to read Australian History since 1788 – warts and all.
Indeed, the Cowra Breakout in central New South Wales during World War II was indeed a massacre, but that occurred under a military context. Australia also has a colonial history of many large scale massacres, particularly committed upon hundreds of Aborigines at a time – should members of the public bother to undertake historically-authenticated factual research.
This author was born and raised in Melbourne. But the author also knew Julian Knight as a trainee colleague at Duntroon in early 1987 just before this awful unnecessary tragedy, (and still does) so perhaps more than many others (not all), one wants too to know WHY? This is one reason for this website.
Many Melburnians especially, and fellow Victorians and more broadly Australians, old enough to have been around at the time, fail to understand the following:
- So, why did Hoddle Street happen?
- Why were innocent people targeted by the shooter?
- What was the shooter’s state of mind at the time to kill (and try to kill) as many people as he could? – all random civilians, all strangers to the shooter, until their were dead?
- What was he doing having three high calibre rifles including lots of ammunition in his possession?
- After subsequent evidence was presented, given the shooter been accepted into the Royal Military College at Duntroon for officer leadership training, following intense Army Selection Board scrutinizing process (including psychological and aptitude testing by The Army’s medical experts) , why within weeks of his discharge from the Army on Wednesday 22nd July 1987 at Watsonia Army Barracks (Melbourne), did Knight, just 18 days later, commit a shooting mass murder near his family home in Clifton Hill on the night of 9th August 1987?
These questions and others are worthy of analysing as not yet before, and to posit insightful researched answers.
This analysis is with a view of offering those genuinely interested to find greater comprehension about the shooter’s recent background experiences and consequential state of mind, as to WHY?
