Bondi Beach is almost unrecognisable. The sun is out but the surf is empty. The usually heaving main street is hushed.
Helicopters track overhead. Forensic investigators - bright blue figures in the distance - comb over the crime scene from Sunday afternoon when two gunmen opened fire at an event marking the Jewish festival of Hannukah, killing at least 15 people and injuring more than 40 others.
Beach chairs, crumpled towels, wads of clothing, a pair of children's sandals lie in a neat pile at the edge of the sand - all the things people left behind as they fled what police are calling Australia's deadliest terror attack.
Nearby, a wall of floral tributes has begun to grow over the footpath. Milling around are shocked locals. Hands cover trembling lips. Sunglasses do their best to hide puffy eyes.
I've grown up in fear my whole life, 22-year-old Jess tells the BBC. As a Jew, this felt inevitable, she adds.
That is the overriding sentiment here today – this is shocking for such a safe country and yet predictable for one that has been grappling with rising antisemitism.
Our innocence is over, you know? says Yvonne Harber who was at Bondi on Monday to mourn the previous day's horror.
I think we will be forever changed, a bit like Port Arthur, she adds, referring to the massacre in 1996 – Australia's worst – which prompted sweeping, pioneering gun reform.
More than 24 hours on, the Jewish community is still locating the missing and counting the dead.
Among them is a prominent local Rabbi, Eli Schlanger, who only a month ago had welcomed his fifth child.
The family broke. They are falling apart, his brother-in-law Rabbi Mendel Kastel told reporters after a sleepless night. The rabbi's wife, her best friend, [they] both lost their husbands.
The youngest victim is a 10-year-old named Matilda, whose only crime was being Jewish, says Alex Ryvchin, the co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the main body for the Jewish community here.
A man who I knew well, in his 90s, survived the Holocaust in the Soviet Union, only to be slaughtered standing next to his wife at a Hannukah event on Bondi Beach.
Mr Ryvchin says he is somehow both numb and distraught. It's our worst fear, but it's also something that was outside the realm of possibilities.
His organisation has been warning about a spike in recorded antisemitism incidents since Hamas's 7 October 2023 attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza. But, Mr Ryvchin says, authorities didn't heed the alarm.
I know these people. They get up every morning to try to keep Australians safe. That's all they wanna do. But they failed, and they will know it better than anybody today.
From the moment news of this attack broke, leaders including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, New South Wales premier Chris Minns, and the state's Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon have fielded questions to this effect – why wasn't this prevented?
There have been a spate of antisemitism-related offences in Australia recently. A synagogue was set on fire in Melbourne last year, a Jewish MP's office was vandalised, and a car was torched in Sydney. A childcare centre in Sydney was also set alight and sprayed with anti-Jewish graffiti in January.
As people began to quietly gather on a grassy slope on Monday in front of the iconic Bondi Pavillion, reflecting on the terror of the night before, Prime Minister Albanese visited to pay his respects.
What we saw yesterday was an act of pure evil - an act of terror and an act of antisemitism, he said later on Monday, before rattling through a list of things he says his government has done to stamp it out.
This includes setting up a federal police taskforce to investigate antisemitic incidents, and an amendment to hate crime laws. Hate symbols, including performing a Nazi salute, and terror offenses are now punishable with mandatory jail terms. NSW set up its own state-level task force because many of the recent incidents were in Sydney.
But Albanese's words were nowhere near enough to console Nadine Saachs.
Standing side by side with her sister, both draped in Israeli flags, she says the government set the tone in October on the day after the horrific attack on Israel by Hamas. She points to the official response to a protest outside the Opera House, where some members of the crowd started offensive chants.
If they had put their foot down straight away this would not have happened. The Albanese government is a disgrace as far as I'm concerned.
They have blood on their hands, her sister Karen Sher adds.
Down the beach, a young woman kneels, eyes closed, palms up, praying.
Katherine Pierce, 26, tells me she's driven from Tahmoor, about an hour and a half away, to commemorate those who died.
I just feel concern for our country… I think Australia needs to wake up, to be honest, she says.
The Bondi community and Jewish Australians continue to reel as police investigate the shooting and the motives behind it. The tragic event has highlighted an urgent need for unified action against rising hate and violence in the country.
