Peter James was on holiday in Launceston when sketchy reports of a shooting crackled over the radio on 28 April 1996. By the time he reached Port Arthur, the living had already been taken to hospitals and the work had shifted to the dead.
James, who was living in Launceston at the time, called the critical incident stress debriefing team to ask whether he was needed. He traveled with two colleagues to Hobart, just over two hours away, and was briefed at ambulance headquarters before police took him to a command post at a Tasmanian devil sanctuary in Taranna, about 45 minutes from Hobart and close to port arthur. Sometime after 5pm, officers told him the number of deaths was not yet confirmed but was unthinkably high.
What followed was a raw, drawn-out response to one of Australia’s worst mass shootings. Police and SES volunteers searched for survivors who may have crawled into bushland to hide, while officers sketched the back routes to the historic site because the direct road would take James past the Seascape guesthouse. He arrived to support the volunteer ambulance service that had been first on the scene, and police immediately told him he was not going anywhere. “You’re not going anywhere. We’ve got crime scene walk-throughs to do, and you’re gonna help us,” he recalled being told.
James worked at the site for almost 24 hours straight. He said he knew most of the senior police there because they had been members of the critical incident debriefing team, and he quickly found himself helping with both the practical and emotional load. “People needed to ventilate, and it was my job to listen,” he said. “I was also there to support people, as some were falling apart.”
The scene itself was still changing. Bodies had to be identified, then the forensic teams went through again to examine and photograph them in position. Tasmanian devils were starting to come out and sniff around the bodies, forcing police to protect them before they could be loaded carefully and compassionately. James said he advised officers to rotate those guarding the bodies to reduce fatigue, and “one whole busload of police” arrived after that to help. “I would become one of them the next day,” he said.
He described the response as a night in which the professional mask slipped. “There’s black humour sometimes at jobs. But we operate behind a facade, and the magnitude of this, well, the facade fell away,” he said. “And also when people become fatigued, like they did that day, coping mechanisms fall away.” The forensic processing of the scene and the psychological triaging went on through the night, underscoring how the Port Arthur massacre overwhelmed not just victims and families, but the responders who had to carry the aftermath.
