IF YOU are as old as I am, you probably remember where you were when you heard about what was at first called the Clifton Hill Massacre.
That Sunday night in August 1987, I was at home with the radio on when a report came in that a sniper was firing at cars on Hoddle St north of the Eastern Freeway. Within an hour the ABC was saying five people were dead and a man was in custody.
Next morning's Sun reported police as saying "the gunman, 19, of Ramsden St, Clifton Hill, had had military training".
In those pre-Port Arthur days, we thought this type of thing happened in the US, with its easy access to firearms. It seemed incredible that seven people could be randomly shot dead on a Sunday evening in the middle of Melbourne.
It seemed incredible, too, that the author of such an enormity should be a drunk teenager dismissed by an anonymous cop that week as "just a weed, a nothing".
Later, as we learned more about the Melbourne High School boy and failed Duntroon cadet, the more pathetic and less interesting he became.
His adopted parents had divorced when he was nine. He lived with his mother while idolising his absent father, a major in the army. Despite being clever, he performed poorly at school and lasted less than a year at Duntroon before being kicked out after a fracas in a Canberra nightclub. He later claimed to have been bullied.
What I recall people being intrigued about was not the character or motivation of this nothing, this weed, but how it was he was legally able own the M14 assault rifle, 12-gauge pump action and semi-automatic .22 he used in his crimes.
Maybe it is because Julian Knight and I are about the same age, but I remember so vividly contemplating the 27-year minimum sentence he was given in November 1988 and reflecting it didn't seem long for what he'd done.
But as we approach the date in 2014 when he will be eligible for parole, it needs to be remembered that, for its time, Justice George Hampel's sentence for Knight was a long one. Moreover, it was not - aside from reasonable objections of survivors and families of the dead - controversial.
At the pre-sentence hearings, the Crown didn't ask for Knight to be locked up for the term of his natural life and it didn't appeal against the 27-year minimum. Nor did politicians climb over each other promising to ensure he would never be released, as Ted Baillieu and Daniel Andrews are doing.
It seemed incredible, too, that the author of such an enormity should be a drunk teenager dismissed by an anonymous cop that week as "just a weed, a nothing".
Later, as we learned more about the Melbourne High School boy and failed Duntroon cadet, the more pathetic and less interesting he became.
His adopted parents had divorced when he was nine. He lived with his mother while idolising his absent father, a major in the army. Despite being clever, he performed poorly at school and lasted less than a year at Duntroon before being kicked out after a fracas in a Canberra nightclub. He later claimed to have been bullied.
What I recall people being intrigued about was not the character or motivation of this nothing, this weed, but how it was he was legally able own the M14 assault rifle, 12-gauge pump action and semi-automatic .22 he used in his crimes.
Maybe it is because Julian Knight and I are about the same age, but I remember so vividly contemplating the 27-year minimum sentence he was given in November 1988 and reflecting it didn't seem long for what he'd done.
But as we approach the date in 2014 when he will be eligible for parole, it needs to be remembered that, for its time, Justice George Hampel's sentence for Knight was a long one. Moreover, it was not - aside from reasonable objections of survivors and families of the dead - controversial.
At the pre-sentence hearings, the Crown didn't ask for Knight to be locked up for the term of his natural life and it didn't appeal against the 27-year minimum. Nor did politicians climb over each other promising to ensure he would never be released, as Ted Baillieu and Daniel Andrews are doing.
