Siege history

A cursory Google search reveals that this evening's drama on "trendy" Bay Street was not the first time that the town has involuntarily hosted an armed siege. Four years ago, Williamstown Road was blocked off whilst Police negotiated with a similarly disturbed knifeman, and ten years ago a gunman brought chaos to the Westgate Bridge.

But the most dramatic story comes from February 1975, during the week before colour television was first broadcast, when a young woman fired more than 100 shots from the top of a fuel storage container, in what is now Beacon Cove.