Illustration: Jim Pavlidis.
Sometimes, it's hard to discern the wood from the trees. After the horrific events outside an outer-suburban police station in Melbourne this week, the temptation was to look for reasons to worry – and they weren't hard to find.
A month after David Irvine, then the nation's security chief, articulated his "recurring nightmare" of a lone wolf, radicalised over the internet, "who has managed to avoid coming across our radar", a version of that nightmare became reality.
Days after Tony Abbott highlighted the threat of random attacks, saying "all you need to do to carry out a terrorist attack is to have a knife, an iPhone and a victim", an angry teenager with two knives attacked two victims.
Two policemen were stabbed in Melbourne this week.
Muslim leaders were defensive, their communities feeling under siege as shrill voices rushed to judgment; many in the broader community were anxious, some even wary of attending the Grand Final; and the reputation of this city as an exemplar of multiculturalism took a hit.
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