Pushing a tape into the jaws of the player, he changed his mind and turned the
radio on instead. Radio 2BL was, as usual, full of the talk of war. Yousef,
seething inside at news of the fall of Baghdad, lit a cigarette and tried to
concentrate on his driving. Through Paramatta on the Western Highway, the
traffic was slow as usual. In the truck tray behind his cabin, the vegetable and
fruit boxes were neatly secured. Yousef took pride in getting his
employer's produce to Sydney restaurants in top class condition. As the traffic
crawled through Concord, he lit a second cigarette, smoke dribbling through his
nostrils. The acrid Camel cigarettes were nowhere near the strength of those he
obtained through his friends visiting from Egypt. As he passed the Five Dock turn-off, the traffic thickened and slowed to a crawl. Horns honked in frustration but Yousef was serene and philosophical as ever about the vagaries of Sydney motorists. He had seen worse traffic in Cairo. The traffic was slow and his watch showed that it was just after 7:00 a.m but it was of little consequence. Rather than listen to the news headlines and another round of triumphalist Muslim -bashing, he pushed the tape firmly home and the little cab was filled with Egyptian music interspersed with a particular prayer. His eyes lit up as the bridge approached. it was a beautiful clear Sydney day with a blue sky and the pollution haze had been carried away by overnight breezes into the undulating waves of the Pacific ocean.
Australians, or at least those from New South Wales, were inordinately proud of
what some called the "coathanger”. The Sydney Harbour Bridge had been considered
a masterpiece of engineering during its construction in the 1920's. It had a
certain ugly elegance about it and connected South Sydney with the more affluent
northern suburbs. Its six narrow lanes were inadequate for the traffic volume -
only the double-decker trains crossed it quickly. Slowly the red truck made its
way to the middle toll-booth and Yousef pitched his $3 of coins into the tray
and proceeded on to the bridge as usual. This was a typical day for him, or it
had been until last night. A husky voice on the telephone announced "Allah
Akhbar" and the receiver was put down. He had risen at 3:00 a.m. as usual, rolled out his prayer mat and dutifully prayed and slipped out of the house to pick up his load of fruit and vegetables. His wife Belah was used to this daily ritual and after briefly stirring, rolled over and went back to sleep. Yousef's truck arrived at the collection point at exactly 3:15 a.m. - a perfectly normal day. The fruit and vegetables were loaded and secured in the usual efficient manner but on this day, there was an extra load beneath the parsnips, tomatoes, lettuces and apples. When loading had finished, he had a cup of acrid Middle East coffee with his loaders, who were quite used to adding a little extra to the truck's load. Whatever was in the packages, questions were rarely asked about the contents. They were, after all, stamped and certified by the Red Crescent presumably for relief of refugees somewhere in Sydney.
By 4:45 a.m. Yousef was on the road again but unlike a normal day, he made a slight detour at Paramatta. Outside a shabby run-down junkyard, a figure emerged from the shadows, mumbled a brief greeting in Arabic and slipped under the truck. In less than three minutes, he wriggled from the other side, muttered a brief farewell and slipped away into the darkness.
By now, barely five minutes after 7:00 a.m., Yousef's truck was close to the centre of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. He reached into a compartment in the dashboard and pulled out what appeared to be a normal cigarette lighter, pushed it into the circuit and thrust it home. Only he would have heard his prayer of triumph "Allah Akhbar" as the device ignited the specially- shaped charges of Semtex in the bed of the truck and its lower chassis. His soul was on its way to paradise.
The fireball engulfed the truck, many cars around it and the
long curved spans of the bridge itself. The downward-facing charges blew a huge
hole on the inward-side of the bridge and the whole structure twisted, groaning. The 6:00 a.m. train
from Gosford slid like a snake off the end of the rails and into the harbour
waters. As the centre of the bridge collapsed, several cars and trucks plunged
into the abyss while people backed up at the toll gates at each end screamed and
gasped with horror. A few managed to escape from cars on the bridge and run to
safety, while others floundered in the water desperately trying to stay afloat
until help arrived. Bodies floated on the water like broken dolls. 
At Kirribilli House on the Harbour, the sound of the explosion was not heard by
the Prime Minister who had taken out his hearing aid. His wife woke him and they
pulled back the bedroom drapes to see a dense pall of smoke rising into the
clear blue sky and Sydney Harbour Bridge collapsing slowly, as on a videotape.
Telephones commenced ringing almost immediately and it was the Prime Minister's
wife who managed to drag her transfixed husband from the window to take calls
from the Federal and New South Wales Police, the New South
Wales Premiers Department, the Department of Defence, the Attorney General’s
Department, the Australian protective services, Emergency Management Australia,
the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and one and a half hours later, the Director of the
Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.