THE FIRST harrowing call for help came in on an otherwise regular Saturday afternoon.
A man armed with a knife was on a murderous stabbing rampage at a busy Bondi Junction shopping centre.
The police force's triple zero call centre on the Central Coast was flooded with more than 300 calls in an hour between 3pm and 4pm on April 13.
Eyewitnesses relayed horrific details of what was unfolding inside the Westfield, while community members with grave fears for their loved ones rang in a desperate search for information.
Claire Isaac was the team leader at Tuggerah's PoliceLink Command centre that afternoon.
The computer screen in front of her suddenly filled with jobs colour-coded 'black' - the most urgent.
"It was quickly apparent that we were dealing with something big," she said.
"There was a lot of jobs and they were all for the one location - we could see that quite quickly."
Within seconds, the multi-skilled customer service representatives working shifts on non-emergency call lines were moved over to the triple zero team.
Their training and skills kicked in as they cut through the barrage of information.
"Our people who were on shift that afternoon responded amazingly well, considering the pressure that they were under to answer the influx of calls that we had, and the content of the calls that they were dealing with," Ms Isaac said.
"It was call after call.
"They didn't just take one call, they took numerous calls. So they might have had an eyewitness, then the next call they picked up could have been a family member, could have been someone that was inside the centre."
An emergency of that scale and gravity, with so many witnesses, meant a "highly unusual" number of calls were made, Ms Isaac said.
Other people from other parts of the state were also still dialling triple zero and calling for non-urgent help.
"Their triage skills, the way that they can extract information from a caller, there is an art to that," she said.
Those taking the calls worked swiftly to gather details and feed them to the radio operations group and police on the ground.
Joel Cauchi, 40, had caused chaos and confusion inside the centre, attacking people across multiple floors.
"For us, it's a matter of getting the information that we're provided and making sure that all possibilities - all of that accurate, real-time information, as it's provided to us - is out there," Ms Isaac said.
"Due to the fact that we were providing real-time, really accurate information to the attending police, that the situation was contained quickly as well."
Police Inspector Amy Scott was near Bondi Junction Westfield and heroically rushed to the scene on her own to confront the offender, where he was shot dead.
He had stabbed six people to death - including five women - and injured more than a dozen others inside Bondi Junction Westfield.
As the volume of triple zero calls began to drop, team leaders at the PoliceLink centre and peer support officers moved into a welfare phase.
The staff were well-supported by mental health professionals, chaplains and visits from therapy dogs like Hebe the golden retriever.
Ms Isaac has worked at the PoliceLink centre for 13 years, both as a call-taker and in a leadership position.
She never knows what she's going to hear when she answers the phone, but she knows no one calls triple zero on a good day.
She said it's doing a job that matters with a tight-knit team that keeps her coming back day after day.
"Whilst not a lot of people might necessarily understand what we do, or know what we do, we know that the job that we do makes a huge difference," she said.
When someone dials triple zero, Telstra redirects the call based on their location and request. Customer service representatives at the PoliceLink sites at Tuggerah and Lithgow extract information and enter it into a computer system, in conjunction with radio operations, who then speak directly to attending police.
As the triple zero calls slowed down at Tuggerah on April 13, another branch of the Central Coast's PoliceLink Centre ramped up.
Sergeant Warren King was the Crime Stoppers team leader that afternoon, and was just about to finish his shift when things got hectic.
"We received hundreds of calls that day," he said.
The CrimeStoppers crew answered the phones and combed through images and hours of footage that came in thick and fast via the online portal.
Footage played a crucial role in getting information to investigators at the crime scene who were actively trying to unpack what had happened.
Information was still trickling in 10 days later, Sergeant King said.
Police minister Yasmin Catley walked through the PoliceLink centre at Tuggerah on Wednesday to thank staff that took "those harrowing calls of crisis" during the Bondi Junction stabbings.
"This is the unspoken first response that we don't often hear about and I just want to make sure that we shine a light on the extraordinary work that is being done from this building," she said.
The PoliceLink Command oversees the NSW Police's community portal, where people can report minor crime online; CrimeStoppers, where intelligence and information is collected and triaged on the phone and online; the Police Assistance Line; and triple zero emergency calls, and is actively recruiting.
