The shockwaves of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City were felt around the globe - even on a little island at the edge of the earth.
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The series of catastrophic terrorist attacks marked a turning point not just for America but for the world.
And so it's not surprising that some people living in Northern Tasmania felt at the time that life as they knew it had come to an end.
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In 2001, airline Ansett Australia had been placed in administration and on September 10, the day before the World Trade Centre toppled, a mercurial Adelaide tennis prodigy named Lleyton Hewitt had just triumphed against Pete Sampras in the US Open final.
But all this was forgotten by the morning of September 12, our time, when residents of Northern Tasmania picked up their copies of that day's edition of The Examiner and were greeted by a shocking image.
The second passenger jet that had been hijacked by terrorist group al-Qaeda swooped in to strike one of the already ablaze twin towers.
The front page simply cried: 'US hit'.
"Horror grips the US early this morning ..." it read. "The [twin] towers, hit by two planes, collapsed, killing and injuring an unknown number."
"The Pentagon in Washington was on fire, hit by another airliner.
"The nation was under siege, airlines grounded, the White House evacuated, President George W. Bush locked away."
The Examiner's editor at the time was Rod Scott, and the editorial that fateful day was imbued with a sense of sorrowful reflection.
"The world will wake up this morning to the chilling news that terror has struck the heart of the world's strongest nation," it read. "For most of us, the initial reactions will be of shock, horror and ultimately outrage."
"The fanatics behind this attack will presumably want all of those: that is the impact they sought.
"But they also deserve our contempt and our pity. No cause can justify this cowardly act."
As the aftermath of the attacks continued, stories of people from Northern Tasmania caught up in the horror began slowly to trickle out.
The New York office of former Launceston man Ben Gray directly faced the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, reporter Nick Clark wrote on September 13, two days after 9/11.
"I was looking at my computer screen when my office assistant starts screaming, so I look up as this plane hits the World Trade Centre and blows a huge great hole in it," Mr Gray told Clark.
"We were all in shock to see such a landmark on fire."
The editorial on the 13th was a kind of call-to-arms, stressing that retribution for the terror attacks had to be pursued.
"The rest of the world must join the US in ensuring that those involved in these attacks pay an appropriate price," the editorial read.
That same day, 300 people packed into the Church of the Apostles on Margaret Street, where Father Terry Southerwood led a special mass for both the parish and members of the public to pray for the victims of the US attacks.
Many Launceston residents appeared significantly shaken by the tragedy, as counselling services reported dramatic increases in people seeking help in the wake of the attacks.
A Lifeline counselling coordinator named Phyllis told reporter Fran Voss on September 15 that a great deal of people were "deeply concerned and just needed to talk".
"Often it is people on their own who want to talk to someone about it," she said. "It is especially hard for those people because they get inundated with it on TV."
Lifelink Samaritans director Pat Igoe said calls to his counselling service had skyrocketed.
"Some [people] are really freaked out by world events," he said at the time. "They feel that it is cataclysmic."
"They are saying, 'Really, what is the world coming to? What an unhappy place to be at the moment and I'm frightened for the future'."
Meanwhile, a Launceston grief counsellor said the attacks were provoking emotions in Tasmanians that were similar to those experienced in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre in 1996.
"We [Tasmanians] see ourselves being very safe and secure, and then something happens, like it happened in New York, that takes that feeling away, and we apply that to our surroundings, and begin thinking that it could happen to us," Wendy Holder said.
On September 16, 40 people gathered in Princes Square to "contemplate peace", according to the following day's edition of The Examiner.
"We're focusing on love in this situation," ceremony coordinator Victoria Stuart said at the gathering. "It's a wake-up call to everyone that there is an alternative to war."
The Launceston connection to the 9/11 catastrophe was further explored in The Examiner when local engineer John Wylie recalled his distressing encounter with one of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's commanders about a year earlier.
Mr Wylie, who was 30 at the time he was interviewed, had been travelling through northern Afghanistan with a friend.
He was at a telephone exchange in Jalalabad and was approached by a man whose eyes were "filled with hatred".
"He started calling me a foreign dog and saying 'death to America'," Mr Wylie said.
"Then he was on the phone for quite a while and he put the phone down and we got in a bit of a scuffle.
"He started pushing me around and I started pushing him back."
The engineer told The Examiner that his friend, who was from Afghanistan, pulled him aside and said bin Laden's commanders were active in the area and that it would be wise to leave.
Despite the unpleasant encounter, Mr Wylie said he didn't wish for the US to strike Afghanistan in retaliation for the bombing of the World Trade Centre.
"I hope they do not start bombing because it could add more misery to a long-suffering people and not necessarily silence bin Laden's extensive network," he said.
"They could just create many more Islamic martyrs."
And it could be argued that Mr Wylie's prediction came to pass. At the very least, the displacement and devastation wrought by Western military intervention in the Middle East following 9/11 didn't hinder the rise of militant terrorist groups like ISIS.
But in the immediate days after September 11, 2001, ISIS meant nothing.
In Northern Tasmania, and the rest of the world, all that mattered was a growing feeling that the world had changed irrevocably.
Everywhere had been touched by the events of 9/11.
New Yorkers may have felt their impact more profoundly, but the pages of The Examiner showed that people in small Tasmanian towns like Deloraine and Bridport were, too, affected in their own way.