Working in the US, I was horrified by mass shootings and imagined returning to Bondi. Now, my heart is broken

Onlookers react at the scene of yesterday’s shooting at Bondi beach. ‘For large numbers of Australians, that blithe feeling of safety that we mostly enjoy in Sydney … has been shaken.’ Photograph: Dean Lewins/EPA

I’ve spent the past decade living just a couple of beaches around from the famous Bondi beach. I will never leave.

Throughout the east of Sydney, the beaches offer an enviable lifestyle: a laidback tolerant society, a melting pot of nationalities, of young people, families and older residents, of surfers, backpackers, artists, tradies and more recently, the wealthy from the tech boom.