A Different Country

In the early afternoon of December 14, 2025, a news photographer sent images to The Australian's picture desk showing a sparkling day at Bondi Beach. It was a Sunday, the second weekend of summer, when Sydney is at its showy best. Among the photographs of that day, there is a frame of hundreds of relaxed beachgoers leaning back on their elbows, checking their phones, using their forearms to shade their eyes from the glare of the baking sun. The very next frame in our files tells a starkly different story: riot-squad police in black body armour grip guns in gloved hands, radios clipped on, ammunition at their side, grouped together, tense, watchful.

From one moment to the next, from one photograph to the next, everything changed. Australia - already strained by the surge of antisemitism that had been allowed to spread almost unchecked since October 7, 2023 - had reached a breaking point. Within minutes, 15 people lay dead or dying at Bondi Beach, almost all of them Jewish, most attending the Hanukkah festival in the park.

A Different Country is a landmark collection drawn from the journalism of The Australian, bringing together the masthead's most significant reporting and commentary on the seismic impact of the October 7 terrorist attacks and the profound aftershocks felt across Australia and the world. It grapples with the fear, confusion and anger caused by the Bondi attack and describes the stilted response from authorities to this assault on our way of life.

Across two turbulent years, The Australian documented a story that would reshape geopolitics, test democratic values and expose deep fractures in social cohesion. This updated edition of A Different Country features work by Paul Kelly, Jonathan Spyer, Yoni Bashan, Gemma Tognini, Henry Ergas, Michael Gawenda, Bari Weiss, Geoffrey Blainey, Deborah Conway, Douglas Murray, Tal Becker, Marcia Langton, Josh Frydenberg and others.

A Different Country offers a powerful narrative of a world in upheaval and a nation confronting questions about security, morality and who we aspire to be.