Australian survivor marks 20 years since London's 7/7 terrorist attacks

Australia Broadcast Center

9 hours ago

After Gill Hicks was rescued from the wreckage of a tube train following London's 7/7 terrorist attacks in 2005, she was so severely injured her hospital identification wristband read, "One unknown — estimated female".
"Becoming Gill again has been a really interesting quest over 20 years," she tells the ABC after arriving back in London from Adelaide for commemorations marking the 20th anniversary of that devastating day.
"It's been 20 years of finding the threads of who I once was and 20 years of discovering who I am now."
Back in 2005, Ms Hicks, then aged 37, was working as the head curator at the Design Council in London.
On July 7, she was on her way to work during the morning rush hour when a suicide bomber targeted her carriage as it travelled between King's Cross and Russell Square.
In what was a coordinated terrorist attack, another three suicide bombers detonated devices on two more underground trains and a bus, killing 52 people and injuring more than 700.
The Australian remembers using her scarf as a tourniquet around what was left of her legs to try to stop the bleeding while she waited for help to arrive.
She was the last survivor to be pulled from the smoke-filled carriage about an hour after the blast.
"My life was saved as 'one unknown', and it didn't matter if I was Gill Hicks or who I was, the efforts that people went to, to give their all to save this 'one unknown', that's shaped me," Ms Hicks says.
"And they're things I take away from London, that on that day in the aftermath, I was loved unconditionally as a human being."
Ms Hicks says she can't believe it has been 20 years since the attacks.
Life with two prosthetics, intense pain and hearing loss means she is reminded of what happened daily.
"There's something for me that I think about a lot, which is time isn't a healer," she says.
But there is also great joy in her life — thanks to her family, friends, peace advocacy work, and the arts.
As well as returning to London for official anniversary commemorations, Ms Hicks is in the city to perform her multi-award-winning show, wryly titled Still Alive (And Kicking)!.
She launched the show, which "explores the wonder of knowing life through facing death", at the Adelaide Fringe Festival in 2021 and has also performed it at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Two days after the 7/7 anniversary she will take to the stage of London's Wilton's Music Hall for one night only.
"I feel like this is the performance of a lifetime in many ways," Ms Hicks says.
"Because of the audience. The audience will be the first responders, the people that saved my life."
Performing, she says, makes her "feel free".
"The greatest loss [since the 7/7 bombings] isn't necessarily both legs; the greatest loss has been a sense of freedom … but what the arts has given me is those little moments of feeling free. And there is nothing like it.
"So, when I'm on the stage, I am me and I'm free. When I'm singing, I'm part of that music and it's greater than bliss. It's what I keep living for."
Relationships are important too — especially those Ms Hicks has formed with the people who saved her life.
"They're my family, they're extraordinary," she says.
"And I just saw Tracy [Russell], who was my first responder in the carriage that morning, last night … and it feels like sitting down with your sister because it's a person that knows you inside out, and we can finish each other's sentences and all of those sorts of special things that I absolutely feel are lifelong bonds.
"We're not defined by the July 7 bombings, but by our shared humanity, by our incredible connection, and now we've got 20 years [of friendship]."
Ms Russell will be a candle bearer at a service of commemoration to mark the 20th anniversary of the London bombings at St Paul's Cathedral.
As Ms Hicks waited for paramedics that July morning in the tube wreckage, she made what she describes as a "contract" with herself — that if she survived, she would make life count.
Over the past two decades, she has become a fierce advocate for global peace and combatting extremism, a motivational speaker, an author, an artist, a performer, partner to Karl, and mother to daughter Amelie — but she says she still has so much more to achieve.
"I haven't had enough time to do all the things I want to do to make the impact I want to make, to leave the footprint that I want to leave," she says.
Ms Hicks counts two letters from people who have heard her speak over the years as symbols of her success. Both told her she had changed their lives.
Those letters now sit on her desk back at home in Adelaide as reminders that her advocacy for peace and zest for life matter.
Ms Hicks says she doesn't know how she is going to feel at today's anniversary commemorations, but she does know this: instead of thinking of the brutality of the 7/7 bombings, she will be focusing on the brilliance of life after it.