2014 Sydney hostage crisis
After the siege began, a staged exclusion zone was established with thousands of people evacuated from nearby buildings, including from the floors above the café. The Sydney Opera House was evacuated after a suspicious package was found; however, reports were unconfirmed by police. The US Consulate General in Sydney, located in Martin Place, was also evacuated. Some Sydney schools were put in "white level lockout" due to the hostage situation, which meant that no school group was permitted to leave the school grounds.
Battle between HMAS Sydney and German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran
Michael Montgomery's 1981 book, "Who Sank The Sydney?", was the first published work to focus solely on "Sydney" and the events surrounding her loss, and the first to comprehensively challenge the accepted view of the battle. The son of "Sydney"s Royal Navy navigator, Montgomery could not accept the ship's loss as described by Gill, and claimed that the true events were being covered up. According to his book, "Kormoran" had fired on "Sydney" while flying the flag of a neutral nation, a Japanese submarine was involved in the battle, and any Australian survivors were killed to hide the involvement of the Japanese. Montgomery also suggests that Britain had foreknowledge of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which occurred three weeks later, and ordered the Australian government to cover-up the truth of "Sydney"s loss so the United States would be drawn into the war. However, "Who Sank the Sydney?" is reliant on assertions that had been proved false, unreliable sources (including a 'sailor's report' found to be a translation of an inaccurate Australian newspaper article), and selective use of German accounts that fit the hypothesis, and Montgomery is generally credited with igniting the controversy surrounding the battle.