Stranded: The Anita Cobby Story
It was the 2nd of February 1986. A Sunday. Late summer in the southern hemisphere. Anita Cobby, a nurse at Sydney Hospital in central Sydney, had finished her shift at 3pm. She had met two nursing friends for dinner at a Lebanese restaurant in Redfern. One of her friends drove her to Central railway station, where she took the 21:12 train to Blacktown. She had been staying with her parents for the past six weeks, after separating from her husband, John. She disembarked the train at Blacktown railway station, a little before 10pm. It was dark.
Anita attempted to call her father, Garry to collect her. She found that someone had vandalised the public payphone at the train station, and it was unusable and decided to walk the 25–30 minutes home. Anita looked around her, took a deep breath, and began walking away from the train station towards her home.
She soon found herself on Newton Road. It was quiet at this time of night. As Anita walked, she became aware of a vehicle on the road, and quickly became uneasy. The car, a boxy white sedan or saloon with an exaggerated front and rear was a HT Holden Kingswood. Inside the car were five men of varying ages. She could not have known at the time that the vehicle was stolen, or that the passengers all had criminal records. The vehicle came to an abrupt stop, and two of the men jumped out and grabbed her, bundling her into…
