When the soot settled and the melted rubber had set, it wasn't police chatter or tension that greeted the morning, but cicadas.
With the smell of oil hanging in the air and television reporters crossing to their bureaus , the sight of charred wrought iron and yellow brick sat uneasy among its leafy setting.
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A scene of devastation: Shelton
A van filled with gas bottles has exploded out the front of the Australian Christian Lobby in Canberra. The groups head Lyle Shelton says they've received death threats.
Unassuming even for Canberra's unassuming suburbs, Eternity House, the site of the Australian Christian Lobby's national home, sat wounded, its head, Lyle Shelton, shocked.
As he examined his second-floor office -Â where heat had cracked the windows but left family photos and a framed letter from a child, thanking him for fighting because "a child needs a mum and dad" untouched - he said this was in the context of the abuse the ACL had suffered over the past year.
His personal assistant, the first line of defence to Mr Shelton himself, bore the brunt of that abuse, in the form of angry and hurt words hurled towards the ACL and its stance on gay marriage.Â
Her office bore the brunt of the heat thrown up from exploding gas cylinders, windows blown in, venetian blinds burned and scorched.
Downstairs, the heat wasn't enough to wipe a whiteboard where the words 'Local priorities" sat front and centre, with Safe Schools, Andrew Hastie and Mark McGowan written around it.
That wasn't the ACL's office, Mr Shelton said, but belonged to a "private tenant", who "prefer to stay out of it". Shortly after the whiteboard was noticed, hands managed what the blast did not, and it was wiped.
![Lyle Shelton managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby in the office his executive assistant after a van with ...](/web/20161225111032im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/g/a/r/k/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtgg7k.png/1482383060372.jpg)
It was this "surreal" site, which Mr Shelton used to answer questions on motivation, praying for the driver, who walked one hour to the Canberra Hospital after the van exploded, where he remains in a critical condition, repeatedly referring to the "context" the ACL was viewing the act.
"This is not the Australia I grew up in," he told reporters, with tears in his eyes, he didn't ever think that a body like the ACL would ever be subjected to something like this.
And it wasn't, police have stated, at least not in the way Mr Shelton and his supporters believed at first.
Investigators ruled out political, religious or ideological motivations just hours after the destroyed van was taken from the site.
Mr Shelton is not as sure.
"Obviously I respect what the police have to say," he said.
"I'm not sure how they can know for sure, given the man was pulled from a burning wreck last night. I certainly hope that's the case."Â
But by early afternoon, "attack" had become "ram raid" for most, with the clean-up beginning and no promise 2017 would be any less messy than the year that went before it.Â