This is an edited transcript of Rob De Castella's interview with SBS journalist Santilla Chingaipe.
"We're obviously over here in Boston with one of our Indigenous women Emma Cameron from Darwin.
Emma was running her first marathon and unfortunately was at about the 25 mile mark or the 41 kilometre mark of the marathon when those two terrible explosions went off at the finish.
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We were nearby in the race hotel, in the headquarters hotel, and heard the explosions and realised what had happened and we just half-an-hour ago caught up with Emma back here at the hotel.
We knew that she was a long way from the finish, we knew she was a long way from the explosions, but obviously the finish area was in a fair amount of chaos and pandemonium as the runners were dispersed to different parts of Boston.
It was great to link up with her and it was wonderful to know that she was looked after by the other runners out there and she's fine.
We were in the race hotel, in the main headquarters where the media centre and the control and command for the marathon [were]. It was about 150 metres from the finish line and we heard and felt the explosions.
It's the last thing you expect to have happen, but very quickly because of the way the police and security reacted we realised it was very serious, and the hotel we were in was put into lockdown so no-one was allowed in or out.
They searched the building to make sure there was no explosive devices where we were and then we worked exactly what had happened … there were thousands of runners still out on the course
This is the holy grail of marathons - this is the oldest-running marathon. This was the 27th running of the Boston marathon.
It's an event than encapsulates the spirit of Pheidippides and what Marathon is all about.
It's embraced by the city - it's held on Patriot Day, which is on Monday here and is a public holiday.
I think there's over half a million spectators out on the course and 27,000 runners from all over the world.
To think, if this was a deliberate act to damage the event or to promote some agenda, in an event where the world is unified like this is disgraceful.
The people who did it, if it was deliberate, and I still don't know the background to what happened, if the goal is to damage and disrupt these kind of events then I'll be doing everything I can do to ensure that that doesn't happen.
International marathons are a wonderful event and it's just despicable that someone would try to promote some kind of personal agenda and damage such a wonderful event."
