From a Facebook group, I see VH-VEQ is back flying in the meantime (and has been since at least 21 Dec).
In Post #24, Advance listed some quotes from 'The Australian': "Ashleigh Atkinson was in row six of the flight to Sydney and said just as the Saab 340 was about to take off, a woman screamed, and the front row was showered with debris"... “The flight attendant was trying to calm the woman down and saying ‘we need to wait until we’re at 1000 feet to tell the pilot’.”
I guess we will have to await ATSB report to understand when the strap hit the fuselage given "about to take off" could mean at the start of the takeoff roll or when aircraft was about to rotate (hopefully it wasn't an earlier phase than those?!). But what interests me more is the comment about having to wait until 1000 ft before informing the pilot(s). If that is a SOP, exactly what was the SOP? I would have thought something coming through the fuselage would warrant an immediate call even if the pilot workload might be high at that time. Would be interested to hear some (airline) pilot perspectives on this.