an unbelievable week

It was a week to test and drain all your emotions. Grief, shock, sorrow, bewilderment, anger, frustration and even fear. Reminder after reminder of our fragile mortality and the fragility of our lives and comfort zones and even our world.

It started with the unbelievable: The bizarre accident which took the life of a loveable Ozzie Steve Irwin. The Crocodile hunter killed not by  the teeth of a giant crock or the venom of a poisonous snake but the reflective response of usually placid creature of the sea.

And in the biggest outpouring of public grief over the loss of one person since the flowery tributes to Princess Diana Australia brutally realised the truism that ‘you don’t know what you’ve got until you lose it’.

In the midst of the pain that bitter literary hag, that has-been harridan of discontent, Germaine Greer, lived up to her nickname of ‘Germs’ and tried to infect other minds with her own bile.

A week later Steve Irwin’s death still seems like a bad dream. A bad dream that intensified when, within days, Australia lost another invincible. Peter Brock. For a few seconds it seems Peter Perfect, King of the Mountain, was less than perfect behind the wheel of a car that he could wear like a glove. And it cost him his life. Two vibrant, talented, larger-than-life Aussies whom we never associated with death despite their risky obsessions. Suddenly both gone.

In that climate we saw, night after night, the lead up to today’s fifth anniversary of 9-11 – the terrorists attack on the World Trade Center towers that took more than 3000 lives.

I know of people so emotionally battered by tragedy, past and present, that they could not watch the news broadcasts or the documentaries any more.

In Melbourne the war against terror took on added meaning with reports that this city would be singled out as the first Australian major target following New York, Washington, Madrid, London and Bali.

Personally I thought, and still think, that if an attack comes in Australia it will be in Sydney. A bloody and symbolic attempt to blow up the Sydney Opera House or the Harbour Bridge. Imagine the carnage if somebody managed to block and blow up the tunnel beneath Sydney Harbour.

But life does and will go on. In a way, the most normal you can keep it, the more the guys in the white hats show the guys in the black hats that they won’t win.

The way Hitler’s attempts to bomb London into oblivion destroyed buildings but not the spirit of the people. The way new towers will replace the ones destroyed on this day five years ago.

The way spring leaves and blossoms are sprouting on our trees. And optimism grows in our hearts. 

Monday, September 11, 2006

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2006