THE DUNBLANE EFFECT

I looked at the newspapers today and flashed back to a memory of a little town in Scotland. The sleepy village of Dunblane. There, 13 years ago, a man walked into a school and killed fifteen children and one teacher. Slaughtered five and six year olds. The news started coming through and we were horrified. But it didn’t really hit you and make you cry until they published a school photo of all those innocent little kids, fresh-faced and smiling, in their first year at school.

And you realised their lives and futures had been snatched from them in an instant. They would never grow up to live and love. Never have kids of their own. Their bereft parents and family friends would have their lives scarred by grief for ever. And a shattered, closely-knit community would never be the same.

The same emotions struck today putting faces to names of the victims of our own carnage. Daily, since Saturday you’ve heard and read the news as the death toll rose and rose and continues to rise. Fourteen dead. Fifty. ‘The death toll is now expected to reach 100’. Then 200. Maybe 300.

They were frightening numbers, but to many not immediately affected, they were just numbers. Incomprehensible though in their magnitude in the worst disaster in this country’s history.

And then came all the photos. Smiling kids. Happy parents. Proud grandparents. From all walks of life. The Brown family: Matthew,7, Brielle 3 and Eric 8. They died with their parents Adrian and Mirrabelle.

The Davey family, the O’Gorman family. House-sitting Monash students  Melanee Hermocilla and Greg Lloyd. Charity worker Eva Zann. Judy and Greg McGiver. Fay and Bill Walker. And their disabled son, Geoffrey.

Here at 3AW, broadcasters and producers recognized name after name that we had put to air in recent days as family and friends searched frantically for any word of missing relatives. And we put faces to names. The sadness occasionally lifting when rare good news came through that a missing person had escaped the inferno and been found safe.

In a two-page wraparound in The Age this morning there are  27 photos of people no longer with us. Happy snaps from birthdays and Christmas parties. A microcosm of laughter and love in the so-called lucky country. A country that ran out of luck February 7, 2009.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009