It's still pouring down; 200,000 houses without electricity. Death toll reports vary wildly, but probably around the ten mark. The Great Deluge. Fording creeks; interviewing the relatives of the dead; their ghostly drowned fraces at the bottom of a creek, the malevolent spirit grazing him softly as he wakes up startled, Protect Me, Protect Me. Saw Romulus My Father yesterday with Joyce at the Newtown Dendy. Cried though half of it, beautifully done; incredibly evocative of a life everyone my generation new. The boys were on the front of the Weekend edition of the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday, the bible of the chattering classes. Just the mob they need to impress to keep the share price up.
The story continues:
"One Sunday afternoon, luxuriating in a well-earned day off - he normally worked Sundays - they sat drinking lemon sqash on his balcony, high in his eyrie above the view he loved so much: the huddle of Woolloomooloo terraces below leading out to the peeling Finger Wharf, the ferries picking their way through the while sails of the yachts, the distant thunder of the trains as they crossed the famous coat hanger of the Bridge, Kirribilli and the northern suburbs behind.
"I'd like to have children some day, he said, making it casual.
"She looked surprised, said nothing."
THE BIGGER STORY:
FROM THE SMH:
Caroline Marcus, Daniel Dasey and Heath Gilmore
June 10, 2007
CLAD in black, they waded into a raging tide to retrieve the bodies of the little victims of the state's killer storms.
As police divers, it was their grim duty to search for a family lost, knowing there was little chance a young couple, their two tiny daughters and nephew could have survived a night in the freezing, filthy torrent.
Upstream, a child's booster seat lay beside the crumpled wreckage of the car in which the family had been lost when a giant fissure opened up in a busy Central Coast road during Friday's furious storm.
Throughout yesterday, the divers - guided by a Polair helicopter and working in a team of more than 40 rescuers - laboured in treacherous conditions at Piles Creek, Somersby, to recover the body of Adam Holt, 30, his long-term partner Roslyn Bragg, 29, their daughters Madison and Jasmine, aged two and three, and a nephew, Travis Bragg, 9.
Their bodies were found in a four-kilometre radius from the crash site.
Late yesterday, the three young victims were taken to Newcastle Morgue.
This is a collection of raw material dating back to the 1950s by journalist John Stapleton. It incorporates photographs, old diary notes, published stories of a more personal nature, unpublished manuscripts and the daily blogs which began in 2004 and have formed the source material for a number of books. Photographs by the author. For a full chronological order refer to or merge with the collection of his journalism found here: https://thejournalismofjohnstapleton.blogspot.com.au/
No comments:
Post a Comment