‘NO news is good news - without information to the contrary, assume all is well’ goes the idiom.
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But after the past few weeks, it began to feel as though no news would ever be good again.
A sky diving fatality; a bus roll injuring many; 60ha burnt out on Friday; the loss of historic St John’s; and the looming loss of the 2016 Show, which casts a long shadow over our tourism economy.
Saturday’s fatality was heart-wrenching, no doubt most of all for the instructor’s family and friends.
Eyewitness accounts of the instructor’s heroic last-moment body roll to protect the boy touched us all.
The freakish gust of wind that collapsed their canopy reminded us how easily such accidents can happen, as did the terrible coach crash, which could have taken dozens of young lives yet to realise their best.
Friday’s total fire ban was a perfect storm of dry heat and high winds needing only a spark to flare.
Commendations must go to the many emergency services teams who worked hard to contain it within hours.
Commendations, also, to your Post reporters for their rolling coverage, across and among the action. Even staff on RDOs came in to ensure our community was kept absolutely up to date: a hard-working team.
While we wait to hear how the council plans to save the 2016 Show from extinction, and whether the fire-ravaged St John’s orphanage can be salvaged, it gives us pause for thought about the cycle of life.
Too often we pass through our days without much if any thought for when we might see such days again.
Who would have thought at the 2015 Show, for instance, that we might not see its kind in town in 2016?
Some things - people, places, traditions, possessions - we cherish and fight for; we defy their loss. Or, as in the case of the many Year 12 students these pages have recently celebrated in their graduation from high school to the School of Life, it’s precisely because we love them that we must let them go.
Ever-changing is the face (and the faces) of Goulburn. Some we may never see again as they are now.
What do you cherish? What do you fight for? And what must you let go, even though you love it so?
In the case of all these stories, we hope for good news, but we must never assume that all is well.