DIFFICULT JOB MUST BE DONE

FAMILIES directly affected by the Dreamworld ride tragedy will never get over the impact on their lives.

They have endured plenty since a raft on the Thunder River Rapids Ride flipped, throwing four adult occupants to their deaths. We can only thank luck or perhaps Providence that two children who were also in the raft were somehow spared and flung clear into the water, where witnesses were able to help them to safety.

As the events of October 26, 2016, are resurrected again and studied in detail this week and in the weeks and months to come as a coronial inquiry endeavours to learn the exact circumstances and causes, and to make sense of it all and deliver its findings, those families will be put through it all again. This is not easy, but it has to be done for the inquiry to get to the bottom of matters. Disturbing facts will be aired.

Indeed this is harrowing for not just the families but for the witnesses – tourists and park staff – who watched it unfold, for the police and emergency services personnel who had to rush to the scene and take charge amid what can only be described as carnage, and for the investigators who have spent countless hours interviewing witnesses and the bereaved while preparing massive volumes of evidence to assist the inquiry.

But it does not stop there. Hundreds of Dreamworld employees have been hugely affected by this. If we are to pursue effects of an ever-widening impact, the tragedy has also left a scar on the city that has loved and supported the theme park since it first opened at Coomera in 1981, and on the hundreds of thousands of people who have visited Dreamworld as tourists or regularly as locals. And it is not going too far to look also at the impact on other theme parks and the city’s tourism industry, which suffered downturns as the Australian public and overseas tourists paused to cope with what happened.

Dreamworld has been and remains a cherished feature of the Gold Coast’s tourism landscape.

What happens as events unfold at the inquiry, which has generated huge media interest and has required two courtrooms to handle not just the families and witnesses but also large numbers of lawyers and journalists, will be watched closely.

What the coroner is told will be confronting and upsetting for all, but causes have to be identified. Such a tragedy must never occur again anywhere.