WE WILL NEVER FORGET
A COMMUNITY came together last night to remember a young woman and a brave man a year after their lives were tragically cut short in a Home Hill backpacker hostel.
It was in Shelley’s Backpackers on the night of August 23 last year that it is alleged French national Smail Ayad, 29, stabbed to death 21year- old Mia Ayliffe- Chung and fellow UK citizen and backpacker, Tom Jackson, 30, who had come to her aid.
It was a horrific tragedy which residents of the twin towns of Ayr and Home Hill and their outlying farming centres will never forget.
It will burn in their hearts forever, like an ember that will never go out.
As Burdekin Mayor Lyn McLaughlin put it yesterday as she prepared for last night’s candlelight service in Home Hill’s Memorial Park – “people will never forget”.
“The entire Burdekin community feels as though it has lost two of its own. A tragedy like this happens and life goes o on, as it has to do, but people here will never forget. They will always be in our hearts. It has brought our backpackers and everyone here closer together,” she said.
Last night after observing one minute’s silence, water was poured on two native red coondoo trees planted by backpackers after the tragedy last year.
Cr McLaughlin said backpackers had told the Red Cross after the attacks they would prefer trees be planted to remember their friends than have plaques on a wall.
President of the Home Hill Bowls Club Bob Ford and his wife Colleen were in their home one street away when they heard screams on the night of August 23 last year.
The screaming went on for several minutes. “We thought there must have been a brawl outside one of the pubs,” Mr Ford said yesterday.
It wasn’t until the following morning they realised the screaming had come from the backpacker hostel beside the bowls club and that a young woman was dead and a man was clinging to life, only to later die in hospital.
Since then Mr and Mrs Ford have developed a close relationship with the town’s backpacker community.
“They are like our kids. They come here to the Burdekin and they work really hard on the farms. They play hard too, but they are young,” Mr Ford said.
“I admire them. They are young and they are brave going out into the world the way they do. In my day if you wanted to see the world you did what I did and joined the navy. Everyone here feels for Mia and Tom’s parents. It is hard to try to think what they must be going through.”
Smail Ayad is being held in a mental health facility in Brisbane. His matter is due to be heard in the Townsville Magistrates Court on November 20 during the mental health callover.