Tragedies That Taught Us

The rules in this book were not invented in an office. Many were written, in the hardest possible way, by tragedy. The cases that follow are recounted not for grim fascination but because each one carries a lesson that has saved, and can still save, other lives. They deserve to be told carefully and with respect for the people who died and the families who grieve them.

Briony Goodsell — Lambells Lagoon, Northern Territory, 2009

On a hot Sunday afternoon in March 2009, after heavy weekend rain, eleven-year-old Briony Goodsell went with her younger sister and two friends to swim at a creek crossing in the Black Jungle Conservation Reserve at Lambells Lagoon, near Humpty Doo, southeast of Darwin, in the Northern Territory of Australia. (The children knew the place as “Black Jungle”; it and Lambells Lagoon are the same stretch of country.) They knew the spot well; in the Dry it was dry ground, and when the wet-season rains filled it they were used to swimming there. That afternoon the creek was swollen and flowing fast. Briony called out for help and went under. A friend saw the tail of a crocodile break the surface and disappear. By the time she looked back, Briony was gone. Her body was recovered the following day.

The coroner found her death was caused by a crocodilian attack and used the inquest to reinforce a hard truth: crocodilians are increasingly present in semi-rural and urban areas around Darwin, and any waterway not designated safe must be assumed to be crocodilian habitat. No adult was with the children at the water that afternoon; the adults who saw the swollen, fast-flowing creek afterward said they would never have gone near it. The children did not know any better — to them it was the familiar swimming hole. That gap, between a danger adults can read and one children cannot, is the whole reason the lesson has to be taught rather than assumed. Briony’s death is closely tied to the public “Be Crocwise” message that runs through this entire book. In the years since, her family has become a courageous voice for crocodilian-safety education in the Northern Territory, turning the worst loss imaginable into a determination to see other families taught to be croc wise — the kind of strength that turns grief into protection for others. The lesson is the wet-season lesson and the children’s lesson together: floodwater turns a familiar, harmless-looking creek into crocodilian habitat, and a place that was safe to play in last year may not be safe this year.