This week has been one of remembering the tragic course of the ferocious force of nature that laid waste to sections of the Lockyer Valley and other parts of our country. A year on, the lives devastated were visited by the memories and well-meaning luminaries; but nothing fills the hole left by a family member swept away in the apocalypse that descended.
The media was rightly dominated by the pictures and sounds of the horror of the 2011 floods and searching faces of those left today who long for the time before.
Another tragedy is more avoidable. That is the disgrace which is sections of our national highway and the death and maiming caused by of it. Like a third-world, developing nation, our main north-south arterial road snakes its way across rusting bridges and via a main street, main road, two-lane bitumen nostalgia; more in touch with the 1950s than 2012.
This is the same ''highway'' which connects our largest city with our third-largest, including our fastest-growing region of south-east Queensland.
But what B-doubles are doing on a road through the middle of Frederickton is a dangerous mystery, which is not the heavy transport operators' fault.
As tragic as the recent accidents have been, they are just two of the 25 forgotten tragedies that have occurred on the Pacific Highway over the past year.
Another sombre poignant tale of many was on August 8 last year, when a 50-year-old woman died after her blue Toyota Echo collided with a silver Ford Falcon. Her car caught fire and while witnesses were able to remove her from the vehicle she later died from her injuries at Lismore Base Hospital.
These tragedies are normally missed by media outlets, there is a police media statement reported, but their impact on the families involved is no less tragic.
Over the past 10 years, there have been 427 deaths on the Pacific Highway between Sydney and Queensland. As parts of the highway have been upgraded, the number of deaths has dropped from 72 in 2003 to 38 in 2010.
However, much of the highway north of Port Macquarie remains completely inadequate. The stretch of road between Port Macquarie and the Gold Coast only accounts for half of the 1000km trip from Sydney to Brisbane yet over the past 10 years it has accounted for 60 per cent of the deaths (and 70 per cent in 2010).
It is not just a case of taking the Pacific Highway into the 21st century, it is also building the inland rail between Gladstone and Melbourne to assist in taking heavy transports on to rail and off the road. The Newell Highway that runs parallel, but on a shorter inland route via Goondiwindi, Moree and Dubbo, also needs the investment that encourages long distance travelling away from the congestion of the coast.
Infrastructure in other nations is major highway and rail upgrades. In our nation it is a tin shed masquerading as an economic stimulus package, a new national broadband network phone company delivering a service that apparently few want and even less are prepared to pay for. The money we sent out in $900 cheques could have built the inland rail, duplicated the highway to completion between Sydney and Brisbane and upgraded the Newell. Instead we got a boon in poker machine takings, bottle shop sales and every family got the opportunity to purchase, on the national debt, a fully imported flat screen television.
We as a nation are reflected in the tactile, Parliament House, the Snowy Mountains Scheme, the Ord River Irrigation Scheme, the Opera House, the Sydney Harbour Bridge. So we are also a reflection of a dilapidated piece of two-lane sealed road making up a substantial section of the national highway.
During the previous week I have driven our nation's premier transport corridor from Port Macquarie to Brisbane. It felt like I saw a police car every five minutes as they sat amongst the continuous streams of returning traffic after the New Year break, but the odds for a tragedy as seen in Urunga are unfortunately real.
If the probability of a death on a section of our national highway is one in 200,000, it is going to happen once a fortnight. To decrease the probability, you have to increase the distance between the opposing streams of traffic - that is, build a dual carriageway.
Driving is an exercise in trust and every car we pass, we rely on that trust to keep us alive. Make sure you drive safely and take care over the holiday period.