This year marks 10 years since my friend Kirk died. He was the passenger in a car heading towards a remote aboriginal community in Arnhemland when the driver lost control on the dirt road. He was 27 years old. A few months ago our group of friends gathered at one of his favourite parks in Melbourne and planted a tree to commemorate the anniversary of his death. I couldn’t be there with them, but today (16^th Sept) we drove past the start of that long and winding road on which he had his accident and in the days leading up to this, Kirk and his death had been weighing heavily on my mind. So I needed to stop at this intersection to quietly reflect on what Kirk meant to me.

Kirk Robson and I became friends when I was 12 and he was 11 years old. He was the son of the new Minister at our church in Box Hill. Going to an all-girls school all my life I had not met many boys, so Kirk became my first true male friend. Actually, Kirk was several firsts for me including my first kiss. We had been Christmas carolling around Box Hill and afterwards we went to the local Seven Eleven to get a slurpy. He was rather swarve back then, his pick-up line was “so sharing the same drink is practically like kissing”. Then we made out behind the dumpster. You can imagine how much I was later teased by my cousins about “having a slurpy behind the 7/11”! That teenage romance lasted a whole two weeks then kind of fizzled out. But we still remained friends until the day he died.

When I reflect on the impact that Kirk had on my life and the gifts he gave me such as his gift of friendship and LOTS of laughter, there is one thing that stands out the most. Through our friendship, he essentially gave me the friendship of many others. When we were 16 years old, he made me go on a youth camp with him because he didn’t want to go alone. At this camp we made friends with so many new people. And from that initial group of friends, we met their friends who then became our friends and so on until this group of friends grew so big I can’t even count the numbers. Kirk gave me this amazing, like-minded group of friends who helped me grow into what I am now and who are still so very important in my life today.

I hadn’t seen Kirk much in the last 12 months of his life. Approaching our late 20’s life had taken all of us on different adventures and on different paths. The same could be said about our group of friends in the present. We might not see each other that much because “life just gets in the way”, but it doesn’t change the significance or importance of these friendships.

Kirk was a budding actor, but he was not seeking fame and fortune (although I do recall him standing up for the actors on Neighbours “because that is where many Australian actors get their start”).   Instead he wanted to use his skills to help people. On the day of his death he was on his way to help the youth of an aboriginal community put together a stage production for a festival. There is no fairness in death. Why can cruel, torturous people live until they’re ninety while the people that want to do good in this world are taken away. This is a question that continues to haunt me.

As I lay a stick with Kirk’s name carved on it at the start of this road, I find myself both crying and smiling at the same time.

Kirk accompanying me to my Year 11 formal