PINK is not the colour of mourning, but it was the right colour for the funeral of murdered Bacchus Marsh woman Sarah Cafferkey.
Many of the hundreds who attended her funeral at St Andrew’s Uniting Church in Bacchus Marsh on Monday chose to ditch traditional mourning black in favour of Ms Cafferkey’s favourite colour, pink.
She was farewelled in a pink coffin, followed by the release of pink helium balloons into a cloudless sky. Her mother, Noelle Dickson, brought her daughter’s dog, a black labrador called Sprocket, on a pink leash.
Her father, Adrian Cafferkey, said he understood the rage many felt about his 22-year-old daughter’s death but, in a moving eulogy, called for calm. ‘‘We are gathered to honour and celebrate a life ended too soon,’’ Mr Cafferkey said of his daughter.
Her body was found in a wheelie bin at a house in Point Cook last week after she had been stabbed to death. Police have charged a 47-year-old man with her murder.
‘‘The life of our treasured daughter, loved sister, cousin. She is her mother’s world, my little princess,’’ Mr Cafferkey said.
Mr Cafferkey said her murder was wrong on ‘‘so many levels’’ but called for restraint and for people to have faith that justice would be served. ‘‘No parent should have to endure the funeral of their child. In all our minds there is a preordained order in which these matters of life and death are meant to occur. We know only too well the moral outrage felt by us all, family, friends, loved ones because we are just a microcosm of the massive societal rage across Victoria and Australia and other borders beyond.
‘‘But today is not for that aspect, we must trust in our systems of legal and social justice, karma even.’’
More than 40,000 people have signed the R.I.P. Sarah Cafferkey Facebook page, with some using the social network site to vent their rage about her death.
Mr Cafferkey said his daughter could raise a person’s spirits ‘‘with just one glance’’ and recalled how she once shut down Melbourne Airport.
‘‘When you go to an airport you might see a little sign near the security screening point saying ‘we take jokes about terrorism seriously’. Well, in our family that little sign is called the Sarah sign because as a 12-year-old travelling as an unaccompanied minor back in 2003 she heard some guys making some jokes like that and she was having none of it, so she closed Melbourne Airport.
‘‘All flights in were stopped, all flights out were grounded. That is just testimony to the spirit of that girl.
‘‘Sarah always spoke up strongly for things she believed in, for friends and other issues. A true giver and always there for people. She felt deeply the pain of others.’’
A friend of Ms Cafferkey’s, Paul Mayne, is organising a march in Bacchus Marsh on Sunday aimed at stamping out violence towards women.
‘‘After Jill Meagher’s [murder], four weeks later this has happened to someone again,’’ Mr Mayne said. ‘‘We have got to put a stop to this.’’
The march will begin in Bacchus Marsh’s Avenue of Honour at 11am.
