Cultured Views

Ten years on…Diana

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Today marks the tenth anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Ten years!. It seems only weeks really since the world woke to the news of that accident. Not in Australia though, we watched the whole thing unfold on TV as it happened because it was during daytime for us. Most of us in Australia were just waking up when the accident occurred at 8.30am Sydney time.

Where were you when itn happened? Where were you when you heard?.

I was reading the morning papers as the accident happened, no way could I have known that those same papers would be reissued later that same day with the news of the car crash. Such a thing was unprecedented in Australia.

About 11.am reports were filtering through on the radio and TV that Diana had been injured in a car crash and that Dodi was dead.  Serious stuff indeed. I had been at the shops that morning and heard it first on the car radio. By the time I had gotten home and turned on the TV the reports had changed gear and things were sounding worse for Diana but still no report of her being killed. Just in a coma; severely concussed.

On the TV there it all was; the tunnel, the flashing lights, the wreckage of the car and the BBC news. That was a sign all was not well, our own news service was replaced by the BBC coverage. James Whittacker was being interviewed.

I sat watching the TV until just after 1pm when my Mum came out of her room where she had been listening to the radio…’There’s reports just coming in that the Princess of Wales is dead’…my Mum was not really a Diana fan but she looked shocked. Almost immediately the wording changed on the TV to ‘Diana reported to have died’. Still disbelief!.

One moment we were being told she was concussed with a broken leg, now we are told she is dead. Then came the confirmation and a whole new topic of conversation for James Whittacker and the BBC news host. That is how I heard about Diana’s death and it was strange that most of the UK was still asleep and unaware of anything.

We are all familiar with the events of the following week and weeks. The funeral and it’s aftermath. The tributes. The two young Princes. How they have grown and how proud Diana would be of them today. This is where we must credit Prince Charles, what a wonderful father he is to them, it is such a shame we were never shown what a great and much loved Dad he is and was while Diana was alive.

There are so many ‘ifs’ and ‘whys’ that could explain how this whole thing could have been avoided, but it seems to have had a kind of inevitability to me. Real ‘tragedy’ involves ‘inevitability’. Maybe if she had worn that seat belt she would still be alive; most probably would have been; but we will never know.

One thing is sure though, maybe Diana - through her death - has taught us more than she ever could have if she had lived. You cannot leave a legacy until you die.

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