Wreckage from the MH17 flight was spread over sunflower fields in Ukraine. Photo: AFP.
Carly Taylor was startled awake by the sound of her phone ringing.
“I think it was about 2 or 3 in the morning,” she recalls.
She had been on the phone just a few hours before with her friend Liliane Derden about the “great time” Lil was having with her family overseas, but she was also looking forward to arriving back home in Canberra and seeing her granddaughter again.
So Carly couldn’t believe what she was hearing now.
“I was just like, ‘Are you sure?’ I just kept questioning and questioning, even though I could tell by their voices they were pretty confident.”
Liliane, from Hall in north Canberra, was among the 298 people killed when a surface-to-air missile over Ukraine shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) on 17 July 2014. The Russian government still refuses to admit responsibility.
Memorial services across the world marked the 10th anniversary, and here in Canberra, an internal commemoration event at Liliane’s old workplace, the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) office in Civic.
“We weren’t exactly in the same team, but we basically worked next to each other – you know, a couple of desks away,” Carly says.
Carly Taylor and Liliane Derden were more than colleagues. Photo: Carly Taylor.
Liliane hailed from Belgium and moved to Australia, where she met her partner CJ and had two daughters. This meant English was her second language and she would often “get words wrong”, but Carly says “she had such a great sense of humour about it”.
“We’d constantly have to correct her or go, ‘What are you talking about?’ but she just had a beautiful smile and a very big laugh that was very infectious.”
By 2014, Carly and Liliane were fast friends and “spent most weekends together” on trips to Sydney, outings to musicals and the Enlighten Festival, and “all kinds of things”.
Liliane Derden and Carly Taylor were friends for seven years before MH17 was shot down. Photo: Carly Taylor.
So it was Liliane’s children who phoned her on the fateful day. And it was Carly who drove round to Lili’s partner’s house “just to be there”. Carly also read her eulogy during the subsequent funeral service.
“In some ways, it feels like only yesterday,” she says.
“But in other ways, so much has happened in my life and in her kids’ lives since then. I just wish she had been around to see it.”
She says 17 July has never ceased to be a “horrible day”, but unlike others who channel their grief into trying to extract justice for what happened, Carly prefers the day to be a “celebration of Lil”.
“Treasure every moment you’ve got with people because you never know when the last day is,” she adds.
“It’s one of those things you only reflect on when a bad thing happens. You get consumed with your world, and it takes an awful circumstance to go, ‘I really just need to enjoy this time away or with the kids’. How blessed I was to be a part of her life for those short seven years.”
An AFP investigator on the scene in Ukraine in 2014. Photo: AFP.
Yvonne Crozier, Acting Commander with the Australian Federal Police (AFP),has spent the last 10 years working with families like Liliane’s, who lost loved ones on MH17.
The AFP deployed more than 500 officers to Ukraine in the aftermath of the crash to assist with the recovery and identification of victims, as well as the investigation.
Yvonne was among those interviewed for a new five-part podcast series called Search Among the Sunflowers: Looking for truth in the world’s biggest crime scene, compiled and published by the AFP for the 10th anniversary.
AFP Acting Commander Yvonne Crozier has worked with many of the families involved in the MH17 tragedy. Photo: AFP.
“I heard about it very early on through the media, but also through our teams,” she tells Region.
“It was the school holidays and there were potentially Australians on that flight, so my next thought was, ‘Who have we got to deploy and where do we need to go to meet these families?'”
Her role as a Family Investigative Liaison Officer (FILO) was to coordinate face-to-face briefings with the families of affected Australians.
“Most importantly, in those early stages, it meant identifying the family’s loved ones and making sure they could be repatriated home, with respect to the needs and wants of the families,” Acting Commander Crozier says.
Debris compiled by investigators at what was considered the world’s largest crime scene. Photo: AFP.
“Families just want information at times like this, so we give them a single point of truth to ensure they’ve got what they need to move forward.”
It was a tough role but an “absolute privilege”.
“The Canberra community lost a loved one as well, and I just want to note that Liliane’s family are in our thoughts … and we wish them all the very best as they grow their own families.”
Loading ...
