Editor’s Desk: Religious or not, treat Easter as a good time for some self-reflection

Let me start this column about Easter by stating I am not a religious person, but I reckon a good purpose for the annual holy occasion is to treat it as a time of reflection. The year is about a quarter over, so how is your year tracking compared to your hopes and goals? If there anything you want to change? Is it time to consider a plan B or C? Is life treating you like a human-sized pinata? Are you feeling at the top of your game? Or are you somewhere in between but life could use a few tweaks? Just like the Reserve Bank hit the pause button on interest rate hikes this week so we could all take a collective breath, Easter is a time to also pause, review and perhaps hit the reset button. After all doesn’t Easter — whether we’re talking about Jesus or eggs or bunnies — boil down to the concept of rebirth. And the time for setting goals shouldn’t just be reserved for the beginning of the year either. Coincidentally, this Easter gives us a chance to reflect on the region’s two biggest news stories in recent memory, with both experiencing milestones. I’m talking about the kidnapping and rescue of Cleo Smith and cyclone Seroja. Cleo’s abductor Terence Kelly was sentenced on Wednesday, facing a maximum of 20 years for snatching the Carnarvon girl from under her parents’ noses while the family slept in their tent at the Blowholes campsite in October 2021. She was rescued 18 days later from Kelly’s Carnarvon home thanks to remarkable police work in a case that generated global headlines. Those four words uttered by Cleo to her rescuers and recorded on police bodycam — “my name is Cleo” — and the sheer relief will never be forgotten, certainly not by the people of the Mid West and Gascoyne. In the end, Kelly was sentenced to more than 13 years. No sentence handed to Kelly would have ever been enough in many people’s minds, but all we can hope for is that Cleo and her family are moving forward, and that Cleo grows up as a happy, well-adjusted child despite her ordeal. Two years ago on Tuesday the Mid West was the scene of a natural disaster. Kalbarri, Northampton and inland agricultural communities bore the brunt of cyclone Seroja, which crossed the coast as a category three. At the beginning, you would think the recovery process would almost be done after two years. But here we are, two years later, and there is still much more work to be done, the rollout of relief funding is happening at a snail’s pace and the whole process is at the mercy of an overheated construction and labour market. There are people who have yet to rebuilt, whose homes are still covered by tarps. But the worst thing to happen is for people to lose faith, or to allow for the Seroja recovery to fall off the public agenda. Pressure needs to be maintained on the powerbrokers to see this through until the end. If the cases of Cleo and Seroja have something in common, it’s that life can change in an instant. We see it too often during Easter on the roads. People lose their lives. For what? All for that silly, mad rush to get from point A to point B. Easter should be about spending quality time with family and friends (if you can), taking a breather from work (if you can), watching the joy on kids’ faces, relishing in the moment. Not dicing with death on the roads. The most important thing is still to be here after Easter. So if you’re travelling on the roads, please take the utmost care. Every road user should do their bit to ensure we come out the other side with zero fatalities. If that means going a bit slower, taking that rest break and getting to your destination a bit late, then who the hell cares? Whatever you are doing and wherever you are this Easter, I hope you find the time to stop, pause and reflect on what’s important in life, and get something out of it — besides a sore stomach from eating too much chocolate.