For Mollymook mother Susan Loch, it's been a labour of love and loss. The book she's finished writing and is about to launch tells the story of her daughter Jess, who lost her life on the Princes Highway on a rainy night in November 2011.
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Susan courageously told her story during the FIX IT NOW campaign launched by this newspaper in March 2018. When we presented it to a slew of politicians with whom we spoke about the dreadful state of the Princes Highway south of Nowra, some were moved to tears.
It was by presenting the human cost of road trauma that we secured commitment to first fix known highway accident spots and, in the longer term, to duplicate the highway all the way to the Victorian border.
Susan was instrumental in getting the politicians to listen.
Of course, it should never have taken a mother's anguish over the loss of a child with so much potential to get our leaders to act.
We had known for years that the stretch of highway on which Jess Loch died was terribly dangerous. The roadside memorials clustered around one poorly cambered bend bore witness to that fact.
Susan was only one of many people to lose loved ones on the highway and, sadly, there will be more.
Alison Murray from Sussex Inlet, whose husband died when a truck lost control just south of the Island Point Road intersection, also came forward to speak about grief and anger about the state of the highway.
Their courage is coming forward to tell most painful stories made a huge difference.
The launch of Susan's book during National Road Safety Week is timely. With national borders closed because of COVID, thousands more holiday makers than normal will be driving this summer, increasing the risk of tragedy on our highways byways.
Many of these visitors will be in unfamiliar territory on roads that, sadly, despite commitments to upgrade them, remain substandard. We know the visitors are coming, indeed many are already here - the weekend traffic through Nowra confirms that.
We should recognise Susan's book goes way beyond amplifying a message about the state of our highway. It is an account of dealing with grief of the most unimaginable kind. It will hopefully help people caught up in similar circumstances navigate their way out of the dark place to which sudden loss has sent them.
