For some, the details of a tragedy fade with time. For others, the moment they heard the news remains as vivid as if it happened yesterday.
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For the Cobram community, the tragedy of the Mazzaferro family is one that has never been forgotten.
On September 16, 1976, Giulietta Mazzaferro (née Carbone), 31, and her four children ― Giovanna, 13, Antonella, 12, Pina, 9, and Franco, 8 ― died in a crash at the intersection of the Goulburn Valley Hwy and Murray Valley Hwy at Yarroweyah.
Fifty years on, Giulietta’s niece Sarina Artavilla (née Coppola), still remembers that Thursday afternoon in heartbreaking detail.
“It feels like it was yesterday, even though it’s been 50 years,” she said.
“Everyone I’ve met over the years know what they were doing when they heard the sirens and the news came out.”
Earlier that afternoon, Giulietta had visited Sarina’s home to show her an outfit she planned to wear to a family wedding, before heading home.
After school that day Franco was meant to go to Sarina’s house because he had soccer training nearby, but he forgot and instead took the bus home.
“Giulietta never liked leaving the kids on their own so she put them all in the car and went to take Franco to soccer,” Sarina said.
“That day, I went to the butcher’s with my mum ... we heard the sirens, but we didn't think much about it.”
Sarina’s mother told her she would go home before returning to help her with her four young children.
After waiting for some time, Sarina decided to call her mother and was shocked when a stranger answered the phone.
“I said to him, ‘What's going on?’ Because I could hear what I thought was loud music,” she said.
“He said to me ‘Don't you know what happened?’
“That’s when I knew something bad had happened, and I realised that it wasn’t music I could hear, it was crying and screaming.”
Sarina ran to her neighbour’s and asked her to look after the kids before running to her mother’s house ― her brother met her in the middle of the street.
When he told her what had happened, she said she “couldn’t believe it” and broke down.
“If he just hadn’t got the bus...” she said.
“We always say ‘if’, but that will drive you crazy.”
In the aftermath, the community rallied around the family, cooking for them for months.
Sarina said what kept her going was family, the community, and being there for her children.
“We're still here, after all that tragedy,” she said.
“That's the beauty of a small town, everyone comes together.”
A memorial post on the Courier’s Facebook page in September this year received more than 100 comments.
One person recalled being just 10 years old and watching from the window of Cobram Consolidated School as the funeral procession made its way to the cemetery.
“Something I will never forget,” they wrote.
Another remembered the funeral as a moment when the entire town came together.
“The day of the funeral the entire town attended and the entire church was crying, it sounded like music as we all unified in such painful grief,” they wrote.
“I wept openly for Joan (Giovanna), she was truly lovely inside and out. I miss her still and often say she deserved so much more,” another wrote.
Sarina remembers Giulietta as the one to organise family gatherings with dancing.
“She was a beautiful person, everybody loved her, and she always had a smile on her face,” she said.
Sarina said in hospital after having each of her children, Giulietta hated the food so much that Sarina would bring her home-cooked meals.
Sarina was 12 when Giovanna was born and remembers helping care for her as a baby.
“I remember the first time I changed her nappy, I was dry retching,” she said, laughing.
“They were like my kids.
“Giovanna played the guitar, Antonella was a character, she was a storyteller and little Pina was quiet ... Franco loved soccer.”
The tragedy remains etched in Cobram’s history, carried through the stories of those who were there and passed down through generations.
“Not a day goes by that I don’t think of them,” Sarina said.