I’ve covered many tragic funerals. These are the details I always jot down

This article is part of our Behind the Headlines series, where Age reporters reveal unforgettable moments in their careers.See all 12 stories.

What do you do for a living?

It’s a simple question with a simple answer – journalist – but for a brief moment about a decade ago, I found myself almost reflexively offering a pithy, cryptic response, ruefully murmuring: “I’m a grief reporter.”

I was working for The Age as a senior writer, but would often be pulled back into the dark whirlpools of daily news. Something horrible would happen somewhere – because something horrible is always happening somewhere – and I’d be called in to add “colour” to that news.

Pink roses on Masa Vukotic’s coffin in 2015.Credit: Joe Armao

The unpleasant task is quite straightforward. Put the readers there, right after the rape or murder or coward’s punch. Sketch the scene and capture the mood. A battle-scarred editor summed up the brief for me once: “Mate, just go out there and do some of your flowery shit.”

I used to teach journalism, and my most abiding lesson was about getting the details. I used to recite to my students what I viewed as one of the central commandments of the craft: “Always get the name of the dog, the brand of the beer and the title of the song that was playing as the car crashed off the road.” Covering funerals, I naturally made a point of getting the type of flowers on the coffin.

Pink roses for Masa Vukotic, 17, the schoolgirl stabbed to death in broad daylight at a pocket park around the corner from her Doncaster home. Purple gerberas at the Dandenong funeral for toddler Sanaya Sahib – a 14-month-old girl drowned and dumped in Darebin Creek. Yellow daffodils for Chris Lane, 22, the baseball player on a US college scholarship, shot in the back while jogging in Oklahoma, then farewelled at a church in Essendon. Proteas tied to a tree for Larrakia man Josh Hardy, 21, beaten to death outside a McDonald’s on St Kilda Road.

There’s nothing unique about this work. It’s part of the gig, the toughest part of which, of course, is the job journalists call the “death knock”.

We appear on a doorstep, hoping to be allowed through the threshold so we can ask a shocked and grieving person about their dead relative, who was usually just killed dramatically or horrifically.

Gary Tippet, a longtime writer for The Sunday Age, didn’t like the term “death knock” at all. He called them “intrusions” because that’s what they are – an uninvited, unwanted and unvarnished attempt to make someone’s red-raw and private grief public.

A car crash that killed five men in Pyalong, near Seymour, in 2015.Credit: Nicole Garmston

The worst one I did was nine years ago – the last I hope to do. Four young men were dead in Pyalong after their silver 2001 Holden V8 SS Commodore left the road, hit a wire rope barrier, became airborne, slammed into a tree and folded in half. Three perished quickly while one clung to life, holding the hand of a female police officer for 15 minutes before dying.

They were mostly from Echuca, so I drove north, checked into a motel and began trawling Facebook pages, looking for people to message, then searching the White Pages for residential listings to call, and addresses to visit. You dial a number, take a deep breath, and softly – respectfully and deferentially – make your case ...

“Hello, this is Konrad Marshall from The Age. I’m in Echuca to write about the boys who passed away in Pyalong this morning. I’m so incredibly sorry for your loss, and can’t imagine what you’re feeling. I was wondering if you have a few moments to talk about (insert name here), and tell us about his life.”

People hang up, tell you to get lost or ask how you got their number. People weep, and let you know that it’s just not the right time, not now, not yet, please. I’ll never forget one poor mum who answered the phone, speaking in the tenderest trembling whisper, “I just want to hold my son …” before her voice broke loose into the righteous fury of a lioness, “... AND NOT TALK TO ANY F---ING JOURNALISTS!”

That’s when I began opening gates, dodging dogs on chains and ringing doorbells. Guided only by surnames in the phone book, I came upon uncles and distant cousins, and had doors slammed in my face. I stumbled on people who weren’t related to the victims at all, and breathed a sigh of relief that I’d come to the wrong place. Then finally I’d arrive at the right place, given away first by the telltale gathering of cars, then by the bloodshot eyes of the people who would answer the door and tell me, “No, thank you” and “Please, go away”.

Nick Mongta’s aunt, Pamela Reade, and cousin, Tarah Reade, lay flowers at the Pyalong crash scene in 2015.Credit: Jesse Marlow

I did this for hours, hating myself and my work, going to bed in the motel with my notepad empty and my heart filled with self-loathing.

It’s true that journalists justify our work in all sorts of ways, but our work is also justifiable in all sorts of ways. In this case, methamphetamine was suspected to have played a role, so these deaths were legitimate news. The rising road toll is always an issue; exploring a crash of this nature – a “quadruple fatal” – was in the public interest.

Those justifications are what I had to repeat to myself the next morning. Finally, I happened upon a little house on a corner with a few rusted cars on the lawn.

The father of one of the dead boys, Wally, opened the door and patiently listened to my request. A broken man, he gently shooed me away – “Not now mate, we’re all a bit exhausted” – and I nodded but made a suggestion: “Maybe I could come back in a few hours, with some coffees for everyone?” He said that would be fine, so I returned later with lattes and sweet pastries.

I told them I wanted to write a tribute to their son, Nick, 22, who had died only the previous day. Then I sat at their kitchen table, with dad and mum and four younger siblings, Shakira, Kade, Samuel and Mya. They told me about Nick’s life, his mates and dabbling in ice. His cheeky grin and his beautiful green eyes. His Yamaha motorcycle and working at the local abattoir.

Then I made one final request: could a photographer come over? They graciously agreed, and the picture led the front page the next day – a portrait of grief in that all-too-familiar pose, parents clutching a framed photo of the departed, doubled over in a paroxysm of tears.

Nick Mongta’s parents, Walter and Tania, after their son’s death in 2015.Credit: Jason South

That was probably my toughest day at work ever, but I was lucky. I had been a journalist for more than a decade by the time of that grim assignment. Ten years earlier, when I was only a cub starting out in newspapers, I hadn’t quite grown the guts and failed miserably on the job at a newspaper in regional New York.

I heard the crackle of the police scanner at my desk, then sped from the newsroom through bucolic country fields to the shores of a deep glacial lake. I found three shivering and stunned teenage survivors at a small marina, wrapped in towels. It was my job to talk to them, about their friend who had just died in front of them, but I simply couldn’t.

So I didn’t. I turned around, drove back to the office and told my editor no one was there. Under the “Intrusion” section of our Code of Conduct, reporters actually have the right to resist pressure from commissioning editors to intrude, but I didn’t yet dare to push back, so I stayed silent and pretended to do my job. (It’s common enough that there’s an industry word for this. It’s called a “grass knock” – when you turn up to a scene, but the only thing you knock is the grass under your feet.)

When I mention that story to people, they often tell me I did the right thing because I showed those teenagers a small mercy. But I can also see how what I did was nothing to be lauded.

Had I pushed through my discomfort, sucked it up and done the work, those boys might have shared a cautionary truth about the danger of swimming in cold northern waters too early in the summer. Every year, those lakes claim more than a few unsuspecting tourists from New Jersey and Long Island, who plunge into the blue, not knowing what the frigidity of the water will do. Stories explaining how that happens are a crucial warning system.

It makes me think about the value of the reporting by my colleagues at The Age last summer when four Indian-Australians drowned in waters off Phillip Island. Telling their stories, and sharing them widely – along with information about how to survive when caught in a rip – might just save a life.

Rosie Batty speaking to media after her son, Luke, was killed in 2014.Credit: Michael Clayton-Jones

People often possess some preconceived notion of journalists as cartoonish villains, milking a widow’s tears. But I’ve only ever seen quiet empathy and consideration, even within those harsh moments where a dozen notebooks, cameras and microphones form a scrum around the suffering. Like the day in 2014 when Luke Batty, 11, was killed by his father on the Mornington Peninsula.

I was called to write the front page piece while my friends were part of the media throng at the home of his mother, Rosie. She famously strode out, speaking with such uncommon eloquence, empathy and grace about mental health and family violence that she eventually became 2015 Australian of the Year. That mass-media death knock – an impromptu kerbside conference – kickstarted a critical public conversation.

Since that Echuca visit, I’ve wondered about the power of the stories we write about the immediately departed, and whether they offer any catharsis to those left behind. I wonder mostly how that family felt about the story I wrote for Nick – if it was worth the intrusion. I sent them a Facebook message almost a decade later to ask if sharing their memories held any value. I think it must have; a year after Nick’s death, they were featured in a TV special hosted by Ray Martin called Ice: The Scourge of Regional Australia. Granted a platform through personal tragedy, this family spoke thoughtfully and openly about what had happened to their son, in the hope other sons might be spared.

They didn’t respond to my recent request, but I think I know why. I found their names in a Google search, linked to a much shorter television story, dated five years later and headlined: “Echuca father, 23, killed in Heathcote highway crash”.

It wasn’t a story about Nick. It was a story about his little brother, Kade.

Six years after Nick Mongta’s death, his younger brother, Kade, was killed on the same stretch of road.Credit: James Boddington

Kade was 17 and shell-shocked when I met him at their kitchen table. He had grown up, got his licence and come off the very same stretch of highway as his big brother, on Easter weekend in 2021. Two brothers from the same family, killed in Commodores after slamming into trees along the same country road.

I scanned the internet to see if any new stories were written about the grieving family. Maybe someone else had death-knocked that little house on the corner, as I had done, and talked with Wally about burying another son? Maybe another reporter had attended the funeral? Maybe someone scribbled down the type of flowers on the coffin?

But I couldn’t find any colour story about Kade. No one got the details. No one wrote the name of his firstborn, or the brand of his dirt bike, let alone what he might have seen as his car crashed off the road.

There was no trace of an intrusion. And I was glad.

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