Kerre Woodham: No room for error

The tragic deaths of six young students on an outdoor adventure was avoidable. Photo / Sarah Ivey

Sitting through the coroner's report of the deaths of six young Elim Christian College students and their teacher must have been indescribably gruelling for those who loved them.

Perhaps if you lost a child you could come to terms with their death if it was an unavoidable accident, one of those freaks of nature that occurs in the outdoors that nobody could have foreseen and for which no one was to blame.

But to hear the coroner say that in all likelihood the kids and their teacher would have survived if they'd just stayed put on the ledge must have been dreadful to hear.

So many things went wrong that fateful day in April two years ago. There were so many things that should have been done, even allowing for hindsight having 20/20 vision.

I have enormous sympathy for the young instructor, too. It was Jodie Sullivan's third month at the centre and just her sixth trip into the gorge. She lacked the knowledge and experience required to lead the teenagers through the gorge that day.

Another instructor, more familiar with the gorge, who was responsible for another group of Elim students that day, decided not to go into the gorge, citing the weather conditions and an "eerie" feeling.

That's what experience gives you: a gut instinct based on life-and-death decisions made over a number of years.

It was utterly tragic hearing the many missteps that were taken before the young people headed out into the gorge, and knowing that the tragedy could have been averted must have been brutal for the Elim school community.

You trust that when you send your children off to participate in outdoor education, they will be in safe and professional hands.

As a parent, you know how important it is for kids to experience the thrill of venturing into in an unfamiliar environment, finding strength and courage they didn't know they had and the pleasure that comes from testing yourself physically and working together as a vital member of a team.

That's the real benefit of outdoor education - not the distinguishing of one fern from another or how to roll a kayak and come out on top. It's the self-discovery and the awareness of how important it can be to know how to work as a team.

So I would hate to see all outdoor education avoided as a result of this tragedy.

All I hope is that every supervisor, every instructor, everybody who has the care of young ones out in the bush keeps the Elim Christian College disaster in the back of their mind when they're making decisions. Then maybe their deaths won't have been entirely in vain.