Family and friends of retired Kanahooka teachers Carol and Michael Clancy gathered in Canberra on Friday to mark the anniversary of their deaths in the MH17 plane crash.
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Mr and Mrs Clancy were among the 298 people killed when the Malaysia Airlines flight was shot down over the Ukraine on July 17 last year.
Sprigs of wattle were laid during an emotional memorial service at Parliament House on Friday, held in honour of the 38 Australian victims who lost their lives that day.
Mrs Clancy’s daughter Jane Malcolm, and sisters Glenda Chalmers and Valerie Kelly, attended a private ceremony for victims’ families, during which Prime Minister Tony Abbott unveiled a plaque etched with the Australian victims’ names.
The plinth sits in soil brought back by a federal police officer from the crash site near Donesk, close to the Ukraine-Russia border.
‘‘It was a humane and decent thing for him to know and do,’’ Mr Abbott said. ‘‘It was a contrast to the savagery that brought down the plane.’’
Mr Abbott recognised the families of the dead had endured the worst year of their lives.
‘‘Hardly a moment would go by when you don’t think of a parent, a child, a sibling, a friend, present in your thoughts but painfully absent from your life,’’ he told the more than 500 people gathered for the ceremony.
Opposition leader Bill Shorten echoed the Prime Minister’s words.
‘‘Grief is a solitary emotion. It can come up behind you like a following wave in unguarded moments,’’ he said.
The Prime Minister also took aim at Russia, which international observers say supplied weapons to pro-Russia separatists who’ve been blamed for shooting down the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777. ‘‘They deserved to be welcomed home, not shot out of the sky in a war of aggression by one country against a smaller neighbour.’’
