For all its detractors, disconcerting headlines and history of incomprehensibly stupid teenage behaviour, Schoolies Week is for most participants a positive experience that represents more than just a week of drinking Blue Curacao in a swimsuit free of adult supervision. It’s a rite of passage that bookends two significant stages in life: the end of school and, essentially, the end of childhood, and the beginning of adulthood, new relationships, and the rest of your life.
Schoolies is supposed to be a celebration of the end of one era and the beginning of another – a wonderful week of suspending life in that carefree in-between state before returning to real life, results, the inevitability of either work or university, and a future of adult independence – and so it is devastating and almost unbearably tragic that a 17-year-old girl attending Schoolies is dead after falling 26 floors from the balcony of a Gold Coast high rise.
Isabelle Colman graduated from Mt St Michaels College in Brisbane, and her death has shocked her peers and plunged them into the reality of adulthood before they got to have their final week of just being with the friends they’ve spent the last however-many-years with.
This via Brisbane Times:
“Everyone’s devastated. Everyone wants to go home,” [Schoolies attendee] Zara Simon told Fairfax Radio 4BC. “I’m going home now. I’m trying to get my bag and we’re going. We’re supposed to be going home tomorrow, but no, most people are leaving today. Schoolies is supposed to be holiday, it’s supposed to be fun, but someone died.”
It isn’t supposed to be like that. Kids, look after each other and if you need to talk to someone support is available at Lifeline 131 114, Mensline 1300 789 978 and Kids Helpline 1800 551 800. Our thoughts are with Isabelle’s friends and family, and all the young people effected by her death.
Photo by Sergio Dionisio for Getty Images
