"Through tragedy, we've become a fraternity"

When Lara Jensen lost her much-loved brother in a collision at a level crossing, she became an accidental advocate for safer country trains.

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I answered the knock at our door the night my youngest brother and his two friends were killed.

Shortly before midnight I'd been woken by barking sheep dogs, signalling the arrival of two local police officers. I called to my parents and siblings, and we gathered around the kitchen table in our old mudbrick homestead on the family sheep property in the Murchison region of WA. It was July 8, 2000. The annual shearing of our Merino flock was due to start the following day.

The police officers were kind but plain-speaking. They told us that my youngest brother, Christian, and his friends, Jess Broad and Hilary Smith, had been killed that night when a loaded grain train had struck the Toyota he was driving at the Yarramony Road level crossing, near Jennacubbine. They were just kilometres away from the Jennacubbine Tavern, where a group of their friends had gathered to celebrate a 21st. They never arrived at the party.

The police drove away, and we were left grappling with the shock of this horrific tragedy.

With daylight came the steady arrival of neighbours from surrounding properties who brought meals and bouquets of freshly picked wildflowers. They grieved with us and then rolled up their sleeves to help us get on with the job of getting our sheep sheared and trucked out so we could arrange my brother's funeral.

I saw this tragedy devastate my parents and my three remaining siblings, Kylie, Annemaree and Jorgen, along with our close-knit pastoral community. And in the days and months that followed, I was left shattered. Every day was an enormous struggle without my greatest confidant, my closest friend and my beloved youngest brother.