A vigil honouring the life of local activist and volunteer Laura Johnston will be held at the Victory Memorial Gardens on Thursday (11 December). Photo: Supplied.
A public vigil to remember the life of Laura Johnston will be held at the Victory Memorial Gardens in Wagga Wagga on Thursday night (11 December).
The beloved local volunteer and activist tragically died in a car crash on the Hume Highway near Gundagai on 2 December. Her baby daughter was treated by paramedics and flown to Canberra Hospital, where she remains in a stable condition.
Since Laura’s death, loving tributes and memories from those who knew her have filled the Wagga community, leading to the Wagga Women’s Health Centre planning a public vigil at the botanic gardens.
The hour-and-a-half event, starting at 6 pm, will allow members of the public to hold up a candle and stand in silence to honour Laura’s memory.
Laura was well known for her activism and service to local refugee communities. She also served as a committee member of the Wagga Women’s Health Centre and focused much of her time on advocating for reproductive rights for women locally.
Wagga Women’s Health Centre president Vickie Burkinshaw said the vigil was a chance for the community to celebrate Laura’s life while also mourning a heavy loss.
“There are so many people who might not feel it’s appropriate to attend the funeral but really want to share their love and respect for her and the work that she did in our community,” Ms Burkinshaw said.
“Her family have also respectfully requested that people make donations to the Women’s Health Centre for our work in that space, which is really beautiful, and we just wanted to have a visual with some silence and some reflection on what Laura means to people, individually and collectively as a community.
“We have a couple of handmade books, and we’re asking people to write about Laura so that when her two little girls are old enough to appreciate just how amazing their mother was, they can read some of those reflections that have sort of been captured on the night.”
Outside of her role with the Wagga Women’s Health Centre, Laura was a community development officer for local charity STARTTS, helping refugees to settle into the Riverina.
Laura worked alongside counsellor Jeanette Ninnis, who said her death had been felt by the refugee community across the Riverina.
“Laura was well known by the refugee settler communities in Wagga over that period of time,” she said.
“That includes here in Wagga, communities from Burundi and other African communities, the Afghan communities, the Tibetan, the Burmese, but most specifically in the Yazidi community, which is the largest settler refugee community in the Wagga area.
“Laura had such strong beliefs in human rights and dignity and opportunity for people, and equality. She ran a lot of groups. There were youth groups, there were women’s art groups, there were young people’s art groups, and there was a theatre group with the Yazidi young people.”
Ms Ninnis said the vigil was a chance for the community to come together and remember Laura and her tireless work.
“This is a young woman in the prime of her life, with so much future and potential, who all who knew her just imagined would be going wherever life was going to take her. And to have that cut short, it’s devastating,” she said.
“It’s a great opportunity also for us to help each other to move on in our healing, because we get that chance to reflect and to think also about ourselves and our own relationships and our own values and what’s important to us.
“It’s in a garden, of course, which is a beautiful setting. So it’s an opportunity to allow us to feel the feelings that we feel, and to interact with each other in a way that just gives us a little bit of opportunity for everybody to remember Laura in a way that’s meaningful for them.”
The vigil will be held at the Victory Memorial Gardens at 6 pm on Thursday (11 December).
Police are investigating the car accident.
