I HEARD my mum gasp, then I was thrown forward in my seat as she hit the brake, and I briefly saw a flash of blue.

That was the colour of the station wagon that had just gone through a stop sign and crossed Seventeenth Street at speed, only just missing the Holden in which Mum was driving my little sister and I into the Mildura shops after we'd finished our school day at The Lake primary. Had we ...