Voice of Real Australia is a regular newsletter from ACM, which has journalists in every state and territory. Today's is written by ACM supervising producer Emma Horn.
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I rounded the corner quickly, and ran straight into her. We both panicked.
Only weeks ago, I had moved to this new city. I wasn't used to the sudden coldness of a Riverina winter! The kind of cold that chills to the heart. But to be honest, my heart was frosty on this June evening for other reasons.
A night before, the world had learned of the horrendous murder of Melbourne woman Eurydice Dixon. Her body had been found at Princes Park.
I've found myself thinking of Eurydice lately. How her name has faded into the background while a new name takes its place on the top of that horrifying list each week.
On average, 125 women are murdered in Australia every year. More than one woman is killed every week. A lot of them are killed by men, and in particular, men they know. That's not according to me, by the way, that's according to the Australian Institute of Criminology.
Last week, three women lost their lives, allegedly by the hand of a man they knew. Lilie James in NSW, Krystal Marshall, and an unnamed woman in the ACT.
This week began with news that a woman in Bendigo, Victoria had likely been murdered too.
How many others will be added to the list? And how does the growing list affect the way we, the frightened women of Australia, behave and act around men?
I have been blessed and privileged to know many good, safe, strong men. My neighbours, my friends, my colleagues, my brother, my father, my heroes. Of course, not all men are unsafe!
But, if I handed you a six pack of apple juices and told you one of the six bottles was filled with urine, wouldn't you be cautious about drinking any of them?
The odds are in your favour, five of those bottles are safe. But one of them will give you a mouth full of yuck. Would you drink any of them? Or would you avoid the whole lot?
Which leads me back to that night in the Riverina, when I ran into her.
I had been walking quickly in the dark, heading toward my car, beret down low around my eyebrows, scarf up around my mouth, gloves on my hands, boots on my feet.
Turning the corner, we collided. She was dressed in all black and matched me for walking pace and urgency. Two unstoppable forces hitting each other at speed.
If you had have been watching from across the street, it may have looked like one of us had switched on an invisible boombox playing Carl Douglas's seminal tune, Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting.
We were certainly moving as fast as lightning and it was indeed very, very frightening as we both assumed the worse and prepared to fight each other.
Then stopped. The unknown assailant in front of me, hand to her heart, took a deep breath as her panic subsided.
"Oh, thank God. You're a woman."
We both chuckled a nervous laugh, waved each other off and continued on our respective way.
Heart still racing, I reached my car, and threw myself inside (Dukes of Hazzard style!) and caught my breath.
Her words still in my ears. Thank God. You're a woman.
As if my gender alone indicated the absence of any nefarious motives.
How very sad. How much sadder still that I had thought the very same thing about her.
"Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them." - Margaret Atwood.
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