Peter Meagher, a former police detective, Randwick Rugby supporter, brother, and husband was farewelled in a moving service on 7 January which paid tribute to all the lives he had touched during his 61 years of life.
Mourners packed into St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney for what was the final funeral of the Bondi Beach terror attack victims.
Fr Richard Leonard SJ – who had married Meagher and his wife Virginia Wynne-Markham in 2017 – presided over the funeral and spoke of how the eastern suburbs stalwart lost his life in a violent attack on the Jewish community.
“None of us should be here. Peter’s life was taken suddenly, violently, and far too soon,” Fr Leonard said.
“It feels wrong because it is wrong and today the church does not pretend otherwise.”
Meagher’s sad death did not take away from the life he had lived, and his coffin was decorated with the camera he used as a freelance photographer, a Randwick jersey, his police service badge, and a jar of lollies for his sweet tooth.
These different aspects of his life were highlighted by four of the people who knew him best – NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Michael Fitzgerald, rugby player Morgan Turinui, brother David Meagher, and wife Wynne-Markham.
Fitzgerald, who had worked with Meagher for four years in the 1980s and 1990s, spoke of his friend’s commitment to his work, the way he conducted himself and cared for those in the community.
As an example, Fitzgerald spoke of the kindness Meagher had shown to a troubled young man, now deceased, who had grown to trust the detective.
Growing emotional at the end of his eulogy, he recalled how he warned Meagher he “cared too much” about the people who found themselves on the wrong side of the law.
“I was wrong, as a police officer, you can never care enough,” Fitzgerald said.
While solemn, the funeral was still full of life, and laughs were drawn from the mourners over the lolly jar, and on hearing the way Meagher and Wynne-Markham met: on a dating site in 2009. Their first outing was to a rugby game, she recalled, recounting the final score.
She had been drawn to him immediately, she said, and he had always ended his voicemails and calls with the words, “I love you.”
Struggling with her words and referring to a conversation they’d had “a month before what happened,” Wynne-Markham also said the final time she said goodbye to him was at 4:15 on 14 December.
“Then our lives changed forever,” she said.
“I choose light, I choose peace, I choose love. Peter will be forever mine.”
Community concerns after the terror attack made their way to Meagher’s funeral with his brother David emphasising in his eulogy his desire to see greater gun control and an end to antisemitism.
He said the terrorists had six legal guns which they used in the mass shooting which left 15 people dead, with proposed legislation aiming to cut the legal limit to four.
“What can you do with six guns that you can’t do with four?” he said.
“An antisemite without a gun is just a hate-filled person, an antisemite with a gun is a killer.”
His brother, the eldest of five siblings, was the family’s “big brother, teacher, and protector” who taught him to ride a bike, once fell asleep in an AC/DC concert, and almost always had dinner with his parents on Friday, Meagher said.
He urged mourners to remember his brother for his personality and actions rather than the tragic way in which he died.
“When you think about Peter, it would be great to think about the life he lived which was a full and rewarding one, one that he managed to squeeze into 61 years, rather than the way he died,” Meagher said.
Among those in attendance were Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, New South Wales Premier Chris Minns, Governor-General of Australia Sam Mostyn, Senator Dave Sharma, NSW Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon and Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP.