It was a strange feeling. I had obviously cried many times before, but never like this.

I didn’t know what or whom the tears were for, where they were coming from or indeed, how to stop them.

Completely overcome, I let them flow.

And from a place deep within, so many memories came flooding back. Faces and pictures . . . scary, awful, horrific and sad flashbacks of so many other traumatic events I had covered as a journalist. The faces of those who had truly suffered. The teen who had his licence for barely a week, his arm resting on the window of his mangled car and his childlike face still perfect with youth.

There were no signs of injury, but he was lifeless.

The silent moment when a toddler’s body was dragged from a dirty, cold dam in a lonely paddock . . . the only sound you could hear was your own muffled cry.

And watching a child’s face as his mother explained that his father was still fighting to save the family home but his pets had perished . . . feeling his pain as he walked away, kicked a tree and then sat alone, staring into the distance.

Journalists on the frontline are exposed to trauma. It’s raw, confronting, sometimes frightening and often heartbreaking.

Often we arrive on scene at the same time as police or emergency services and, just as they do, we immediately start separating emotion from fact.

We build a professional wall between ourselves and the events unfolding.

But like every person exposed to trauma, at some point even those of us who build the strongest of walls and ignore our inner turmoil can come undone.

For me, it was Black Saturday. Rightly, you may ask why.

What grieving rights do I have for an event which did not affect me directly?I’m a seasoned journalist. Doesn’t than mean I’m a hardened, heartless, newshound?Not so.

A psychologist discussing the issue with a colleague accurately described journalists as filters.

We are on scene when events unfold while emergency services are going about their duties, we are the people survivors come to, to talk.