Beloved Daniel finally finds peace

Moments of Daniel Morcombe's young life were celebrated in this touching tribute, chosen by family to be shown at his funeral service.

ONE by one they start appearing. A woman with a red scarf, a man in a red shirt. The closer you get to the Sunshine Coast, the more people you see wearing red - red socks, red ties, red skirts, red dresses.

By the time you get to the beautiful school chapel at Sippy Downs where a 13-year-old boy was finally farewelled and laid to rest, a boy who should now be a young man starting out on life, there was a sea of red, a blazing red ocean of love.

See more pictures from the funeral here

Red was the colour of the shirt Daniel Morcombe was wearing the day he disappeared nine years ago.

It is the colour chosen by the foundation created in his name to symbolise safety awareness for children.

In the hands of the Morcombe family it has become the colour of hope and celebration.

Daniel Morcombe is forever frozen in the public imagination as a smiling, good-looking boy who went out to buy Christmas presents one morning and never came back.

Read the eulogies in full here

In the hard years since his abduction, his courageous and dignified mum and dad, Denise and Bruce, became Australia's most famous grieving parents.

Daniel Morcombe's casket is carried from St Catherine of Siena Catholic church on the Sunshine Coast. Picture: Glenn Barnes

But yesterday in a chapel open on all four sides to the air and the light, a chapel where an ordinary boy once sat just like all other ordinary kids who keep on being ordinary because the extraordinary mercifully never seeks them out, it was much-loved, ordinary Daniel who was remembered.

Daniel, champion arm-wrestler, fan of World Championship Wrestling, of dirt-bike riding. Daniel, mean maker of spaghetti bolognaise.

It was this ordinary kid who brought the oceans of people in red, many of whom never met him, but who felt an echo of the shock which ran through Daniel's parents, his grand-parents, his cousins, his older brother Dean and most especially his twin, Bradley, when the awful truth dawned that he might never come back.

GALLERY: The Daniel Morcombe story

It was Daniel from Siena Catholic College they came for in the rain.

The female police officer in her blue uniform with a slash of red lipstick because it was the only red thing she could find.

The two little girls in red shirts, India, 11, and Sienna, 8, sitting with their mum Tarn Davies from Peregian Beach, who works in child safety.

The girls have never been to a funeral before and have taken the day off school because their mum believes it's important they attend.

Bruce Morcombe speaks at the funeral for his son Daniel, held at St Catherine of Siena Catholic church, Sippy Downs on the Sunshine Coast. Thousands more mourners were gathered outside. Picture: Glenn Barnes

"There's just not enough child security in the world," she says. And here are other ordinary boys wearing Daniel's old school uniform, wiping down the rain-splattered chairs before the service.

See more pictures from the funeral here

Boys much like Daniel must have been, ribbing each other, careful of their hair in the wet.

Boys just beginning to notice girls, wearing red twists of ribbon pinned to their grey school shirts, or red cotton at their wrists.

Here are the Siena College girls, handing out red ribbons with safety pins.

Here are all the thousands of ordinary people - the SES workers, the police officers, the workers from nearby Australia Zoo, the volunteers, the mothers and fathers whose hearts went out to a frightened boy and his family.

The television crews have been setting up since 3am, and the traffic built up hours before the 11am service.

At the turn-off to the school road, a local business, T and G Sand and Gravel Centre, put out a sign reading "Farewell Daniel".

The family of Daniel Morcombe gather for his funeral at St Catherine of Siena Catholic church in Sippy Downs on the Sunshine Coast. Picture: Glenn Barnes

Soon, on the enormous wide screen set up outside the chapel so that the overflowing crowd can see the service, India spots someone famous.

"Who was the prime minister before Julia Gillard?" she asks. It's Kevin Rudd.

Then there's the white coffin of an ordinary boy, covered in red roses. Bruce and Denise are sitting in front of it, Denise's hands shaking, and the crowd watching outside on plastic chairs grows quiet.

Denise lowers her eyes, as if she can no longer bear to look up. Tarn Davies instinctively cradles her children. After the hymns, the liturgy of the sacrament, after his brother Dean and twin Bradley have spoken and all the prayers have flown up, there are cups of tea and biscuits for everyone in the school hall.

Then that immensely brave and unbreakable family bear the coffin from the chapel, down through the column of boys and girls, and out to the silver hearse, tied with red ribbons.

In private they will bury their precious child in the earth, the crowds dressed in red will separate and drift away, and life will go on.

The Morcombes want the short life of their son Daniel James not to be wasted, and for the darkness to be broken by the light.

SPECIAL PRESENTATION: Behind the search for Daniel Morcombe

A look at the eight year crusade to find a missing son.

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