When they reach their final resting place, the Australian victims of flight MH17 will be festooned in the phosphorus stars of the Southern Cross, an unadulterated symbol of home.
The word "home" and what it represents has become the overriding nexus in a grim mission to repatriate the bodies of the Australians killed when MH17 exploded over eastern Ukraine.
It's been just over a week since Malaysia Airlines flight 17 was ripped apart at 33,000ft, most likely by a missile fired by Russian-backed rebels, and it will be many more before the families and friends of the Australians killed in this outrage will have any closure.
Dr Yega Muthu, a lecturer at University of Technology Sydney and an expert in post traumatic stress disorder, says closure is very important when dealing with the grief that comes with such events.
"Closure is one of the ways to go through a healing process, and it can mean different things for different people," he said.
He says our want to repatriate the bodies of our loved ones is an important part of the process.
"It's a form of ritual and religious ceremony in different faiths and cultures to bring a body back and to either bury the body to draw closure or in some other cultures to burn the body according to the faith or belief which also draws closure."
The day after news of the tragedy broke, a Mass was held at Saint Mary Magdalene Catholic Church in Rose Bay.
It was just a regular Saturday service, but the church was full with people, not all Catholic, who had come to pay respects to the much-loved Sister Philomene from Sydney's Kincoppal-Rose Bay School, who was on MH17.
Monsignor Tony Doherty, who had known Sister Phil for 30 years, celebrated the Mass.
"To do it when the news was so raw provides a place for people to discharge their distress, have a safe place for grieving," he said.
"When we come together in the face of grief, we actually go away a bit enlarged."
Fr Tony recalls witnessing, during the 10 years that he was dean of St Mary's Cathedral, similar outpourings of grief when Diana died, following the Thredbo landslide disaster, and after the 2002 Bali bombing.
"I began to realise the importance of a church, the importance of bringing people together into a safe space for them to express this distress, to grieve together."
He says these collective outpourings of grief "are not only helpful but probably essential for a lot of people".
"The simple process goes to the very heart of what is a very important part of us dealing with and remaining sane in a pretty mad world."
When they finally reach Australian soil, they will be draped in the national flag and honoured with a military-style ramp parade.
"We will bring all of them home. We must bring all of them home," Prime Minister Tony Abbott vowed earlier this week, as he led the world in condemnation of the attack, and in calls to rectify the grotesque "mistake" that killed all 298 people aboard the ill-fated flight.
The Australians who were killed, whether they be citizens or residents, came from all around the country, indeed from other parts of the world, and from many walks of life.
They included Hans van den Hende, his wife, Shaliza Dewa, and their three children Piers, Marnix and Margaux who lived at Eynesbury, west of Melbourne; and Gerry Menke and his wife Mary, who owned an abalone pearl company in Mallacoota.
Also aboard the plane was Toowoomba couple Roger and Jill Guard, both doctors, who were returning to Australia after holidaying after a medical conference.
The three Maslin children - Mo, 12, Evie, 10 and Otis 8 - were on their way to Australia with grandfather Nick Norris ahead of the new school term. Their parents Rin Maslin and Anthony Maslin had stayed behind in Amsterdam.
Jack O'Brien, 25, was on his way home to Sydney after a seven-week European holiday.
Mother of two Liliane Derden, 50, from Hall in Canberra's north was aboard the flight, as was Emma Bell, a teacher aged in her 20s who was returning to the Northern Territory for the new term beginning next week. She grew up in Lithgow in NSW.
Itamar Avnon, a 27-year-old dual Dutch-Israeli national, was a student at Melbourne's Swinburne University, living in Windsor.
They all called Australia home.
At a solemn ceremony in Eindhoven to mark the arrival of a Dutch C130 Hercules and the Australian RAAF C17 transporter which carried the dead from MH17, a thousand grieving family members and friends watched on.
While the flags of all the 17 countries affected by the tragedy were flying at half mast, with the exception of Malaysia, two carried a heavier burden.
Out of the 298 people on the downed plane, 193 were Dutch, while up to 39 either were citizens or residents of Australia.
Two nations - the Netherlands and Australia - have become fused in grief.
After arriving in Eindhoven, these bodies and the many more that will follow, will be taken to Oudheusden Kazerne near Hilversum, a leafy, quiet town about 30 minutes from Amsterdam, where hundreds of forensic specialists will begin the identification process.
But as Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove surmised when the first 40 wooden coffins arrived in the Netherlands on Wednesday, it mattered little that the identities, or even origin of those inside, was not yet known.
"We were thinking is this person in this casket, is this an Australian?" Sir Peter said.
"So today they were all Australians. And they were all Dutch. And they were all the other nations. I feel very privileged today to represent all the families ... and all Australians."
"This is a long journey home."
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