The “Jack ‘n’ Jill” course at TAFE’s rural skills centre on the outskirts of the city was a hit with the 18-year-old from Newcastle, who wanted to get her hands dirty before enrolling in the veterinary science course at Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga.

In between classes she was loving making music with Dubbo District Concert Band, playing the clarinet that had been her constant companion for more than a decade.

“She was as happy as we had ever seen her,” father Mark Waugh said yesterday before the sounds of Sarah’s preferred instrument accompanied the scattering of some of her ashes on the Macquarie River at Sandy Beach.

A large crowd gathered there late yesterday afternoon for a celebration of the smart and talented teenager’s life.

Sarah’s devoted family described by Dubbo’s Anglican Reverend Diane Beal as “ inspirational”, experienced “sadness” but “no regrets in what she was doing and where she was going”.

The day after 18th birthday celebrations, Sarah and her mother Juliana had made a bee-line to Dubbo after a position in the “full” TAFE course became available when “someone pulled out”.

In Dubbo on Saturday, the Waughs had another birthday party to go to with their son and Sarah’s brother Jonathan turning 17 late last week.

He and extended family members joined friends from near and far in yesterday’s moving ceremony led by Reverend Beal who was full of admiration for the family she first met on the day Sarah died.

“They are actually quite inspirational,” she said.

“They are focused on celebrating Sarah’s life and not on their own sorrow.”

Dubbo District Concert Band played during the ceremony near a bench and a plaque, installed in honour of Sarah. On the plaque is her final diary entry, written as she watched a “father and daughter down by the river” at Sandy Beach.

“There is a calm serenity I have very few times experienced,” she wrote.

An anonymous donation encouraged the family’s inclination to create a memorial to a daughter who was “beginning to fly”.

It has been one of many gestures of support and love since Sarah fell to her death on March 24, 2009.

Mark Waugh says his beloved daughter would be “blown away” by them all.