A BROKEN HEART

Cindy Gambino's world was shattered when her three young sons were killed by their own father. Seventeen years later, at the age of just 50, she died of...

- MEGAN NORRIS

Father's Day 2005 began early for thousands of Australian dads who woke to cold tea and toast and gifts wrapped by small hands, before heading out to celebrate with their own fathers at backyard barbecues and picnic lunches all around the country.

But for recently separated Victorian father Robert Farquharson, 35, Father's Day was a forlorn affair spent browsing the toy aisles of his local Kmart store with his three children - and listening to the car radio while they gobbled KFC before he dropped them back at the former family home where he was no longer welcome.

Ironically, it had not been Farquharson's turn to have his children - Jai, 10, Tyler, seven, and Bailey, two - on September 4, 2005, because Father's Day had fallen on a weekend that he had been rostered to work.

But, anticipating that his first Father's Day as a single father might be difficult for him, his ex-wife had offered to change the access arrangements so he could spend this special day for dads with his boys.

Cindy Gambino, then aged 35, had left the house in such a rush that morning that Jai had forgotten the backscratcher he had bought for his dad at his school's Father's Day stall.

"Don't worry about it, mate," Cindy told him.

They could give dad the chocolate bar Tyler had chosen, and the framed photo she'd taken of the three of them on the sofa, and he could surprise his dad with the backscratcher later when he dropped them back home.