Dressed in white, they placed flowers in a riot of colours where the aircraft's fuel-filled wing sections had fallen to earth, igniting an inferno that reduced much of the engines and the fuselage to molten metal. They knew that the vibrant and vivacious Fatima, aged 25, had been seated near the wings. Jerzy and Angela Dyczynski visit the MH17 crash site near the village of Grabovo in Donetsk region on July 26, 2014. Credit:Reuters/Sergei Karpukhin On returning to Australia they clutched a precious memento – a bunch of sunflowers, which had been presented to them by tearful rebel fighters, in what Jerzy described as "a moment of truth, of real humanity and love at the crash site". Their hope was to preserve the seeds from the flowers and to grow them in a garden that would be a memorial to their daughter. But on arriving at Perth airport, quarantine officials confiscated the flowers as a biosecurity threat to Australia. MH17 Planting Hope Sunflower Project

On Saturday, however, it was their turn to be tearful – and to drink champagne – as they received one of about 200 parcels of seeds distributed to MH17 victim families and friends, a second-generation, grown from seeds harvested by hand at the crash site by myself and Fairfax Media photographer Kate Geraghty, which in turn were cultivated in a secure quarantine facility by the Australian Department of Agriculture. Under a cloudless blue sky and amid gum trees at the orchard property of dear friends Sarina and Carlo Giglia, the Dyczynskis planted just the one seed – and undertook to plant the rest of the parcel in the coming spring. Jerzy Dyczynski, left, and Angela Dyczynski, right, with Maria Condipodero and Sarina Giglia, open the packet of sunflower seeds harvested from the MH17 cockpit crash site on the outskirts of Rassypnoe in East Ukraine. Credit:Kate Geraghty After planting the seed, the four walked arm-in-arm back to the Giglia home, to toast their cherished daughter and friend. At the crash site last year, the couple avoided most of an international corps of reporters covering the crash – including myself and Geraghty.

Aerospace engineer Fatima Dyczynski was heading to Perth and died aboard Malaysia Airlines flight MH17. Credit:Facebook But when American NBC TV news chanced upon them, the father was wearing a "Fatima we love you" T-shirt, which featured a photograph of their daughter. And the mother repeated for NBC a vow they had made when they first got news of the crash: "[Fatima] knows mum and dad … we promised that we would come here on this field … we want to say again and again, [our] daughter is not dead." But after walking through the debris and the sunflowers for two hours, they said on Saturday, they realised their mission was hopeless. While a team of investigators from Australia and other nations that had lost people in the crash was shuttled to and from the crash site under heavy security, often being forced back by intense fighting, these two negotiated with the locals and were given a rebel escort. There was a brief ceasefire on the day they went to the site. But recalling their drive through rebel checkpoints into lawless territory, Angela said: "We didn't know if we would live or die, but we did make a promise to Fatima."

These are parents who lived for, and through, their daughter. They moved to Perth from Germany 10 years ago because it was Fatima's dream, as a 15-year-old, to live in Australia. They still live through her. When I asked Jerzy, in an email exchange, how they coped with grief, he replied: "We ask every day what would Fatima do in our situation. "We have been catapulted from our peaceful and happy life to the utmost chaos and murder of a war zone. Creativity has been helpful – I have just finished and submitted to my publisher a book – Intelligent Heart, Quantum Body and Superior Mind. It's dedicated to Fatima." And he explained that Angela is compiling a database on the MH17 crash – "a search for the truth". On befriending the Giglia family, Fatima had dubbed Sarina as her second mother and Sarina's daughter Maria as a sister, which is why the Dyczynskis are so pleased to have Fatima's sunflower garden on the Giglia property – anyway, by their own admission, neither of them is a green thumb.

Over coffee with Geraghty, Angela said of her daughter: "She challenged us in science and spirituality, showing us a way that we followed. She had perseverance and she wanted to achieve her dreams in space." They recalled her laugh – "so infectious that at times it was embarrassing", Sarina said. They shared stories of Fatima's defiance – how she had challenged the principal's insistence, at Perth's John XXIII College, that she must wear the regulation black shoes; how, while the rest of the household had wanted to hide, rather than open the door to Mormon missionaries, she insisted having them in and on debating religion and spirituality till the Mormons went out the door backwards; and how when her mother had presented her with a painting for her 24th birthday, she had insisted on scrawling her own life's aspirations across the canvas. This is what she wrote: "I love Perth. Millionaire before the age of 30. Car in red for Mum. Fame. Global success. Work in Asia-Pacific region. Get married. Start acting. Have a successful business. Happy with Mum and Dad. Huge white house on the ocean. Celebrations. Hot temperature. International breakthrough. Hot body. Beauty. Royalty. Health. Love Jesus." Fatima was returning to Perth at the end of a five-year stint in The Netherlands, where she had been doing a master's degree in aerospace engineering at Delft University of Technology. She had established her own space and nano-satellite company, Xoterraspace, and within days of her planned arrival back in Western Australia, she was to take up a consulting job with IMB in Perth.

Her dream was to be an astronaut on a mission to Mars. She wanted to "make space personal for you and you and you and you", she told a TEDx conference in 2013. She had travelled in 40 countries and spoke five languages. She had been a guitarist in a rock band, had flown more than 400 glider flights and had learnt kung-fu from the masters. Loading Excited at the prospect of having her back, the parents had lashed out on a special homecoming present – a blue BMW Z Roadster. Fatima's last communication with her parents was to text a "selfie" before boarding the MH17 flight at Amsterdam. And her last Facebook entry was a good summation of how she threw herself into life: "one real good thing is better than [a] thousand things of mediocrity".