If you are new to this re-creation of Ray and Jennie’s Outback Mystery, or have missed a part, you can catch up on the story so far here: Outback Mystery - The complete story, so far...
Or if that is too long to commit to right now, start on this one. Hey, it’s a free world, that decision is entirely up to you.
Please note: The narrative and dialogue should be considered Creative Nonfiction at best, and names are changed to protect the innocent and guilty; however, the overall timeline and locations of events are based on witness statements and submitted evidence.
April Fools
What was left of the calf lay splayed out under the breakaway — a low limestone cave carved by wind and rain beneath a granite overhang. Dianne rested her rifle across her leg as she squatted beside the carcass, lifting its rear by the hoof to confirm what she already suspected. Wild dogs. Dianne stood and turned, sweeping the vast, sparsely vegetated mulga and aptly named dead finish acacia scrubland surrounding her, holding the rifle low yet ready to raise to her shoulder should she spot the culprits. The packs of wild dogs that roamed this land were the scourge of Dianne’s immense outback station, picking off calves or weaker cattle then dragging them back to these temporary dens and feasting on the helpless beasts, starting from the hind end. Dianne kept her gaze focused on shaded areas under shrubs where she knew the dogs would be resting from the heat as she made her way back to her four wheel drive utility. She racked the rifle in its carrier above the seats then opened a cooler box in the rear tray, the lid covered in yellow stickers showing a skull and crossbones inside a triangle, and POISON written in bold underneath. Dianne lifted a hand-full of packaged dried meatballs loaded with 1080 out of the container then hurled them with contempt back toward the breakaways.
Dianne’s patrol of Atley Station, which she regularly undertook each fortnight, took the entire day, inspecting perimeter fence lines and water troughs, and monitoring the welfare of her livestock herds on the property which covers an area the size of the entire island country of Singapore. On the final leg of her journey, turning west off the Paynes Find-Sandstone gravel road which dissects her station, Dianne spotted something metallic and bright red a few hundred yards ahead, laying just off the rough track which ran toward a cattle yard and water tank, ten kilometres south of the station’s homestead. Stopping alongside it, Dianne stepped out of her utility and picked up the foreign item — a car fire extinguisher. She turned the canister over in her hand and noted that it was nearly brand new. It had clearly fallen off of someone’s vehicle, who had wrongfully accessed the station’s land sometime in that last fortnight. “Bloody tourists,” Dianne muttered to herself, placing the extinguisher in the tray of her vehicle before driving on.
Dianne returned to her family homestead before sunset, it being the only dwelling in this remote and rugged expanse. That evening, an unusual sound filled the air; the gentle breeze that typically swayed the tall eucalypts surrounding the home, soothing Dianne’s spirits after a long day with its tranquil metronome, was being overshadowed by a thundering aeroplane sweeping the skies, back and forth across the land immediately north of her station. Dianne stepped out onto her patch of lawn and looked up at the plane, tracking its blinking red light as it passed low overhead. “What bloody fool has got themselves lost this time?” she wondered aloud.
The plane, a Dornier 328, had been mobilised from Perth by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA). It was equipped with night vision and infrared radiometer to detect any heat sources. Dianne’s silhouette, standing there on the ground only a thousand feet below with a glass of wine in one hand and the other raised with the middle finger of that hand pointing high toward the cockpit, glowed iridescent green on the mapping screen. The pilot banked the plane hard, turning the aircraft around and back north to sweep another section of the search area for two missing persons that had been reported that afternoon by Geraldton police — April Fools day, 2015.
Mount Magnet police station had been a flurry of activity that morning, with Constable Lane telephoning relatives of Ray and Jennie gathering information on where they might be. Ray and Jennie had been secretive about their intended prospecting location, so no one in the family was able to provide him with information on the campsite’s location. No one had heard from either of the couple since the 18th March, two weeks ago, either. Meanwhile, Eric Murphy from Sandstone Shire had identified the camp the day prior — Bell Chambers — so Mount Magnet police sent another officer, Constable Taylor to the site. Taylor was a local to the area, having grown up in Mount Magnet before joining the police force then returning to his hometown station. The area where the couple had camped was however unfamiliar to the officer, so he contacted the Sandstone Shire to request assistance. Sandstone Shire’s president, Beth, advised Taylor that her husband would be available to take the constable to Bell Chambers.
Beth’s husband, Bradley, is a local prospector. A Goliath of a man, Bradley poses a figure of those hardened individuals of the former era who moved whole landscapes with their bare hands. Constable Taylor and Bradley arrived at the northern track to Bell Chambers mid-morning, encountering firstly a four wheel drive MAN truck fitted out with a mobile home. Its inhabitant was prospecting nearby, and seeing the police vehicle approaching promptly hid himself behind a mulga tree. Constable Taylor called out to the man, asking him if he had seen any other campers nearby. The MAN truck man warily peered past the tree and said that he had not, and that he had only just arrived and would be leaving again that day.
“He’s got no permit to prospect here,” boomed Bradley.
“How do you know that?” asked the officer.
“Why do you reckon he hid?”
Taylor appeared puzzled as they drove on along the prospecting track. They soon reached the Golden nAUmad caravaners who were packing up their camp ready to depart. Bradley and Taylor parked nearby and greeted the retirees, the officer questioning their discoveries. John, Dennis, Rose, and Bea told the constable what they had found.
“We’ve been here five days … haven’t seen anyone since arriving … their camp appears to have been abandoned for weeks … wasp nest on the rear door … bungarra holes underneath the trailers … the red quad bike seemed to be hidden … there’s a smell coming from that mine shaft on the rise, something is dead down there!”
The Golden nAUmad crew were leaving early, because it all smelt too baleful.
Taylor and Bradley made their way to the identified mine shaft. Bradley harshly advised the constable to not approach the shaft too closely, as it could collapse. The two local men both exuded equal confidence; Bradley having earned his authority from decades of experience and capital success in the region; Constable Taylor’s assertiveness was formulated in a 28-week training course at the Western Australian Police Academy. Their contradictory personalities walked a parallel path to the Bell Chambers abandoned mine shaft.
Taylor got within a metre or so of the shaft’s two openings before recoiling from the smell. The constable recalls saying, “Something is dead down there,” lifting his collar over his nose. Bradley heard the officer say, “That smells like a cadaver!”
Bradley observed flies or black hornets coming out of the mine shaft, whereas the officer made no note of such.
They walked around the abandoned mine shaft searching the area for any further clues. Taylor spotted a kangaroo carcass in a hollow three metres or so to the east, and noted it as potentially the source of the smell. Bradley saw the same carcass, identifying it as skin and bone, and having no odour.
Their paths finally converged once they reached the campsite in their search that day, with collective agreement that the camp was indeed abandoned and appeared to have been so for a long period of time. The pair patrolled the surrounding area, Bradley showing Taylor the locations of several adjacent abandoned mine shafts, which they shined the officer’s Maglite torch within observing that the torch was useful to only ten metres or thereabouts, and many shafts were far deeper.
After their search, Constable Taylor dropped Bradley back to Sandstone then returned to Mount Magnet, relaying his observations to Constable Lane. With the gathered information and findings, Lane concluded it was appropriate to commence a missing persons report, and all information was forwarded to the regional Land Search and Rescue (LandSAR) centre at Geraldton Police Station.
A crack team was soon formulated. Incident Controller, Sergeant Nolan, would oversee the search from the Geraldton headquarters, and trained LandSAR officer Sergeant Hoskins would lead the team on the ground, based in Sandstone and on site at Bell Chambers as the Forward Commander. The State Emergency Services (SES), Tactical Response Group (TRG), and the Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) were all put on standby. Sergeant Hoskins made his way to Bell Chambers that afternoon while Nolan reviewed notes and followed up on several calls.
Sergeant Nolan identified that the last person to have seen the couple alive was a Mr. Miller from a suburb south of Perth. Nolan called the man and Miller seemed surprised that the couple, his friends, had been reported missing. Miller regurgitated his rehearsed story that he last saw Ray and Jennie on the morning of the 21st March, having loaned the couple his quad bike to chase their dog who kept running from camp. He then asserted that he went prospecting alone for twenty hours non-stop, returning to camp in the early hours of the next morning. Ray and Jennie had apparently then parked his quad on his trailer for him ready to leave. Miller said that the couple did not stir from their tent, and so Miller left camp before sunrise on the 22nd March and returned home via Mount Magnet.
Sergeant Hoskins reached the Bell Chambers area later that afternoon, entering the southern track and soon reaching the abandoned campsite. Two four wheel drives, two trailers, a rooftop tent, a line of washed clothing strung between tree and trailer, camp chairs and table with a pair of reading glasses and two coffee cups on top, and foul odours emanating from rank coolers and an unpowered camp fridge. Hoskins stared at the camp table, at the two half-consumed cups of outback café mélange. There was no sign of struggle anywhere in camp. No overturned equipment, nothing thrown about. It looked like they had been sitting there together in one moment then simply gotten up from that table and . . .walked away.
The Forward Commander continued his survey of the entire Bell Chambers site, confirming that all was as reported by the three previous groups of observants. Reaching the northern prospecting track on the unlucky horseshoe, Sergeant Hoskins parked nearby the campsite previously occupied by the Golden nAUmad retirees. His field notes included reports of a foul odour emanating from a nearby mine shaft, further advised by Constable Tucker that there was a dead kangaroo nearby that would account for the smell. Sergeant Hoskins walked toward the abandoned mineshaft which was prominent and within a few hundred yards of the caravaners’ campsite, as stated in his notes. He came within a couple of metres of the mineshaft, observing the mounds of diggings nearby the two shaft openings, and concluded that it would be dangerous for anyone to approach any closer. Hoskins smelt the foul odour reported, which he attributed to a dead kangaroo. He decided that all shafts were to have a clearance zone taped off around each abandoned mine shaft in the area, for safety.
Leaving the site and driving back toward Sandstone, Sergeant Hoskins called the local Shire and ordered the Paynes Find-Sandstone shortcut to be closed to all traffic. There would be a search-plane in the air within hours, and they required no interference from false heat sources. The Forward Commander then called Sergeant Nolan, suggesting that they put together a media release with photos of the missing couple, to be aired as soon as possible in the hope that if anyone had sighted either of the pair they might come forward. Sergeant Nolan had requested photos from the missing couple’s family, passing them on to the Police Media Liaison team in Perth who whipped up a frenzy in the local news stations, choosing the photo that looked most like mugshots of Ray and Jennie — their worksite identification photographs. That evening, the first media releases of Ray and Jennie’s Outback Mystery were aired.
Late that night, in the closing hours of the 1st April 2015 — April Fools day — the AMSA search plane had returned to Perth, its night vision and heat detection data downloaded and forwarded to the LandSAR team. The results of all potential living bodies in an area slightly smaller than the island country of Singapore included one indomitable station owner, hundreds of livestock, thousands of kangaroos and emus, and a rogue wild dog pack glowing iridescent green on the mapping screen — whose location was of no use to anyone other than Dianne, who was now sound asleep inside her station homestead surrounded by tall eucalypts lulling her dreams, counting sheep and calves and eradicating their killers, a mere five miles south of a quiet outback murder scene.