Monday’s slaughter of two police officers and a civilian in rural Queensland, and the subsequent shootout where three suspects were also killed, has sent shockwaves across Australia and New Zealand. Where it happened, though, is less shocking to anyone who knows such areas.
First, the horrifying events.
The dramatic shoot-out started after three people – including the two police officers in their 20s – were killed in a cold-blooded ambush at a man’s property in the western town of Darling Downs, about three hours west of Brisbane.
The police were conducting a routine search in the missing persons case of Nathaniel Train, a former primary school principal who vanished from the NSW town of Walgett in early December 2021. Constable Rachel McCrow, 29, and Constable Matthew Arnold, were shot as they approached a house in a remote area. A third police officer was wounded, while a neighbour, Alan Dare, was also shot and killed by the shooters.
Multiple police officers came under fire from inside a house as they walked up the property’s driveway in the remote town of Wieambilla, about 4.40pm (NZT 7.40pm) on Monday.
Horrifyingly, two of the wounded police – a 29-year-old man and a 26-year-old woman – were seen to be approached by at least two shooters clad in military-style camouflage fatigues, and shot execution-style where they lay, according to the Australian.
A witness reported seeing the suspects then take the police officers’ pistols, the newspaper reported.
A fourth police officer, a young female constable, took cover in the surrounding scrub. The shooters set fire to the area in a bid to flush her out.
Police confirmed that two men and a woman had been later killed in a confrontation with more officers shortly after 10.30pm (1.30am NZT).
NewstalkZB
Nathaniel Train has been identified as one of the three suspects shot by police, along with his brother Gareth and a third female suspect.
The property where the shooting took place is set among small acreage blocks and has a small wooden house.
Residents who lived near the property said it had been unoccupied for months until last Friday when they saw a vehicle go up the driveway and stay there over the weekend.
ABC Australia
The shootings occurred at a remote property near the rural Queensland town of Tara. The area is a hub of Queensland’s notorious “blockie” district.
In the mid-80s, the formerly bustling wool district was in deep decline. But as many of the established population moved out, a new wave of settlers moved in.
Not farmers so much as refugees from the cities, the poor and disadvantaged, lured by another land boom. The blocks.
The “blockies” were lured by cheap blocks of scrubland divided up by developers. The 12 to 20ha blocks had no power, no water, bugger-all fencing and rudimentary roads. But they were cheap. Like the fibro shacks sold in remote Tasmania, former mining and hydro “company houses”, similarly offloaded in the mid-80s, they were sold off for a few thousand dollars. For poor families, many generational unemployed, it was a once-only chance to own their own place.
Decades later, some are connected to power, but most still don’t have water, or even basic services like garbage collection. Many don’t have stoves or showers.
“The teachers give out packs at the start of the year full of soap, shampoo, conditioners and all their toiletry hygiene […] They have showers there for the dirty kids that smell and they can go to the teachers to refill their bags any time through the year” […]
A council-generated 2010 report on the health and wellbeing of the Western Downs found the Tara district was the most disadvantaged in the region. It had a high proportion of people with profound or severe disabilities, a higher rate of poor mental health, unemployment and welfare dependency or low income.
Courier-Mail
As a colleague of mine, a former school principal in a remote Tasmanian town, once put it: “Some places just ought to be bulldozed”. Some locals call the Tara blockie district “the Bermuda Triangle”. There are similar places dotted around Tasmania. Locals will tell you: don’t go there. When I was a rural Census collector, locals told me not to go near certain properties, while making gun-cocking noises. Police are advised never to go alone to some areas.
A police operation in 2019 busted not only a major marijuana and meth operation but also recovered 12 illegal firearms, including a German WWI machine gun.
As two police officers tragically found out, though: there’s not always safety even in numbers.