by Gary Gregor
“Down there,” he ordered.
“Wh… what?” Tracy stammered.
“You heard me,” he said. He raised the gun and waved it at the path. “Get inside.”
Tracy gathered the children closer to her and gently ushered them down the sloping walkway. At the open door of the shipping container, she hesitated and the children, guided by their teacher, stopped and huddled close around her.
The man, and his friend with the rifle, followed the group down the slope. Tracy had already decided that the man from the bus was the leader of the trio. He raised the hand-gun so Tracy could plainly see it and the threat it presented. “Inside!” he ordered.
Tracy glanced fearfully into the interior of the container and then gently ushered the children inside. The first thing she noticed was the floor. Scuffed and dirty from years of neglect, it was filthy with accumulated dust and dirt which seemed to have been trodden into the very grain of the timber over a long period of time. The walls were lined with what looked like cheap particle board. They too were grubby. This was very obviously not a place that was subject to cleaning on a regular basis, she thought.
In the centre of the room was a table, the size of a small dinner table, with two plastic chairs positioned around it. Against the wall, to her right, stood a third chair. In the centre of the table an oil lantern burned dimly. Faint wisps of dark smoke wafted from the open top of a fragile, stained, glass flue surrounding a flickering wick at the base of the lantern. Against the rear wall, on top of an even smaller, folding table, there was a small, two-burner gas stove complete with a kettle on top and what appeared to be the makings for tea and coffee adjacent. In the back corner, to the right of the table and stacked against the side and rear walls, was a number of clear, plastic, twenty-litre containers filled with what Tracy assumed was water. Whatever the purpose of this place, it seemed to be set up for a stay of indeterminable duration she thought.
The first man, the man from the bus, followed them into the room and stepped closer to Tracy. “Sit down,” he ordered. “Over there in that chair.” He indicated the chair, against the side wall.
Tracy stared at the chair. There were no other items of furniture close by. On the floor next to the chair lay a coil of rope. As innocuous as it might otherwise seem, there was something about the rope that sent a shiver of dread along Tracy’s spine. “Wh… what?” she stammered.
“Sit in the chair!” the man ordered again.
“Why?” Tracy asked.
The man took another step closer to Tracy and leaned close, his face just inches from hers. “Walk over there and sit in the fucking chair!” he hissed. “Do it now! Do you really want the children to see me drag you over there by the hair?”
“N… no,” Tracy sobbed. “I’ll go over there.”
“Thank you,” the man said. He stepped away and waved a hand at the chair. “Please, take a seat.”
Tracy glanced at the children huddled in a close group near the rear wall. She took a couple of shuffling, tentative steps towards the chair, turned her back on it and sat, careful to ensure her dress was pulled demurely over her knees.
The man turned to his colleague with the rifle and nodded. The man shrugged the rifle from his shoulder and leaned it against the entrance doorway. Then, he stepped across to where Tracy sat, picked up the rope, and began to wrap it around her waist, securely binding her to the chair.
Tracy moaned loudly. “Pl… please, don’t do this,” she begged. “You don’t need to dd… do this. I will cooperate. W… we will do as you ask.”
In the centre of the room, a collective gasp from the students echoed through the hollow space. Some sobbed loudly. Others stood wide-eyed, silent and terrified at the scene unfolding before them. All of them huddled even closer together; like there was comfort and safety in their physical closeness. They all loved their teacher. She was kind, gentle and caring. They did not understand what was happening. The fear and the confusion on their faces was a tangible thing, so deeply etched upon their collective visages it might well have been there all their young lives. Tracy could not drag her eyes away from them.
The man behind her glanced across at the gaggle of school children. “Shut the fuck up!” he yelled loudly, his voice muffled slightly behind the bandanna. He Leaned down close to Tracy. “You too!” he hissed in her ear. He tied the rope tightly behind her and then stepped in front of the chair, paused and looked down at her. In his hand he held a thick roll of duct tape. He tore a strip from the roll, dropped to his knees, and wound the tape tightly around Tracy’s ankles. When he was done, he lingered a few moments longer, staring at her legs, just inches from his face. Finally, he looked up at her, the bottom of the bandanna fluttering slightly as he breathed. One blue eye winked, and then he got to his feet. He tore another strip from the roll of duct tape and immediately plastered it across her mouth. A muffled moan escaped from behind the tape, and tears rolled freely down Tracy’s face. The man stepped back and admired his handiwork. Then, he turned away, moved back to the doorway and retrieved his rifle.
The leader moved closer to Tracy. The hand-gun was tucked into his waistband and now he held a mobile phone. He raised the phone, snapped a photograph and examined the image. Obviously satisfied, he moved away and handed the phone to his colleague.
The man with the rifle tucked the phone into his pocket, turned away, and quickly left the room. The leader watched him go and then moved across to where Tracy sat bound tightly to the chair. He reached out and grasped a corner of the tape covering her mouth. Tracy knew what was coming, and she knew it would not be a gentle maneuver. She closed her eyes, held her breath, and clenched her teeth behind the tape. With a sharp, fast tug, the man pulled the tape away from her mouth. Tracy grimaced, dropped her head, and moaned loudly, certain he had also removed several layers of skin. She ran her tongue over her lips, thankful she could not taste blood. Then, the man knelt in front of her, removed the tape binding her ankles, and then moved behind her and fumbled with the rope securing her to the chair.
Distracted by the sound of a vehicle engine outside, Tracy looked out through the entrance door. She was unable to see anything other than a small part of the sloping walkway. She heard a vehicle door slam shut and then she heard the familiar sound of the bus engine start. They were driving the bus away! Where were they going with the bus? How would she and the children ever be able to leave this place if they took the bus away? Her chest heaved against the vice-like grip of fear threatening to consume her.
“Wh… where are they going?” she asked the man with the gun.
“They’ll be back,” the man said. He unwound the rope from her waist, cast it casually aside and crossed to the door leading to the outside and pulled it shut.
As the door swung closed, the hinges squeaked loudly and a hollow, metallic clang echoed through the room. Tracy started with the sound of it. It roused thoughts of a prison cell door closing and the room became suddenly darker. Only the erratic flickering of the lamp at the back of the room cast a dim, eerie glow across the space. Is this what this place was now, their prison? Were they ever going to see the outside again? She quickly got to her feet and crossed to where her students huddled, their faces reflecting their fear.
The man indicated a door in the centre of the side wall to Tracy’s left. The door was open and she could see what looked like a camp-stretcher on the far side of the adjoining room. “Through there,” he said.
Tracy shepherded the children towards the open door and followed them into the room. They were in another shipping container, exactly the same size as the first. It too was lined with grubby, stained timber on the floor and walls. The camp-stretcher against the far wall had a sleeping bag on top, and at the base, a scattered assortment of items of clothing and personal effects. There was also a lantern burning in this room. It was on the floor, at the foot of one of the bed and, like the lamp in the first room, it cast dancing, ghostly shadows across the floor and walls.
W
as the man living here, Tracy wondered? Why? Why would he be living here, out in the desert, miles from anywhere? Why had he brought them here? What was to become of them? Un-answered questions, each tumbling unchecked over the next, raced through her mind. She looked to the rear of the room and there was yet another open door.
“In there,” the man ordered.
“What is this place?” Tracy asked.
The man smiled. “This,” he indicated with a sweep of his arm, “is your home.”
“What?”
“This is where you and the rug-rats will be staying for a while,” he said.
“Wh… why? What do you want with us?”
The man stepped a little closer to Tracy and leaned in close, his face just centimetres from hers. “This is getting a little monotonous, Tracy. Get… in… the… room!”
6
When a family member suddenly goes inexplicably missing, speaking with the loved ones and updating them on the progress of the police investigation, can, and often does, produce a wide-ranging variation in the intensity of emotions. Those emotions are never more apparent than when the missing family member is a child. When eleven children from the tiny Haasts Bluff community, and their teacher, mysteriously disappeared without any apparent trace, the emotion was palpable.
Russell Foley had intended to speak with the immediate families of the missing students and update them on the progress of the investigation within the confines of the small Haasts Bluff school-house. However, it appeared as if the “bush telegraph” in this remote location worked far more efficiently than the latest, most modern, up-to-date communication devices. Word had spread across the landscape like an out of control wild-fire in a dense, tinder-dry forest.
The entire Haasts Bluff community, and it seemed many more from outlying bush camps and as far north as Papunya, had gathered at the community oval waiting for the police to arrive from the scene. Foley knew immediately that isolating the parents from the mass of distraught, confused faces was impossible. From the moment he stepped from his vehicle, followed closely by Sam Rose and the two officers from Papunya, the questions flew at him a from every direction; like a hungry media throng with the scent of a political scandal in their collective nostrils.
Foley stood patiently before the crowd and waited for the voices to quieten. When finally, the disjointed conglomeration of questions and demands for answers had settled sufficiently for him to be heard, he spoke.
It was a new experience for Foley. In his career up to this moment, he had never found himself in such a situation. Eleven young school children and their teacher had disappeared, apparently kidnapped. The school bus driver, Walter Tjapanangka, a much-loved community member, was dead. What do you say to the community? What do you tell the families? No one knew if their children were alive or dead. Sometimes the unknowing can be harder to accept than the knowing. How do you begin to placate a hundred or more confused and grieving people?
There was both white children and black children missing. The cultural divide between aboriginal Australians and white Australians was wide, and the grasp on peace and harmony between the two was often tenuous. But grief was grief, in any culture, and while the overt display and eventual management of it may differ proportionately, it was still sadness and despair whatever your race or cultural background. There was no doubt in Foley’s mind that the families, black and white, gathered before him were overcome with grief, and their grieving was compounded by their confusion in not knowing exactly what they were grieving for; a dead child or a missing child. In the case of a missing child, there is an expectation that the child will be either found or will return at their own volition. There is no such expectation in the case of a dead child. Dead is dead. Gone. All that will be returned to the loved ones is a body.
Foley was not afraid of the crowd. They were not unruly or threatening, they were simply scared. They pressed forward wanting answers; answers more detailed than he was in a position to offer. When someone from the middle of the crowd called, “Are our kids dead?” they wanted more from him than, “I don’t know. I hope not.” When someone else asked, “Will you find our children alive?” he wanted to explain the difficulties faced by investigating police. The answer to the question was more complicated than a simple “yes,” or “no.” He answered, “Yes, we will find your children alive,” and immediately he regretted his response. If he could take it back, he would. Had he had the benefit of time to think about the question he would have answered in a more measured, diplomatic manner. What was he thinking? He was in no position to promise he would find their children at all, let alone find them alive. While his response may have given some of the families a small degree of hope, he could see by the looks on the faces that the majority did not believe him.
Aboriginal Australians, particularly those from remote, isolated communities, are generally a softly spoken, almost submissive people generally possessive of a shy, retiring, demeanor. Under normal circumstances they are not recognised as a boisterous, domineering, demonstrative race. But these were not “normal circumstances”. If you take their children from them, they will react no differently from any other Australian. They will speak, question, and protest as loudly as their white counterparts. The color of a man’s skin, or the manner and intensity of his voice, is not a measure of the depth of his love for his children.
Russell Foley spent over an hour doing his utmost to reassure all of the families, and indeed the entire community who it seemed were gathered on the oval to hear him, that he and his colleagues would do everything in their power to find their children and bring them home to the arms of their loved ones. When he was done, the crowd was slow to disperse. Perhaps they just wanted to wait where they were for news of their children. Perhaps they were afraid if they left and returned to their homes without their children it would seem like an acceptance of the inevitable. However, with heads held low and tears flowing freely from many faces, the crowd slowly and reluctantly shuffled off to their respective homes. Some walked away much slower than others, perhaps hoping a miracle would see them called back to the announcement that their children had been found safe and well and were at this very moment on their way home. There was no such announcement.
When only Foley, Rose, and the two Papunya officers were left standing alone on the vacant oval, Foley turned to Sam. “I’ve had to do some difficult things in my career,” he said. “But that was up there with the hardest. We’ve gotta find their kids,” he said determinedly.
“That might be easier said than done,” Sam responded.
“There are millions of acres of nothing out here,” Foley continued. “How hard can it be to find a school bus full of kids?”
“It’s been several hours now,” Sam said. “The bus could be anywhere by now.”
“Yeah, I know,” Foley said. “But we have a BOLO out for the bus. It can’t be that hard to find, can it?”
“We haven’t found it yet,” Sam reminded him. “I guess we just gotta keep looking.”
“Okay,” Foley said. “Let’s get to Papunya. I’d like to get a look at the body of the bus driver before the Flying Doctor takes it back to Alice Springs.”
The pitch of the relatively quiet, almost hypnotic drone from the single Pratt and Whitney Canada PT6A-67B Turbo-prop engine changed slightly as the Pilatus PC12 banked sharply and began to descend. Left wing high, the aircraft slipped away to the right and the ground, four-thousand-feet below, rapidly began to rise.
It was the dense smoke on the ground away to the right of the aircraft that caught the attention of the pilot. The thick, black cloud billowing skyward was incongruent against a back drop of vast, open land. It seemed to the pilot that there was a vehicle on fire very close to the Tanami Road.
Commonly referred to as the Tanami Track, the road runs through the Tanami Desert, from the Stuart Highway just north of Alice Springs to the Great Northern Highway in the remote Kimberly region in the far north-west of Western Australia.
; Crewed by a pilot and a highly qualified and experienced flight-nurse, the PilatusPC12, as part of the fleet of aircraft operated by The Royal Flying Doctor Service, was on its way to Papunya. A simple, pick-up-and-return job, transporting a body back to Alice Springs on behalf of the Northern Territory Police. The flight out and back would take less than two hours, a stroke of luck for the pilot, Howard Bonnett; he would be home in time for a celebratory dinner for his wife’s birthday.
Behind Bonnett, in the body of the aircraft, flight-nurse Irene Matters felt the sudden deviation from the flight path and leaned forward in her seat. She looked out through the window on the starboard side of the aircraft and noticed the thick, black smoke below. “What is that?” she asked, curiously.
“I think there is a vehicle fire down there,” Bonnett answered.
“An accident?” the nurse queried.
“I don’t know,” Bonnett replied. “I can only see one vehicle, but it’s a pretty big fire.”
“A pretty big vehicle by the look of it,” Matters said.
Bonnett piloted the plane in a wide, descending, circling pattern until he reached a height of one-thousand feet, where he leveled out and continued to circle the inferno below while maintaining his current altitude.
“It looks like a bus!” Matters said.
“I think you’re right,” Bonnett agreed.
“What do you want to do?”
“I can’t put down, it’s too rough. I’m gonna call it in. There may be injuries down there.”
“Or worse,” Matters added.
“I hope not,” Bonnett said. He did not want to miss his wife’s birthday dinner. In this job, missing important family events was an all-to-common occurrence.