by Kate Holden
Turner hadn’t spoken to Turnbull for two years – since that meeting at the gate of ‘Strathdoon’ in June 2012 – despite the legal cases. The new court case was a long way off being heard.
As he hugged Alison goodbye, he said, ‘I wish I wasn’t going to Moree. I’d much rather be at home tonight, sleeping in our bed, with you by my side.’ It was typical of him, she thought. A beautiful thing to say.
By late afternoon, Glen Turner was in the Croppa Creek area, on his way to Moree for the night. He and Strange had got as far as Pallamallawa when, having a bit of time to spare before twilight, he decided to turn north and show Strange the properties in Talga Lane they would be inspecting the next day.
Strange was up for the ride. He was generally pretty cheerful. He had been with the OEH for a while, having moved over to land management from the water division, and he’d been coupled with Glen Turner for the past six months. He liked Glen: the two of them had played touch footy when working together in the water division ten years earlier.
The detour took them north up County Boundary Road, right past the gates of ‘Strathdoon’ and ‘Colorado’. Strange knew this stretch from an inspection a few months earlier. He’d even visited Anderson and seen her koala patients.
Turner’s mind was on the inspection he’d inherited. Although he probably knew that Turnbull had lodged a fourth complaint against him just weeks before, he didn’t mention this to Strange. Perhaps he had bigger thoughts: just four days earlier, Anderson had emailed him yet again to say the Turnbulls were clearing. The last of the trees on ‘Colorado’ were falling.
The sun was setting at the end of the lane, far into the west. It had been a nice day for winter, the sky now clear and pale.
As the officers approached ‘Colorado’, they could smell smoke in the late-afternoon air. They stopped. When they drew level and glanced across, they could see a great raft of timber alight in the middle of a cleared field, like a funeral pyre. Others, too: there might have been thirty beacons of fire in the middle of newly cleared ground. The open grassy woodlands were gone.
There was prickly pear and myall beside them on the roadside, then clear space until, far across the field, a line of trees remained, so thin the sky could be seen in threads among it. Turner narrowed his eyes.
Strange pulled off to the side. He hopped out to take some photos while Turner dialled Arthur Snook back in the office. ‘Arthur, we’re on the road at “Strathdoon” and “Colorado”. All that area that is on the remediation map to be retained has now been cleared. They’re burning the piles now.’
A white ute appeared from a gate ahead of them. Turner watched it turn onto the road as he asked Snook for an authorisation document to get onto ‘Colorado’ to get some samples from the wood stacks. His boss said he’d have it to him by the next morning. ‘Have you been onto the property?’
‘No. We’re on the road,’ Turner said. Outside, Strange was checking GPS readings. ‘They’ve just lit the fires and you can see them flaring up.’
‘What are you doing there, anyway?’
Strange climbed back into the driver’s seat and closed the door.
‘I’ve had a few concerns about some of the information lately,’ Turner said, ‘and I just wanted to check it out.’
‘Leave it for now, and ring me in the morning.’
Turner had his finger over the button on the hands-free. ‘Okay. Talk to you in the morning.’
As they headed off to Moree, they overtook the white ute, which was dawdling by the roadside. Strange could only see a bulky silhouette inside, but Turner recognised Ivan Maas. ‘He’s on the phone,’ said Turner, with a knowing look. Strange turned left towards Moree, into Talga Lane.
Smoke rose in the clean winter air to a fading sky.
They stopped the car.
10
Featured saying: Gandhi, ‘An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.’
—The Crooble Chronicle, Croppa Creek’s newsletter, August–September 2014
Turnbull was already walking towards his ute as his phone rang. It was Ivan Maas. ‘They’re on County Boundary Road,’ he told his boss. Turnbull got into the cabin and started his engine.
In Talga Lane the car had dawdled, the men peering out the window into the side of ‘Colorado’. They went a bit further up the lane, then Turner asked his colleague to pull over.
They got out of the car where a thin wire fence stood at waist height. Turner had his GPS location reader and was jotting the coordinates in his notebook. Strange took out his camera and took a series of pictures. As he clicked, he heard a vehicle pull up behind him.
Strange looked around and saw an elderly man in a blue check shirt get out and stop between the cars. He raised something to his shoulder. He put his eye to a barrel.
In that moment on the road there were birds above, heading to nest for the night. The soil under the scrub was rich with tiny life; in cover of the undergrowth, wallabies and koalas might have been watching. At ‘Yambin’, Robeena was turning on the lights. In Tamworth, Alison McKenzie was driving the kids home to make dinner.
There was the sound of a shot.
Strange looked over at Turner. He had fallen to one knee. He looked up, a hand to his jaw. ‘Ian,’ Turner said, ‘what have you done?’
Perhaps it was a BB gun, was Strange’s first thought, and this guy is just trying to be smart. But there was blood on Glen’s face.
Turner rose. They walked quickly towards their car.
There was another shot. Strange saw blood on Turner’s shirt.
Turner ran towards the vehicle and Strange followed. Turner got to the passenger door, Strange to the front headlights, but the gun barrel followed them, and the man advanced. Turner crouched beside the door. The man said, ‘You’ve ruined the Turnbulls! You’re here crucifying us. You’re going home in a body bag.’
Strange could hear Turner’s hoarse breathing. Strange spoke with a dry mouth, hands up in surrender, eyes on the man. ‘Sir, please, put the gun down. Put the gun down, please, sir.’
The man wouldn’t look at him. ‘No. No, no, no. Turner, you’ve taken this too far. You’ve taken us to court.’
Strange tried to move and the man moved sideways with him, around the car.
‘You’ve ruined the Turnbulls, you sent us broke.’ He spoke firmly. The words fired forth. ‘We’re in a drought, you know. You’re constantly persecuting us. You’re out here all the time. You’ve got planes flying over here. What, what am I to do?’
‘Sir, he’s, you know, he’s hurt. I need to get him to the hospital. Please, put your firearm down. Let us go.’
‘Move back,’ said the man, ‘or you’ll get one in the heart.’ His hands, gripping the .22 rifle, holding it steady, were black with engine oil.
Every time Strange asked Turnbull to put the gun down, the man raised it defiantly. Evidently he was a crack shot: the first bullet had nearly had Turner right in the head. He told Strange to drop the little camera; Strange dropped it. He told him to move back; Strange moved back.
‘Glen, just keep down, keep down,’ Strange murmured. When Turnbull edged around the car he muttered, ‘Move to the back.’ He kept pleading with the man. ‘Sir, put the gun down. There is no need for this.’
Turner said hoarsely, ‘Let us go, Ian, let us go.’ His hands left bloody smears on the side of the car.
‘Don’t move,’ the man told Strange, and trained the gun at him. ‘Or I’ll fucking shoot you too.’
And Turner wept, ‘Please. Please get us out of here, Rob. Get us out of here.’
Minutes had passed; Strange didn’t know how many. It was getting darker, the sun soaking away beyond the trees. Strange kept moving around the car. The beam of the headlights shifted across him. He edged out of them, thinking that the dark would give them cover to get away. But he knew the man would be alert to this. The man would want to get it finished before the light went. He could hear the thought in Turner’s voice too. He was getting frig
htened of the dark.
There was a moment when the man focused on Turner, and Strange was able to get his hand into his pocket, to his phone. Thank god, it wasn’t locked. He glanced down quickly and dialled triple zero and pressed the green call button. The phone light glowed in the lowering dark and he tucked it further in, eyes on the gun, hoping the man wouldn’t see the light, hoping someone was already answering and would hear him say, ‘Sir, you’ve got to put the gun down. We are unarmed. You have to put the gun down.’
Choking on his words, he said, ‘Sir? We’re here to do a job. We’re only doing what we’re told to do.’
‘You’re not here to do a job,’ the man spat. ‘You’re here to ruin us, to take us to court. It’s not enough that we’ve been in court. You don’t leave us alone.’ He jerked the gun forward. Strange felt the implacable eye of it. ‘All you want to do is just ruin, ruin the Turnbulls.’
Strange could tell the call hadn’t got through. It was maybe twenty or thirty minutes by now since the horror began and still no one knew about it. No one was coming to help.
Turner got the passenger door open. Strange edged over to give him cover; the man noticed the movement and Turner backed away. But the door was open.
Strange thought, If I can get to the driver’s side, get the man’s attention, Glen can get in.
He made to move, but the man aimed the gun straight at his head and said, ‘I fucking told you, I’ll fucking shoot you. Now get back.’
He flinched. He thought, I’m going to get shot. I’m gone.
Turner was by now crouching around the back of the car, bleeding from the chest. There was a red stain on his upper breast. The man moved back there, saying, ‘You’re going to die, Turner, you’re going to die.’
Strange thought, I have to get the gun off him. I have to, I have to hit him – get the gun –
He moved and Turnbull swivelled the barrel once more, fixed him with one furious eye. ‘I fucking told you.’
‘We need to go,’ Turner panted. ‘Rob? We need to go.’
Strange forced his voice to stay calm. ‘Mate, it’s okay. I’ll get you out of here – just, just bear with me.’ He turned to the man: ‘Please, he’s hurt, he has a family and two little kids. We’re unarmed. We’re only here doing our job, doing what we have to do to earn a living.’
‘Well, we’ve got to earn a living too, but you’re fucking here crucifying us.’ The thin little rifle clutched in his hands. The harsh, steady voice. ‘You’ll just be back again and again, and I’m putting an end to it.’
‘I won’t be back, I can assure you,’ Turner gasped.
The man looked at him. ‘You’re going home in a body bag, is the only way you’re going.’
Turner somehow got his arm in under the fibreglass canopy at the back of their ute. His fingers found the yellow EPIRB and pressed it. A light showed it had activated. He dropped the thing. Hesitating on the far side, Turnbull fired twice through the window of the glass canopy and shattered it. A bullet grazed Turner’s chest.
Another shot went past Strange’s head. He shouted to Turner, ‘Glen, Glen, get down.’
Turner gasped, ‘I know!’ Then he said, ‘I can’t do this anymore, I can’t.’ He broke from his crouch and ran to the darkness of the trees. And Turnbull raised the gun.
Bang. Turner dropped to the ground, face first. Strange spun around to look at the man. Turnbull let the gun fall to his side and said, ‘Right, you can go now. I’m going home to wait for the police.’
ANDREW UEBERGANG’S GRANDFATHER HAD a station at Crooble, 15 kilometres south of Croppa Creek, and Andrew had been working there all day. There were two ways the young farmworker could go home; he took the Talga Lane way a bit before 6.00 p.m. On the way north, he saw Ian Turnbull’s white Nissan Patrol heading south down County Boundary Road. He knew Turnbull, and his grandson Cory – he had worked for them occasionally. He turned left into Talga. The sun had almost set – just a glow on the horizon ahead, the trees a black wall on either side of the road. And about a kilometre along, in the shaft of his headlights, he saw a man standing in the road, his hands up, eyes closed.
The man was plump, with glasses and a pale face. He opened his eyes and stared at Andrew. He said something about Ian Turnbull. He said his mate had been shot. He needed to use a phone, his had no signal. Asked where Turnbull lived. Uebergang told him: ‘Yambin’.
Uebergang got out in the dusk and saw the dark form of a man lying in the grass, motionless. He didn’t know what to do; he stood, shaking his head, freaking out while the other man used his phone in his car. Then he hopped back in and took off down the road to get help. He called his uncle, thumbing the phone in the dark cabin, heart racing, watching the fenceline scrub for the gate of the next property, ‘Talga’. Turned in; up the drive. The door opened and Brenton Whibley came out.
Already the words had been in his mouth once: ‘Someone’s been shot.’
‘Shit. Who shot him?’
‘Ian Turnbull.’
‘Oh, shit.’
Brenton’s wife, Felicity, had first-aid training. She snatched up her medical kit and took her ute. As Uebergang drove out the gate, he recognised a work vehicle from Turnbull’s place coming past.
ROBBIE, IVAN MAAS’S SON, was working for Grant on ‘Buckie’, shooting wild pigs, that day. The pigs were wrecking the crops. He stayed until it was dark, his gun beside him in his ute, then finally turned the headlights on and made for home. He was on the way back up County Boundary Road when he heard Ian on the shortwave frequency the Turnbull staff shared. ‘Are you there, Scott?’
Robbie heard the Turnbulls’ farm manager, Scott Kennett: ‘Yeah, Ian?’
‘I just pumped a couple of shots at Turner. I think he’s dead.’
In the dark of his cabin, Robbie heard these words but couldn’t understand. What had happened? Who was Turner?
Turnbull said, ‘I’m going home to wait for the police.’ His voice was steady and gave nothing away.
The transmission ended, and a moment later his phone rang. It was Scott Kennett, asking where he was. They had to go and see what had happened. Robbie’s heart was thumping.
SCOTT KENNETT, WHO’D WORKED for Turnbull and Grant for more than twenty-five years, had had a normal day. He was at ‘Buckie’, working on a planter all afternoon. It wasn’t surprising he was still there: ‘I don’t really work to clocks,’ he would later tell the court. ‘If there is enough light I just keep going.’
Close to dusk, he got a call from Ivan Maas that Glen Turner was in the area, checking things. Ivan had been working with Turnbull in the field all afternoon, until one dozer got a bad leak. Turnbull couldn’t fix it and took it back to ‘Buckie’ for some tools. Now the farmhand had tried to call his boss, but the signal was bad. Ivan mentioned to Kennett that as a caution he’d locked the gate, by now their common practice when anyone was around the properties. Kennett made a mental note to watch out for the government men.
He came upon Turnbull in the shed, looking for an oil filter and oil. He mentioned that Turner was around. Turnbull gazed at him. ‘I thought he would be about at some stage.’ He took the oil from Kennett’s hand and walked out. Kennett heard him checking his voicemail as he walked to the car, then Ivan’s voice over the phone. Kennett called out after him that Ivan had locked the gate; Turnbull nodded, put the equipment and can in the tray of his ute, and left.
It was just on 5.30 p.m. Kennett’s farmhand, Henry Martin, finished up and filled his ute with petrol before leaving. About ten minutes after Martin left, Kennett drove a tractor to the fuel tank, spent about five minutes filling it, and got in to drive it back to the shed.
Turnbull called on the radio’s private channel. ‘I just pumped a couple of shots at Turner. I think he’s dead. I’m going home to wait for the police.’
ROBBIE GOT HOME AND quickly put the gun away. Then he sped to a dark paddock on ‘Buckie’. Kennett got in and they drove along Talga Lane. Kennett called Turnbull’s son, Gran
t, who was in Queensland. ‘Have you talked to your dad?’ he asked. ‘Your old man just said he shot Turner.’
Grant sounded shocked. Kennett said he and Robbie would go and see what was happening. Grant could barely reply. ‘Just let me know,’ he said, and rang off.
Robbie dipped the high beams for a car coming towards them. Then they passed another car, parked on the side of the road, its headlights shining into the trees. They slowed, staring, but did not stop.
‘He’s done it,’ Robbie said.
‘Looks like it,’ Kennett replied.
They went on a bit past ‘Talga’, then did a U-turn and headed back to the HiLux with its lights on and, now, the two other cars, and the body on the ground, a woman kneeling over it.
NICOLA KENNETT RANG HER husband after the two-way call came through on the receiver. ‘What the hell did I just hear?’ She was getting dinner for her daughter, her kitchen warmly lit in the house they lived in on the property next to ‘Yambin’, the lodgings part of Scott’s job. He said he didn’t know. He rang off. Nicola kept making dinner; got some texts from friends about ordinary things; paced nervously. Scott rang back. He said there’d definitely been a shooting – it was out on Talga Lane. He was on his way with Robbie; the Whibleys were helping. Nicola texted Felicity to see if she was okay.
FELICITY WHIBLEY HAD BEEN home all afternoon with her family, as usual. She too was in the kitchen cooking dinner when the phone rang; at the same time, a car she didn’t know came down the driveway. Felicity picked up the phone as her husband went to the door. In her ear, her neighbour Michael Coulton was saying that someone had been shot. At the door, Andrew Uebergang was saying that someone had been shot. He looked terrible.
Someone has been shot. Everyone saying the same thing. Those words, in her kitchen, in her hallway, in front of the kids.
Should she or Brenton go? Someone had to stay with the children. ‘I better go,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to see someone die.’
She got in her car and drove east, along with Andrew Uebergang. The quiet road, empty for the past hour, pounded now.