by Hazel Baron
In her hand, she held the china teacup.
‘I think he went down to the water to get a drink and fell in. I don’t know what else could have happened. We’ve got to look for him. Come on, get up and help.’
On the banks of the river, Ted’s faithful dog, Toby, howled into the morning air.
Once the kids were up, Dulcie ran to the corner shop to use their phone and call the police. It was barely 8 am when the first officers arrived. They found the four children peeping through the flap of the big tent, their faces fearful at what had happened, their mother in tears, their father missing and his dog, sitting unmoving on the sandy riverbank, staring out at the water and still howling. A young man introduced as Harry was wafting a flame until it caught on under a pile of hefty logs in the fireplace.
Dulcie wrapped her arms across her chest as she spoke to the officers, tucking her hands under her arms. You couldn’t call her pretty but she was an attractive woman, who wore her confidence in her face. She was always ladylike and demure; and, despite having little money to spend on clothes, she did her best to look classy. You would never get a flash of her petticoat because her dresses were always below the knee. Dulcie was five feet six inches with ginger hair that she kept short, as was the fashion. She wore thick glasses but she couldn’t read very well. However, she could talk — boy, could she talk.
Her words came pouring out. Her husband had got home from hospital just yesterday afternoon, Dulcie told the police. He was a cripple who used to use a wheelchair but she had returned it to the hospital. He’d been fine when he went to bed in his pyjamas and she had heard him moving around about 1.30 am. She had slipped back to sleep and, when she woke at 6 am, she saw he wasn’t in the tent. He’d gone.
She went looking for him, knowing he couldn’t have gone far in his state. In the sand on the banks of the river she had found the cup. Oh my God, she was afraid that in his enfeebled state he had got up for a drink and fallen in. Or he might have committed suicide, she said, as bad as that sounded. The gold injections he had been given for his arthritis could send you mental if they didn’t cure you, Dulcie had heard, and she was happy to pass that on to the police.
In his police notebook, one of the officers took down the details: Edwin James Gray Baron, born 11 January 1902, at Black Dog Creek, Chiltern, Victoria. Six feet two inches, about fourteen stone. Last seen the previous evening wearing a singlet and pyjamas.
As Harry got the fire going to chase the morning chill from the air, Dulcie introduced him to the constables as Harry Boyd. Harry said he was Ted’s younger brother. Listening from the tent, Hazel had no idea where that name came from. She stayed silent. Harry nodded to the officers and shook their hands. He and Ted were close and he was frantic about what had happened to him, he wanted them to know.
The police took charge. They called in reinforcements and every day for the next two weeks, they searched the bushes and the shoreline along the banks downriver. The other campers further up the riverbank were shocked to hear about Dulcie’s ill husband going missing and joined police and other locals in the search. Apart from the china cup, the only sign of Ted Baron was his false teeth. A few days after he disappeared, Dulcie showed them to Hazel, green weed wrapped around the teeth like roots. She said she had found them by the edge of the water not far from the camp.
The police officers felt genuinely sorry for the mother of four who was obviously struggling to keep any roof over her family’s head, even a canvas roof. They told Mrs Baron they would do all they could to find her husband but as the days passed, they had to be honest: hope was running out.
Among the searchers were Captain Bill Collins and his brother Norm, two of the five ‘river rat’ children born into the famous Murray River family of ‘Pop’ and Amy Collins.
It had been five decades since the Murray, Australia’s longest river, had been a busy water highway, its paddle steamers linking the pioneering pastoralists in the heart of New South Wales with the rest of the world. One of the river’s most loved paddle boats was the Avoca. Built in 1877, it had carried cargo, flour from the mills, and helped transport the machinery to build the locks on the Murray. It was such a stalwart of the era that after it sank in 1921, it was never forgotten. The Collins brothers bought the raised vessel and reinvigorated it as a showboat for tourists.
One or other of them was at the helm of the Avoca every day of the year, spring, summer, autumn, winter. The families camping along the banks of the river became familiar figures to the brothers who didn’t always know their names but recognised their faces and their individual campsites. They saw the new faces who took their places as families moved on, chasing work in an endless circle.
On Tuesday, 12 September, Bill, forty-two, a master mariner and shipwright, was repairing the boat on the riverbank when he heard shouting. He looked up to see three men on the opposite bank waving their arms.
‘Hey, over there! Bloody hell, mate, have you got a boat? There’s a body floating in the water!’
The men pointed downstream where Captain Bill could see a body drifting slowly in the current south of the Mildura bridge, about 500 or 600 yards away. He took the Avoca out and, as gently as he could, pushed the body back to the bank. After twelve days in the water, it was grotesque, bloated, missing a leg and with a shoe on its remaining foot. The captain could still see it was a man. He shouted to his brother to help.
They figured Ted Baron had just been found and called the police.
About thirty kilometres further up the Murray River, at Wentworth police station, Constable William John Corby took the call at 3.15 pm that day. At twenty-nine, Corby was an RAAF veteran of World War II who had followed in the footsteps of his dad Stanley and joined the police when the war ended. He had been posted to Collector and then to his current job just a few months earlier, moving into the police house with his wife and their then four-year-old son. Life as a country cop suited him well. He was a solid, reliable officer. Corby was called in because the government medical officer, Dr James Ross Morris, himself a war veteran, was based at Wentworth and the body would have to be taken there for a postmortem examination. Constable Corby drove into Mildura where it had been arranged that he would meet Harry ‘Boyd’ at the morgue in Mildura Base Hospital.
Harry was waiting for him. He told the constable that Dulcie was his sister and that he had known Ted as his brother-in-law for about twelve years. As anyone who lies for a living knows, you have to have a good memory to be a good liar. Harry was an amateur. Dulcie, on the other hand, was a liar by nature and could easily slip from one role to the next mainly because she believed what she was saying at the time. Luckily for both of them, none of the police called Harry out on his slip-up.
‘Ted’s been suffering from rheumatoid arthritis for some time, the poor bugger, but my sister, Mrs Baron, can tell you more about that. She’s also got an idea of how he came to be in the river,’ Harry told Constable Corby.
At 5 pm that day beneath the bright cold lights of the morgue, Ted Baron’s body on a slab was officially identified by the man who had been having an affair with his wife, now his widow. If Harry felt any guilt, he didn’t show it; and Corby was not expecting any guilt so he never looked for it.
That evening, Corby accompanied the body back to Wentworth. The young constable had seen a few autopsies by that time so it didn’t unduly bother him to be present as a witness when Dr Morris cut open Ted Baron at Wentworth District Hospital that night. His air passages were full of fluid, showing he had been alive when he went into the river. The medical officer recorded the cause of death as asphyxia from drowning and estimated the body had been in the water for between seven and twelve days.
By laws that have barely changed for hundreds of years, all sudden or violent deaths or deaths from unknown causes have to be reported to the coroner. The Wentworth District Coroner at the time was Murray Farquhar and while he would be determining Ted Baron’s cause of death, the investigation was in the hands of Constable Cor
by. The officer never had any doubt that Ted had drowned but as protocol demanded, he had to prepare a brief of evidence. So the next day, he was back in Mildura to interview the widow, Hazel Dulcie Baron.
Dulcie had kept the kids home from the local Catholic school since their dad had gone missing. She told them it was for their own good as she didn’t want them to be upset by all the questions the other children would have — questions which she didn’t want them to have to answer. She needed to be in control and keeping the children at home ensured that. The twins Margaret and Jim were still too young to understand what was going on. Their family was always on the move, they lived out of boxes, they couldn’t make friends and their only permanents had been their mum and dad. Now their dad had gone and as much as being sad, all four of them were scared and puzzled.
Their mum told them they would only be tormented if they went to school so best to stay away. Nobody from the school came to check on the four Baron children; they had barely been going to the local classrooms for a month by then and the welfare authorities were not nearly as sophisticated as they are today. To fill in their days, there was nothing much else for the children to do except walk around, catch bugs, throw sticks in the river and see whose floated away the fastest, or throw in a piece of string and pretend they were fishing. Anything to stay out of the way of the police, of the authorities, of the neighbours. Anything to stay out of the way of anyone and everyone.
The reason the kids had been peeking through the tent flap when the police arrived that first day was because Dulcie had ordered them to stay inside. She told Constable Corby they were too upset and, as a father himself, he understood. On top of that, there was no reason for the police to suspect otherwise.
The only questions the constable had for Dulcie were perfunctory but he had to ask them in order to record an official statement. She replied as he went through them. She and Ted had married after they had known each other for a few months. Their oldest, Hazel, had come along in 1941 and then the other kids followed. She had no idea how they would cope but they would get on with things. Oh yes, Dulcie could talk. She liked to appear helpless but she was always totally in charge.
She told the officer they were planning to bury Ted the next day.
As the family had no money, they had been granted a pauper’s funeral at the Presbyterian Church in Mildura. Dulcie told Hazel to stay home and look after her brothers and sister. Funerals were no place for kids, she said. It was also another ploy to keep them away from people.
The Barons hadn’t been brought up a particularly religious family. Ted had been a Presbyterian who had started going to Catholic churches after one particular stay in hospital where the local priest who regularly came around the wards had been a jolly fat man — a lot more fun than the po-faced Protestants, he had thought. Despite that, Ted was given a burial spot in the Protestant graveyard.
Ted had been an only child from solid settler stock. Ted’s father, James Baron, had been born on a ship as his young parents, aged in their twenties, sailed from Cheshire for Australia for a new life. Although he had died a few years earlier from a heart attack while chopping wood, Hazel could just about remember visiting him and her grandmother Agnes, known as Aggie, on their farm at Black Dog Creek, Chiltern, in Victoria’s northeast. Agnes Baron was a lovely lady who wore her grey hair in a bun and always had an apron on because she seemed to be constantly cooking. It was from her that Hazel got her middle name, Hazel Agnes Baron, and she was sometimes called Aggie herself.
Aggie was still alive, as were Ted’s father’s two brothers, his uncles Ralph and John, and there was a big family of cousins and aunts and uncles around Beechworth and Chiltern. Dulcie told none of them about Ted’s death. The only mourners on 14 September 1950 were Harry and an apparently tear-stained Dulcie. After a short service, they left. Ted’s grave was abandoned, unadorned.
Ted Baron was dead and buried but the clerical work that accompanies sudden death still had to be completed.
A week later, the four children were still not back at school and they watched as Dulcie and Harry got into Dulcie’s car, the big Nash. As Hazel heard the car doors slam and the engine start up, it made her feel lonely. The inquest into their dad’s death was being heard on Friday, 22 September, at Wentworth Courthouse and Hazel, once again, was left in charge of the kids. Dulcie told her they were too young to accompany them to court.
Dulcie and Harry sat on the hard, wooden benches outside the beautiful 1880 Wentworth Court building waiting to give evidence, careful not to hold hands or show affection of that kind. Constable Corby had explained to them what was to happen at the inquest.
Inquests are held to officially determine the identity of the deceased, when and where that person died and the manner as well as the cause of death. With about a murder a year at Wentworth, the coroner, Murray Farquhar, was no stranger to homicide but there was no indication that Ted Baron’s inquest was going to be anything but run of the mill. There was no history of violence in his life and no evidence of violence in his death. Nevertheless, the coroner was thorough and spent two days having witnesses questioned.
First up was Dr Morris. His medical reports and statement were tendered to the court and his time in the witness box was short. He testified that he had been the government medical officer at Wentworth for eighteen years and the body he had been told was that of Ted Baron had drowned. Ted’s medical records from Mildura Base Hospital were also tendered to the court confirming he had suffered badly from rheumatoid arthritis, but they couldn’t shed any light on his cause of death. Despite the mental anguish his medical condition entailed, there was no evidence he had been suicidal.
Dr Morris was followed by Constable Corby who, as the officer in charge of the investigation, gave the court an overview of what had happened and testified that Harry Boyd had identified the body as that of his brother-in-law Ted Baron. Having given his evidence, Corby could then sit in court and assist the coroner.
The three men who had spotted the body in the river were called to testify to what they had seen, followed by Captain Bill Collins, who was as succinct in court as he had been in his statement to the police. A man of few words, he said he had spotted the body he now knew to be Ted Baron’s after being alerted to it by three men who were strangers to him. The body had still been wearing pyjamas.
When Dulcie was called into the witness box, she reiterated the story she had given to the police and which she had sworn to in her statement. She and Ted Baron had married on 1 June 1940, at Wangaratta in Victoria. She had last seen him when she went to bed on the last night he was alive and found him missing from his bed when she got up at six the next morning.
The inquest was adjourned over the weekend and Harry was the last witness on the Monday. He told the court how he was Dulcie’s brother and that he recalled Ted being in good spirits when he returned from hospital on 30 August. Harry said Ted and Dulcie had discussed general family matters, about how the kids were, that kind of stuff, until he went to bed.
Coroner Farquhar wound up the inquest, giving his commiserations to Dulcie and recording a verdict of accidental death.
Still no one picked up on the fact that Harry had somehow morphed from Ted’s brother to his brother-in-law or questioned where the surname Boyd had come from. Perhaps the police officer who was initially told that had not recorded it in his notebook because he never recalled it later.
Every girl needs her mum. A young girl’s relationship with her mother shapes her life; it makes her what she is whether for good or bad. It’s a complex but powerful bond that no one outside it can ever understand, psychiatrists and psychologists included — even though they may profess that they can provide insights. It is personal and all-encompassing.
While Dulcie was crying and appeared to be really grieving while the police were around, Hazel wasn’t her mother’s daughter for nothing. She lacked her mother’s cunning but she picked up the indications that all was not as it seemed. She was suspicious
even if she wasn’t sure exactly what had happened to her dad.
Hazel noticed that when the family was alone again, her mum was nervous and on edge. She had heard her mum tell the police Harry was her brother and then Harry said he was Ted’s brother but Hazel knew Harry wasn’t their uncle from either side of the family. She knew enough about life to know that her mother shouldn’t have been sharing the small tent every night with Harry, except of course when her dad was home and she slept with the kids.
Now, Hazel noticed Dulcie and Harry arguing a lot, for the first time in their relationship. A few days after the inquest, Hazel was sitting on the end of her mattress in the tent stitching up a hole in one of the boys’ woollen socks. The other kids were away playing marbles or hopscotch and Dulcie didn’t realise Hazel wasn’t with them.
From inside the tent, she overheard Dulcie and Harry talking about ‘getting our story right’. For several days, Toby the terrier had continued to bark and howl at the river and would not be silenced.
‘If that bloody dog could talk, we would be dead,’ Dulcie said.
Hazel couldn’t move or she would give herself away. She didn’t even realise that she was holding her breath. She knew she had heard something she wasn’t supposed to have heard.
Not long after, Dulcie and Harry told the kids that Toby had run away. Hazel didn’t believe them.
While Hazel looked like their mum, Allan took after his dad, tall and stocky but with sandy hair. He was the shy one of the kids, much quieter and less self-assured than Hazel, who they all looked up to. Hazel became more fearful when Allan confided in his big sister that the day their dad had arrived home from hospital, he had heard his dad say to their mum: ‘I saw him kiss you.’
Although his dad did not mention a name, Allan knew he had been talking about Harry.
Allan had said that he had heard Dulcie try to brush it off, laughing: ‘Don’t be silly, Ed, he did not.’