The Diamond Dakota Mystery

by Juliet Wills

  The bank arranged for the diamonds to be counted by

  Arthur and Charles Williams, of Dunklings (later Mazuchelli’s) jewellers. They counted 4571 diamonds then valued at £18,500, some as large as shirt buttons and between three and ten carats, beautifully cut top-quality stones. It was quite a find.

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  Two of the diamonds weighed more than seven carats—the

  estimated value of these diamonds in today’s terms is US$160,000

  each. A five-carat flawless diamond included in the parcel has an estimated value of US$300,000 on its own.

  There was scepticism about Jack’s story, but no one suspected that there were many more diamonds to be found.

  On 5 May, three weeks after Palmer handed in the diamonds, Major Gibson called on him to make a written statement

  explaining how he had found them. Palmer stuck to his original story, still claiming he had been hunting dugong half a mile north of the wrecked plane when he discovered a black object embedded in the sand and covered by water. Palmer stated: I stooped down to pick it up, but it fell out of my hand. The material seemed to be rotten. The object seemed to be made of leather and was black in colour.

  The tide was then on ebb and I waited until it had gone

  out before I examined this wallet or packet. At full tide this wallet or packet would be covered over by about eight or nine feet of water.

  He described how he picked up the wallet which collapsed, diamonds falling into the sea. He scurried to retrieve the valuable gems, but many disappeared into the sand as he did so.

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  Nearly all the diamonds which had been in this packet fell on the sand at the beach where I had found it and I had to pick some of them off the sand.

  I handed them to Major Gibson as I believed the wrecked

  plane belonged to the army, and I thought it was my duty to report and hand over the property to them. I did not go near the plane at any time.

  Palmer asked about a reward. Gibson said it wasn’t up

  to him.

  Later in May, Jack Palmer was asked to return to the crash site with a search party to recover any stones that might have been overlooked when he had opened the package. Lieutenant Laurie O’Neill and Warrant Officer Clinch joined him, but as Jack scoured the site with his colleagues he knew there were no more diamonds to be found.

  On 6 June the diamonds Palmer had handed to Gibson were

  delivered to the Commonwealth Bank in Melbourne, along

  with 275 boxes said to contain foreign coins. The diamonds were revalued in Melbourne at £20,000.

  No one knew exactly how many diamonds were sent from

  Java. The documents revealed there were sixty-five lots, though the quantity in each lot was unknown. The Australian jewellers had separated them into 138 lots but it was clear that the method for separating diamonds in Australia was different from

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  that used in the Netherlands, so a Dutch diamond merchant was called in. The diamond merchant stated that it was the practice in Java not to offer lots of less than between ten and twenty carats per lot. When he sorted the diamonds handed in by Palmer, there were only twenty-four lots, leaving forty-one lots unaccounted for.

  As news of the diamond find hit the headlines, jewellers and businessmen from around the world cabled the Australian

  government outlining their missing packages of diamonds from Malaya and Java, and seeking assurances that their jewels were not among those found by Palmer.

  Diamonds other than those sent by N.V. de Concurrent

  were apparently missing, as the flight of wealth joined the flight of people fleeing war-torn countries.

  For example, the Netherlands Purchasing Commission in

  New York issued a telegram requesting confirmation of the source of the diamonds. They claimed that a shipment of

  diamonds sent out on 15 January from Batavia had gone

  missing, and suggested the beachcomber’s cache could have been part of that consignment.

  The Commonwealth Bank advised that the diamonds found

  by Jack Palmer were solely from N.V. de Concurrent.

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  Frank Robinson and Jim Mulgrue were still keeping clear of Broome, living off their supplies and the fruits of the sea. They had shifted camp from Pender Bay further north to Little Creek, which had good camping grounds. It was about a month since Jack Palmer had ambled into their camp with his amazing find.

  Robbie thought the entire episode was like something out of a book, and Mulgrue was still convinced the whole thing meant trouble. They had pooled the diamonds that Palmer had given them, and stored them in a metal film canister which Robbie kept in his shirt pocket. They had no idea what had happened to Jack Palmer since he departed with his fortune, and were startled when they saw him making his way along the beach dressed in a military uniform, his moustache well trimmed and hair neatly combed, accompanied by a military patrol. He was part of a group assigned to destroy all transport along the coastline, in case of invasion. Boats could be used by the enemy to move their troops or weapons further south.

  As the patrol made its way along the beach, neither Robbie nor Mulgrue moved, waiting for the party to come to them.

  They did not know why Jack had sought them out, or why he had come with the military. They feared it was something to do with the diamonds.

  Jack greeted them like long-lost friends, while Mulgrue

  acknowledged Jack apprehensively. Whispering to Robbie to say nothing about the diamonds, Jack said loudly, ‘We’re here about the luggers, mate. We can’t leave transport lying around for the Japs to use. We have orders to destroy them.’

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  Robbie explained that the Aumeric belonged to Bert Kennedy, and the soldiers agreed it was in good enough condition to be of use to the Australian Navy. The Eurus, however, was barely seaworthy and would have to be destroyed.

  Mulgrue screwed up his eyes, looking at the two luggers

  sitting on the sand, their white canvas sails gently waving in the breeze. He remembered the pride he felt when he purchased his first lugger and sailed out at the helm, with his boys waving him off on the shore, sharing his dream of finding the one pearl that would turn their lives around.

  He sat in the shade on the sand some distance away to avoid the heat, and watched through blurry eyes as they poured fuel over the Eurus. The fire started slowly, the smoke driving cockroaches and rats from the hold as the lugger burned, then exploded. A huge bonfire soared into the sky, the glowing flames engulfing the ship and then climbing up the mast. The smell of petrol filled the air and the heat from the fire added to the oppressive swelter of the day. In minutes the Eurus was a charred wreck and the history in which she shared—the cyclones she had survived, the divers in their iron helmets and lead boots, shell cleaners prying open the oysters and scraping the meat away, men from all over Asia chattering over hot coffee and tobacco—went up in smoke. Of the fifty-two luggers that

  patrolled the coast before December 1941, only six would

  survive the war.

  ‘Roll up your swags, you’re coming with us,’ the patrol leader said to the two men. Two of the soldiers would sail the Aumeric

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  back to Broome, but Mulgrue and Robinson were to travel in the truck.

  The soldiers offered to help the men pack up their camp

  but the pair turned the
m down. Robinson hoped to hide the film canister filled with his and Mulgrue’s diamonds when the soldiers weren’t looking. Palmer tried to distract them but the group were disquietingly close. Grabbing his shaving gear, Robinson placed the film canister which held the diamonds into his shaving basin and started heading towards the truck that would take them out of Little Bay. While Palmer was

  talking to the soldiers, Robinson dropped the canister and attempted to conceal it by kicking loose sand over it. He wished he had more time to hide it properly.

  A group of Bardi people from Lombadina Mission came down

  to camp at Little Bay to fish and hunt for crabs as their people had done for centuries. Their camp was not far from Mulgrue and Robbie’s. Connie Joorida watched as Mulgrue and Robinson headed off in the truck with the soldiers. Her husband, Willie Chatwell, had left with them. Like the beachcomber Palmer, she had often found useful items left behind by visiting sailors and was not one to miss an opportunity. While she was a tradi-tional Bardi woman who lived off the bounty of the sea and the land, she enjoyed the odd European luxury, like tobacco.

  When the group was out of sight she went down to scour

  their campground for cigarette butts. Sifting through the soft

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  white sand, her fingers touched a solid object. She pushed the sand away to lift it up. It was a metal film canister, and when she looked inside she saw it held hundreds and hundreds of shiny glass stones. She would have preferred tobacco.

  She took the tin back to her camp and left it hidden there until Willie arrived back about a week later. She wasn’t sure what to do with the stones, and had a feeling that they might be bad luck. When Willie looked at the stones he didn’t know what they were, but he was pretty sure he could get something for them. He knew the white fellas liked shiny things. In the old days, men had died fighting over pearls. The couple decided to head back to Lombadina Mission, where Willie offered a man called Jacky eleven of the shiny stones for a tin of tobacco.

  Willie was happy with the deal and Jacky was confident he could trade the pretty stones. He headed to Beagle Bay, where he met up with Sebastian De La Cruz, a Manilaman who

  worked in Broome. Jacky asked what he would give him for

  the eleven white stones, and De La Cruz gave him two tins of tobacco and four shillings. Jacky claimed he had found the stones somewhere between Wyndham and Derby. Neither knew

  what the stones were worth, but both suspected they were of some value.

  Trading among the Aboriginal people continued, and the

  diamonds had passed through a number of hands by the time stories about Palmer’s find surfaced. It was known that the amount of diamonds received from Palmer was not the full amount of diamonds that had been in the package handed to Smirnoff in

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  Java. With the army, Dutch officials and the police all searching for the diamonds, some of the Aborigines began to get nervous about the shiny glass stones. The police were beginning to ask questions and warning of trouble for anyone caught with the stones.

  Iron neck shackles and chains were still in use in the

  Kimberley during the war, and the Aboriginal population were terrified of the police. To this day, the Aboriginal locals say that many diamonds were flung into the well and the springs near Beagle Bay as panic about the consequences of being found with them spread.

  Major Gibson travelled to Beagle Bay with the officer in

  charge of Native Affairs, Mark Knight, hoping to find news of more diamonds and to discuss tactics for the mission should invasion occur.

  Nervous about holding on to the white stones that were

  generating so much official interest, Willie Chatwell decided to give the diamonds that he still had to Major Gibson. He stood anxiously at the door of the reception room at Beagle Bay, signalling to Mr Knight to come outside. Willie gave him the metal film canister. Lifting the lid, Knight saw the container was about two-thirds full of diamonds. ‘Connie found ’em up at Little Creek Bay. We didn’t take ’em, Mr Knight. I swear.

  That old fella and the one with the funny leg left ’em behind.’

  Knight assured Willie he was not in trouble and that he

  had done the right thing by handing them in. Returning to the reception room, Knight handed the canister to Gibson,

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  who looked inside it and raised his eyebrows. The bank had insisted there had been more diamonds in the original shipment than those handed in by Palmer, and now there was proof

  positive.

  Connie and Willie were rewarded with clothes and tobacco, with the hope this would encourage further cooperation and information from the native population.

  On returning to Broome, Gibson sent an order to Palmer to return to headquarters immediately. The town was still deserted.

  There were no women and children, and of the resident

  population a mere forty-five men remained, mostly pensioners.

  Only ten houses were occupied by their original residents.

  Although some houses were used by soldiers, most had been abandoned with their furniture and furnishings intact, gathering dust and cobwebs. Lawns grew wild and then wilted in the hot sunshine. Homes and shops had been looted.

  Palmer had expected to get some reward for handing in the diamonds and thought maybe that was why the major wanted

  to see him. But on arrival, he could tell immediately that he was in trouble from the tone of the major’s voice.

  ‘Come in, Palmer,’ he shouted. Jack apprehensively entered Gibson’s office and stood nervously at attention before his superior officer. ‘You didn’t tell me the truth, Jack.’

  Jack could feel a lump form in his throat. ‘What do you

  mean, sir?’ he asked, wondering just what the major knew.

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  ‘There were more diamonds, weren’t there, Jack?’

  ‘I handed them all in. I swear, sir,’ he replied.

  ‘Then what are these?’ the major demanded, showing Jack

  the film canister.

  Jack looked down; he’d been caught out. ‘They’re the ones I gave you,’ he lied.

  ‘No, Jack, they’re not. Do you want to tell me about Jim

  Mulgrue and Frank Robinson before you get yourself into any more trouble?’

  Inside, Jack was furious but he was trying not to show it.

  He wondered what the hell the two men had told the major.

  Had they dobbed him in? ‘I was just trying to protect them, sir. Him being an old man, and the other a cripple.’

  ‘How about you make another statement? This time—the

  truth!’

  Jack relented and admitted he had given some diamonds to

  Mulgrue and Robinson, but he still insisted that he had kept none for himself.

  Gibson next sent for Frank Robinson. When confronted

  with the canister of diamonds, Robinson agreed Palmer had given him some. He told the major he had buried the canister on the beach at Little Creek when the patrol came to burn the luggers. ‘Mulgrue got none,’ he insisted.

  Next it was Mulgrue’s turn. ‘I am not such a fool as to get mixed up in all of that,’ he told the major.

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  Gibson told Mulgrue that he did not believe him and that

  he expected Mulgrue back at eight that evening with the

  diamonds he had received.

  Mulgrue returned to the major’s office that night and admitted to receiving ten or twelve diamonds
and pooling them with Robinson’s in the film canister. He said he held no other diamonds aside from those in the canister found on the beach by Connie Joorida.

  Major Gibson later told the Daily News he released the two men when they said they knew of more diamonds. ‘They said they would bring them back. That was my big mistake. I let them go and they didn’t come back. I never saw those diamonds.

  I suppose some people would say I took some. I had plenty of opportunity but I had a lot of other things more important than diamonds to worry about.’

  Major Gibson took the canister to Military Intelligence headquarters in Perth on 16 July. Five days later Mark Knight, the officer in charge of Native Affairs, brought in another eighteen diamonds he had received at Beagle Bay from the Manilaman, Sebastian De La Cruz. Believing it was likely that more diamonds were held by Aborigines throughout the area, it was suggested a reward be offered to entice them to hand them over. Still no reward had been offered to Palmer.

  Together with a Broome police constable and an Aboriginal tracker, Mark Knight travelled to Aboriginal communities across the Dampier Peninsula in September, six months after the Dutch plane crash. He questioned the locals and asked for any news

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  of the missing diamonds. They found no more diamonds during the trip. On returning to Broome, Knight cleaned out the

  glovebox of his car and was about to toss out a dirty matchbox with the other rubbish when he noticed a tuft of cotton wool peeping out from inside. Opening the box he found another sixty-one diamonds. He knew they hadn’t been there four days earlier when he left on the trip.

  With evidence of more diamonds having been found, Military Intelligence and the Dutch authorities agreed the investigation should now be handled by the Western Australian police force.

  Detective Sergeant Albert James Blight had joined the police force when he was twenty-three years old and had been a