The Tall Man (11 page)

Enormous pine trees stretched above us. “This remind me of
Blair Witch
,” Elizabeth said. Along the dirt road, to the right, was a view of the surrounding islands. To the left I could see valleys where wild horses grazed on the banks of a creek.

“How much farther?” I kept asking. “To the bridge,” she kept answering. Through the heat we passed huge grey boulders, wild-flowers, a tree with foliage gathered on each branch like a bouquet. No bridge ever materialized.

I asked Elizabeth about the Tall Man.

“He like Big Foot.” She believed he’d always been in these hills.

The Aboriginal activist Murrandoo Yanner told me that Tall Man stories exist all over Indigenous Australia. In the Northern Territory’s Arnhem Land, there are mimihs—tall, thin rock spirits capable of evil. There’s also the figure of Namorrorddo, described by rock-art expert George Chaloupka:

A malignant spirit, a ghostly, spectral figure [he] is usually portrayed in rock paintings as a very tall, thin and extremely elongated being with long slim arms and legs, and with claws instead of fingers and toes. It is not unusual to find images representing this being that are more than 8 metres long. He moves about only at night, when he may be seen for a split second rushing across the sky. When the people see the trail of a falling star they know that it is Namorrorddo going to a locality where somebody is dying. He is said to fly in search of sick people, waiting to rip open their chest, take away their “breath” and carry away their heart. The brighter the star the more important the dying person. When a person dies during the day, their “shadow” is taken away by birds who are said to be Namorrorddo, or who act on his behalf.

I’d seen contemporary bark paintings from western Arnhem Land of the giant called Luma Luma. There was a Luma Luma Street on Palm Island. Elizabeth told me the Tall Man was a traveller, a creature that could change shape at will in order to move around freely. This was also one of the abilities of Luma Luma.

In the 1920s and 1930s many Aboriginal people were sent to Palm Island from around Laura, in southeastern Cape York. Near Laura there was said to be a giant who ate people, called Turramulli, as well as many tall spirits, good and bad, who, like the mimihs, were rock spirits. These spirits were called quinkans, and were said to have stone axes extending from their knees and elbows that they would use while flying down and striking enemies. Laura elder Tommy George explained:

Quinkans are malevolent spirits. They hide in dark places and come out at night. That’s when they are active. Our stories say they live in the sandstone, the cracks and narrow places. It’s dark there and you can’t get in. They come out at night and sneak around over the rough country. That way they can hide quickly if they have to. They just slide into a crack in the rock. Those long legs and arms let them hide easily behind and in the trees too. That night work they do can be evil. It still make people worry a lot. That
purri purri
belief is still very strong.

Fifty thousand years ago, the Aborigines did live among giants. The megafauna included three-metre-tall kangaroos, and giant wombats, koalas, snakes, crocodiles and lizards. Their bones found across the land were readily explained as evidence of the giant Ancestral Spirits of the Dreaming.

Elizabeth led Paula and me down a steep embankment covered in long grass. At the bottom stood a mahogany-coloured horse straight from a young girl’s fantasy. As we picked our way through the rocks and deep grass it stared at us, quizzical. In a shallow creek bed, taro grew: tall green stalks with wide leaves on which mud and water ball like mercury. Elizabeth put on her boots and began to loosen the roots with the shovel.

Then she stood back, expecting me to pull the roots out—and I did. The job was ridiculously primal. I squatted and clutched the stalk, pulling as hard as I could, sliding farther into the mud. An enormous tuber sprouting muddied roots slowly emerged. As it came free, mud splattered all over me, giving off an intense vegetable smell not unlike manure. It was overwhelming, the whole thing. Before long Paula and I were both roiling in mud trying to birth these bulbous taros. Elizabeth’s mother had taught her to do this, and perhaps her mother before her.

For Elizabeth, traditional food gathering was one custom the Palm Island missionaries could not destroy. The same was true for men on the island: her brother had been much admired for his hunting.

The Christians had tried to stamp out “tribal sorcery and superstition … savage life … medicine men and rainmakers of barbarous nations”. Like a lot of people on Palm, Elizabeth had her own way of reconciling traditional spirituality with Christianity. She worried that the Rainbow Serpent, her grandmother Lizzy Daylight’s totem, was the snake in the Garden of Eden, but she still believed the Ancestral Spirits were all around.

I passed the taros to Elizabeth, who sliced off the stalks with the blade of the shovel. The tangled roots looked like hair. It was as if I were filling our bag with human heads. Paula and I were now completely covered in mud, while Elizabeth remained spotless. I realized how far we would have to carry the bag and stood staring at it gloomily.

“What’s that?” Elizabeth asked suddenly. “It’s the Warning Bird calling!”

I strained to hear birdcall.

“It’s warning us it’s now time to leave.” She moved quickly and I picked up the heavy sack and followed. Elizabeth was strict but warm, wily but protective. It was impossible to tell if she was teasing us. “Thank you very much,” I heard her say to any resident spirits. “We’re going now.”

The people in Elizabeth’s church had been searching for grace. Elizabeth was searching for grace and for answers. Father Tony, the island’s Catholic priest, later told me that on the island he’d had theological discussions of more substance than in many other places. Among families so ravaged by alcoholism and violence, there is another dimension to forgiveness.

Father Tony had invited Elizabeth to go to Townsville with him to speak at a church service. She told the story of her brother’s death, and a white policeman stood up and started to cry. He said he’d seen terrible things done to Aboriginal people; he said how sorry he was.

“He cried brokenhearted,” Elizabeth told me. She had gone over and hugged him. “Brother, I forgive you.”

THREE AND A HALF
months after Cameron Doomadgee and Chris Hurley fell through the door of the Palm Island police station, the coroner’s inquest into Cameron’s death began. The riot had made the case front-page news in Queensland, and on the first morning, along with the star lawyers, small planes delivered star journalists to the island. After one plane’s arrival, an Aboriginal man stood waiting for the passengers to disembark. “The white people fly in,” he sniggered, “so we fly out.”

“What do you think will happen?” I asked him.

“The same as usual: nothing.”

Court convened in the gymnasium of the newly opened state-funded multimillion-dollar Police Club Youth Centre. Under the basketball hoop, a desk was set up for the coroner. On the wall behind him hung a sheet reading:

THE PALM ISLAND COMMUNITY WELCOMES YOU

TO THE CORONER’S INQUEST HEARING OF

THE LATE MULRUNJI DOOMADGEE.

MAY THE BLESSED BEAUTY SHOW HIS MERCY AND BOUNTY

UPON HIS BATTERED, BLESSED SOUL FOREVER.

The colourful sign had been appliquéd by Lex Wotton’s sweet-looking, bespectacled mother, Agnes, who had learned to sew and embroider in the mission’s dormitory. Unfolding the umbrella she used to keep off the sun, Agnes told me she was having a second career as an activist. Along with her son and daughter, she had been charged with rioting. The women had not been sent off the island, but on the sign she had listed the names of the banned men, alongside this message:

BWGCOLMAN WARRIORS TOOK A STAND FOR JUSTICE.

WE WANT JUSTICE.

Despite the workload of the inquest, Andrew Boe had applied to have the men’s bail conditions reversed. Now he sat along the bar table with seventeen other lawyers, all of them white. They knew one another, having worked together on different trials over the years. They knew who among them were the drinkers, which ones were gamblers, who was fast on his feet, who was slow. This was a club with old loyalties and old grievances. Running the inquest, as counsel assisting the coroner, was the trim, wry barrister Terry Martin SC, who was himself assisted by two other lawyers. Martin would examine all the witnesses. Other counsel would then have an opportunity to cross-examine. The coroner had to determine what had caused Cameron’s death. If he suspected Hurley was guilty of a criminal offence, he was required to refer the matter to the director of public prosecutions, who had the power to lay charges.

Every party with an interest in the outcome had legal representation. Appearing for Senior Sergeant Hurley were the barrister Steve Zillman and solicitor Glen Cranny. Cranny, along with another barrister, was also appearing for the other police who’d been in or at the station at the time of Cameron’s death: Lloyd Bengaroo, Michael Leafe and Kristopher Steadman.

Barristers Peter Callaghan SC and Tony Moynihan, and solicitor Stephanie Hack, all funded by Legal Aid, had come from Brisbane to represent the Doomadgee family; Boe and Paula Morreau were to represent the Palm Island Aboriginal Council. Two lawyers from Townsville’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Aid were representing Tracy Twaddle. The Queensland police commissioner also had two lawyers. Another lawyer, Jonathon Hunyor, was appearing for the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission.

Although this was an inquiry, not a trial, and the proceedings were not meant to be adversarial, the lines were firmly drawn: five lawyers for the cops, trying to persuade the coroner that Hurley had no case to answer; ten lawyers for the blackfellas, insisting that he did. Agnes Wotton was made to remove her sign.

Under the basketball hoop, in linen shirt, trousers and new boots, sat the state coroner, Michael Barnes. His wide-brimmed hat rested on the floor. Barnes looked like someone who had tried to dress down but only succeeded in making himself look like a colonial planter. Now he rose and said good morning—and shot himself in the knee.

Firstly, I think I need to place on the record my previous involvement in some matters involving one of the principal witnesses, namely Senior Sergeant Hurley. From 1992 to 2000, I was Chief Officer of the Complaints section of the Criminal Justice Commission.
^fn1
In that position I was obliged to make a determination in relation to all complaints made to the Commission. A review of the files of complaints made against Officer Hurley shows that I dealt with a number of those matters in that capacity … I have no memories of any of the matters. I do not believe that my involvement will in any way reduce my ability to impartially consider the evidence in these proceedings.

This was Queensland: even the state coroner had only one degree of separation from the main suspect. The coincidence was like a red rag to the Doomadgees’ lawyers. They had written to the state coroner’s office a number of times over the past month seeking access to Hurley’s complaint files. They were looking for “similar fact” evidence, trying to find out whether Hurley had been accused of assaulting prisoners before. Quick and aggressive, Peter Callaghan now declared he wanted immediate access to these files, to gauge the coroner’s involvement—and to see what the complaints were.

The police commissioner’s lawyers opposed him; so did Hurley’s barrister, the lean, coiled Steve Zillman, who claimed that most of the complaints were “unsubstantiated” or led to “informal resolution … there’s nothing in them”.

Callaghan stood again. He was forty-two and in Brisbane’s legal ranks considered a rising star. He had been drawn into this case by Boe, who knew Callaghan was haunted by work he’d done fifteen years earlier on the “Gulf circuit”: Callaghan, a twenty-seven-year-old government prosecutor, would fly to the Gulf of Carpentaria’s Aboriginal communities for the day, meet Aboriginal rape victims for the first time in the courtroom, and then have to fight for them with no counsellors to assist, no resources, and no time for preparation.

Peter Callaghan said to Coroner Barnes: “I will object to you continuing to hear the inquest, and ask you to disqualify yourself, on the basis that you have disclosed previous dealings with this man [Hurley] and for not allowing us access to the materials that relate to those dealings, which can only entrench a perception of bias.”

The coroner ruled that Callaghan could review the files, but they were back in Brisbane. And seeing everyone was gathered and waiting to start, he said, the inquest would continue.

Elizabeth sat with her sisters and Tracy Twaddle in a line at the front, watching the lawyers’ facial expressions to gauge what was happening. The women wore Sunday best and held kitchen wipes in case they needed to dry their eyes. Earlier, Elizabeth had led her lawyers in prayers and ordered them to stand up straight with their heads held high. I’d also overheard her asking Erykah Kyle if onlookers could be banned from taking notes. “We got our writer here,” she’d said, gesturing to me.

It had been raining lightly. “Blessing rain,” Valmae said. She had not been able to find a hearing aid and was sitting by a speaker, straining to follow the evidence. Also sitting near the speakers were fifteen or so journalists, photographers and cameramen from around Queensland, sweltering. Among them was the
Australian
’s Tony Koch, who’d done the most to publicize the Doomadgee affair. In his mid-fifties, Koch was both hardbitten and gentlemanly; he’d been writing about Indigenous issues for twenty-five years. The son of a country cop and the brother of cops, Koch was considered a traitor by the police union for criticizing the riot response. While all the other journalists were embedded under police control, he had stayed with a local family and gone out on the streets reporting.

About a hundred Palm Islanders sat at the back or stood close to the door, as if being able to get out fast were more important than being able to hear.