September 2, 2025 • 19 mins
The whispering forests and deep valleys of Victoria’s high country have long provided refuge for those on the run.
Think of Ned Kelly and his gang, who roamed the north east Victorian ranges, before finally being captured by police in a shootout at the Glenrowan Inn.
And, conspiracy theorist Dezi Freeman, who has been on the run for the last week in this area, after allegedly killing two policemen and injuring a third.
Today, associate editor and special writer Tony Wright, who spent the last few days in this area, on how this region has helped some of Australia’s most mythic outlaws.
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:01):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris. It's Wednesday,
August 3rd. The whispering forests and deep valleys of Victoria's
high country have long provided refuge for those on the run.
(00:24):
Think of Ned Kelly and his gang, who vanished into
the Wombat Ranges before finally being captured by police in
a shootout at the Glenrowan Inn, and conspiracy theorist Desi Freeman,
who has been on the run for the last week
in this area after allegedly killing two policemen and injuring
a third. Today, associate editor and special writer Tony Wright,
(00:49):
who spent the last few days in this area on
how this region has helped some of Australia's most mythic outlaws. So, Tony,
you are only just back to the city after a
few days spent in Victoria's high country. And this is
obviously because the search for alleged gunman Desi Freeman around
(01:11):
Papanca continues. Now, this is a region that has been,
I guess, somewhat infamous. So can you just start off
by telling us a little bit about this area and
its geography?
S2 (01:21):
Well, Papanca is in the Ovens Valley, which is on
the ovens River, which flows past Mount Buffalo and out
of the mountains. The mountains that I'm talking about in
north east Victoria are they're known as the Victorian Alps.
They're a very large area, very, very rugged, very beautiful also, and, um,
quite perilous if you don't know what you're doing and
(01:43):
you get lost up there. Over the years, there have
been quite a few people who have gone missing for
various reasons there. Um, but also there are sort of
legends because they worked out how to get around that
place and, and hide out if they so desired.
S1 (02:00):
Well, let's get into this because you have written I
love your turn of phrase, Tony. You've written that the
hush of Victoria's high countries, snow laden plateaus have long
been the haunts of the daring, the desperate and the deranged.
So just how far does the area's links to criminals
go back?
S2 (02:18):
Well, at the very least to the time of Dan Morgan,
the bushranger who skirted that area in the mid 1800s. Then,
of course, Ned Kelly and his gang through the latter
period of the or a slightly later period of the 1800s.
(02:39):
And then in the early part of last century, about
19 1718, there were two very mysterious murders that occurred
in the Wonnangatta Valley. And the. And the valley sits
basically within this great bowl of mountains, very inaccessible until
relatively recently when four wheel drives began their owners camping
(03:05):
in there. But back in 1918, the body of the
manager of Wonnangatta Station, it was it was a cattle station.
In those days it was found the head. His head
found nearby and he'd been shot. Everyone assumed that his
cook and stockman, who was known to have a pretty
(03:29):
bad temper, had killed him. But then they found the
body of him, the cook and stockman, about 30km away,
hidden under a log, and he'd been shot in the head.
Since then, nobody has been able to crack that case
to know exactly what happened and who killed whom and why.
(03:49):
So the Warren got a valley in particular, gained this
reputation as a as quite a place of mystery. And then,
of course, uh, much more recently, there was the case
of Russell Hill, who is 74, and Carol Clay, 73,
went missing in 2020 while on a camping visit to
(04:11):
the Wonnangatta Valley. And that turned into an enormous case,
which eventually ended up with an airline pilot named Gregory
Lynn being tried and found guilty of one of those
people's death. He was found guilty of murdering Clay, but
not of murdering Hill. He got 32 years in jail.
(04:33):
But in the meantime, of course, there was this ghastly
situation revealed that he'd removed the bodies, taken them to
elsewhere in the remote areas of the mountains, burnt them
to ash, and then had tried to pretend he had
nothing to do with it.
S1 (04:51):
This region really is the site of such dark sort
of crimes. Terrible violence, bizarre stuff. Is it something about
the region? Like is it something about the geography? Does
it just have I don't know, what is it about
the geography of this place? Does it sort of lend itself,
I guess, to people hiding?
S2 (05:09):
Well, it certainly lends itself to people going missing. The
mountains are a place where you can disappear, or you
believe you can disappear, because there are those who have
done it in the past. There are at least four
people that I know of this century who have simply
gone missing and never been found. A bushwalker very experienced
bushwalker in 2019 he went missing has never been found.
(05:34):
A warden from Barwon Prison also went missing in most
extraordinary circumstances.
S1 (05:42):
Wait, I have to interrupt you. Tell us about these
extraordinary circumstances of the warden going missing. Was the warden
escaping the prisoners? Like what's happening there?
S2 (05:50):
No, no, we don't know. We don't know. He certainly
had been in charge of some very violent prisoners at Barwon,
but you'd hardly imagine that they would trace him up
into the high country and then do away with him.
Nobody knows. There's several others who have gone missing. And also,
of course, uh, during the investigations into the more recent
(06:11):
missing persons up there have been the stories about this
very mysterious fellow called the Button Man. He's about 70
years of age. It's believed. He wanders around the hills,
lives alone in the mountains, and mysteriously turns up and
just sits down next to campers silently, and then then
(06:35):
wanders off again. And nobody really knows much about him.
But he is, uh, a, uh, a man of some
interest to a lot of people.
S1 (06:45):
I mean, Tony, this man might be perfectly harmless, and
I certainly don't want to defame him, but this is
the stuff of nightmares. I think you wrote the reason
he's called the Button man is because doesn't he carve
buttons out of deer antlers or something and just leaves
them places? And, I mean, it's ominous. Yeah.
S2 (07:00):
And little cairns of stones. And there was one famous
occasion where a photographer, a wildlife photographer, was up there
all by himself and going around and took a whole
heap of photos and slept in his tent. And when
he had a look at his pictures, he was astounded.
And I imagine, uh, very disturbed to discover there was
(07:23):
a picture of himself asleep in his tent. And, uh,
so a lot of people assume that the button man
had turned up and decided to announce that he'd been
there by taking a photo and then disappearing again.
S1 (07:39):
And before we get into the latest case and why
we're talking about this area yet again, and some, you know,
very dark crimes, I just quickly want to ask you, Tony,
about your own interest in this area because you are
from Victoria, the not from this region, but you did
grow up on the land elsewhere. So why are you
so interested in these crimes, these stories?
S2 (07:59):
Well, I was fortunate enough in the 1980s, late 70s,
80s to get to know a number of high country
cattlemen who ran their cattle up on the Bogong High
Plains during the spring and summer, and then had to
bring them down before the snow fell. And that was
known as the muster. And I was invited to attend
(08:21):
several of these musters, and they would provide a horse
for me. And in the evenings in the old, old
cattlemen's huts up there in the high country, we'd sit
around a fire and they would tell me stories about
this place, their knowledge, which went back a very long time,
and their father's knowledge and so forth. And so it
became a place of fascination for me and also love.
(08:45):
I just grew to love that country. And so this
place and its stories cast a bit of a spell
on me, I suppose. And and still do.
S1 (09:02):
We'll be right back. Okay, well, let's get into why
we are talking about this now, because of course, as
we're recording this on Tuesday morning, we're now into the
eighth day of a police hunt, a manhunt for Desi Freeman,
an alleged police murderer. As this airs, it'll be the
(09:22):
ninth day. If he's still on the run, then. So he,
too has disappeared into the high country's forest. So, I guess,
does this have anything, do you think, to do with
what he's alleged to have done?
S2 (09:35):
Well, I guess there are a lot of people up there,
some of whom, uh, support his very bizarre views. He's, um,
known as a sovereign citizen and, uh, and lived in
what you might call a compound of like minded people
at the foot of Mount Buffalo with the mountains and
the forests right behind him. And after this event, where
(09:58):
two policemen were shot dead and another was wounded. Desi
Freeman Headed off and was last seen disappearing into the
forest at the foot of Mount Buffalo. Now he's known
as a man who has frequented those areas. He's been
a hunter. He's been a survivalist. He knows the bush
(10:21):
pretty well. And for quite some time, there was this
belief that perhaps he had a hide up there in
the mountain country which would be stocked with food and
so forth, the survivalist thing. And that is no longer
necessarily the major theory. There is now a theory coming
around that he's being helped by one or more of
(10:45):
his supporters, and he may have got away to somewhere
else or whatever, but the facts are that this is
a first class mystery. I suppose there are 450 police
up there trying to find Desi Freeman, a man who
actually changed his name to Freeman from his real name
(11:05):
of Philby because it it fits the myth that he's
created around himself and the sovereign citizen movement and the
free men of the land, uh, as, uh, as some
of them are called. But if he is in that
forested area or on the mountainside or otherwise, then he
(11:26):
has to be in a very secure hide that is
protected from the weather. There are two reasons for this.
One is the fact that helicopters are constantly flying over
the area with heat imaging technology. And it hasn't. They
none of them have picked up a track of him,
(11:46):
which they would have, but it's possible. Some theorize that
he's got an underground bunker. There are a lot of
old gold mining shafts in that whole area which Desi
Freeman would know about. Um, and maybe he has converted
one of them into a hide. Maybe he hasn't.
S1 (12:07):
Now, I really want to ask you, just before moving
on to what the locals in the area told you.
Because we're so lucky you were there on the ground
asking people about him. But I do want to ask,
you know, before we started recording, you told me that
Desi's house is only 60km by road from Glenrowan across country.
S2 (12:24):
Yeah.
S1 (12:24):
Where, of course, Ned Kelly was famously captured by police
at Glenrowan. And you've just mentioned all of these, you know,
bushrangers and outlaws and criminals and quite dark crimes really too,
that have taken place in the area. Is there any
suggestion that he has gravitated to this area because of that,
or is this just where he grew up or just
where he lived, just, you know, happenstance?
S2 (12:44):
I don't think he's gravitated there because of these old stories.
I think he's gravitated there simply because it's a fairly
remote area, and he could afford to to live there.
And there are others of his beliefs with whom he
could live. And I discovered a number of people had
(13:05):
similar beliefs wandering around the place, although they didn't call
themselves sovereign citizens. There were people who sympathized with him,
and the police are very aware of that. He's lived
there for a long time. He lived for quite some
time on the other side of Mount Buffalo at a
place called Nag Nag. So he does know the mountains
(13:25):
very well. He hunts. Those who have, uh, visited him
in the past have seen carcasses of of deer hanging
up and being salted because it's part of his survivalist technique.
I suppose he does know how to hunt. He knows
how to get around the mountains. And so I guess
it was a a useful area for him. Whether he
(13:47):
saw himself as some form of Ned Kelly, I don't know.
But certainly some people are romancing that at the moment
up there. Um, my view about that is that, you know,
the only real comparison that can be made is that
Ned Kelly and his gang murdered three policemen. I don't think, uh,
Dessie Freeman is a Ned Kelly sort of guy. Really?
(14:09):
I mean, I did point out in one of my
stories that even Ned Kelly probably wouldn't have taken the, uh,
the King's shilling in that Desi Freeman has been living
off government benefits while rejecting everything to do with the
government and, uh, and traditional society.
S1 (14:27):
I mean, is there any risk, do you think that
Desi Freeman is being glorified much in the way that,
you know, many of us have romanticized stories of bushrangers
of times gone past?
S2 (14:37):
Oh, I think it's it's it's inevitable that some people
will go down that path because they they want the
romantic story. It's not a romantic story. Two policemen have
been shot dead in cold blood. Another one wounded, and
a man is missing in that area. I think those
who want to turn it into a, uh, a part
(14:59):
of the legend of the past are badly advised.
S1 (15:04):
I'm so interested. You just said that, you know, people
might want to. Or they will want to. They want
the romantic story. Why? Why do they want the romantic
story when so much of the coverage, of course, of
this man and it's just alleged at this point? I mean,
it's horrifying. You know, these policemen were allegedly ambushed, you know,
murdered still in the prime of their lives. I mean,
it really is quite horrific. So why do people want
(15:24):
the romantic story?
S2 (15:26):
Well, Australian history has romanticized bushrangers in the mountains. And.
And Ned Kelly is at the leading edge of that.
I suppose there have been movies about him. There have
been books, endless books. There are those who see him
as a some sort of a freedom fighter, a man
who stood up for the little people and all the
(15:46):
rest of it. Mad Dan Morgan is perhaps less romanticized,
but there has been a movie made of him. I
think that people who are locked to a desk, if
you like, or stranded in a city or in a
life that isn't all that exciting, may well be the
(16:07):
sort of people who need a story like that to
give their their lives a, uh, a bit of a kick.
S1 (16:15):
And, Tony, just as a last question, you know, so
much of our reporting has focused on Desi Freeman's beliefs,
you know, as him being this person who's anti-government, anti-police,
a conspiracy theorist. But what was your impression of him
after your trip there? Like, what did locals tell you?
S2 (16:30):
Well, most most of the locals, of course, don't know
anything about sovereign citizens or the freedom movement or otherwise.
And they're revolted by the fact that two policemen have
been killed and another wounded. But here and there you
would come across people who have gone down the rabbit hole,
as it were, and the conspiracy theories that have grown
(16:53):
over the years, particularly since, uh, the lockdowns of the pandemic.
Desi Freeman himself clearly became seriously radicalized during that period,
and his hatred of authority and police and everything else
came to the fore. Conspiracy theories have always been around.
(17:13):
They quite often are found fairly deeply embedded in areas
of country communities, in particular, where people feel that they
have been bypassed by wider society or are economically and
educationally and all sorts of other ways, and are searching
(17:33):
for for something, for an ideology. And a number of
them have found this particularly strange, imported from the United
States and other nations, views about authority and about pseudo law,
and that they don't have to answer to society. There's
(17:56):
a little bit of that around, and I think you'll
find it in many areas of Australia.
S1 (18:06):
Well, Tony, we're so lucky that you took the time
to travel this area that I know you do love.
So you could give us this report from the ground.
So thank you so much for your time.
S2 (18:15):
My pleasure. Samantha.
S1 (18:24):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Josh
towers with technical assistance by Julia Carcasole. Our executive producer
is Tammy Mills. Tom McKendrick is our head of audio.
To listen to our episodes as soon as they drop,
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(18:46):
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Morningedition newsletter to receive a summary of the day's most
important news in your inbox every morning. Links are in
the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris. Thanks for listening.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris. It's Wednesday,
August 3rd. The whispering forests and deep valleys of Victoria's
high country have long provided refuge for those on the run.
(00:24):
Think of Ned Kelly and his gang, who vanished into
the Wombat Ranges before finally being captured by police in
a shootout at the Glenrowan Inn, and conspiracy theorist Desi Freeman,
who has been on the run for the last week
in this area after allegedly killing two policemen and injuring
a third. Today, associate editor and special writer Tony Wright,
(00:49):
who spent the last few days in this area on
how this region has helped some of Australia's most mythic outlaws. So, Tony,
you are only just back to the city after a
few days spent in Victoria's high country. And this is
obviously because the search for alleged gunman Desi Freeman around
(01:11):
Papanca continues. Now, this is a region that has been,
I guess, somewhat infamous. So can you just start off
by telling us a little bit about this area and
its geography?
S2 (01:21):
Well, Papanca is in the Ovens Valley, which is on
the ovens River, which flows past Mount Buffalo and out
of the mountains. The mountains that I'm talking about in
north east Victoria are they're known as the Victorian Alps.
They're a very large area, very, very rugged, very beautiful also, and, um,
quite perilous if you don't know what you're doing and
(01:43):
you get lost up there. Over the years, there have
been quite a few people who have gone missing for
various reasons there. Um, but also there are sort of
legends because they worked out how to get around that
place and, and hide out if they so desired.
S1 (02:00):
Well, let's get into this because you have written I
love your turn of phrase, Tony. You've written that the
hush of Victoria's high countries, snow laden plateaus have long
been the haunts of the daring, the desperate and the deranged.
So just how far does the area's links to criminals
go back?
S2 (02:18):
Well, at the very least to the time of Dan Morgan,
the bushranger who skirted that area in the mid 1800s. Then,
of course, Ned Kelly and his gang through the latter
period of the or a slightly later period of the 1800s.
(02:39):
And then in the early part of last century, about
19 1718, there were two very mysterious murders that occurred
in the Wonnangatta Valley. And the. And the valley sits
basically within this great bowl of mountains, very inaccessible until
relatively recently when four wheel drives began their owners camping
(03:05):
in there. But back in 1918, the body of the
manager of Wonnangatta Station, it was it was a cattle station.
In those days it was found the head. His head
found nearby and he'd been shot. Everyone assumed that his
cook and stockman, who was known to have a pretty
(03:29):
bad temper, had killed him. But then they found the
body of him, the cook and stockman, about 30km away,
hidden under a log, and he'd been shot in the head.
Since then, nobody has been able to crack that case
to know exactly what happened and who killed whom and why.
(03:49):
So the Warren got a valley in particular, gained this
reputation as a as quite a place of mystery. And then,
of course, uh, much more recently, there was the case
of Russell Hill, who is 74, and Carol Clay, 73,
went missing in 2020 while on a camping visit to
(04:11):
the Wonnangatta Valley. And that turned into an enormous case,
which eventually ended up with an airline pilot named Gregory
Lynn being tried and found guilty of one of those
people's death. He was found guilty of murdering Clay, but
not of murdering Hill. He got 32 years in jail.
(04:33):
But in the meantime, of course, there was this ghastly
situation revealed that he'd removed the bodies, taken them to
elsewhere in the remote areas of the mountains, burnt them
to ash, and then had tried to pretend he had
nothing to do with it.
S1 (04:51):
This region really is the site of such dark sort
of crimes. Terrible violence, bizarre stuff. Is it something about
the region? Like is it something about the geography? Does
it just have I don't know, what is it about
the geography of this place? Does it sort of lend itself,
I guess, to people hiding?
S2 (05:09):
Well, it certainly lends itself to people going missing. The
mountains are a place where you can disappear, or you
believe you can disappear, because there are those who have
done it in the past. There are at least four
people that I know of this century who have simply
gone missing and never been found. A bushwalker very experienced
bushwalker in 2019 he went missing has never been found.
(05:34):
A warden from Barwon Prison also went missing in most
extraordinary circumstances.
S1 (05:42):
Wait, I have to interrupt you. Tell us about these
extraordinary circumstances of the warden going missing. Was the warden
escaping the prisoners? Like what's happening there?
S2 (05:50):
No, no, we don't know. We don't know. He certainly
had been in charge of some very violent prisoners at Barwon,
but you'd hardly imagine that they would trace him up
into the high country and then do away with him.
Nobody knows. There's several others who have gone missing. And also,
of course, uh, during the investigations into the more recent
(06:11):
missing persons up there have been the stories about this
very mysterious fellow called the Button Man. He's about 70
years of age. It's believed. He wanders around the hills,
lives alone in the mountains, and mysteriously turns up and
just sits down next to campers silently, and then then
(06:35):
wanders off again. And nobody really knows much about him.
But he is, uh, a, uh, a man of some
interest to a lot of people.
S1 (06:45):
I mean, Tony, this man might be perfectly harmless, and
I certainly don't want to defame him, but this is
the stuff of nightmares. I think you wrote the reason
he's called the Button man is because doesn't he carve
buttons out of deer antlers or something and just leaves
them places? And, I mean, it's ominous. Yeah.
S2 (07:00):
And little cairns of stones. And there was one famous
occasion where a photographer, a wildlife photographer, was up there
all by himself and going around and took a whole
heap of photos and slept in his tent. And when
he had a look at his pictures, he was astounded.
And I imagine, uh, very disturbed to discover there was
(07:23):
a picture of himself asleep in his tent. And, uh,
so a lot of people assume that the button man
had turned up and decided to announce that he'd been
there by taking a photo and then disappearing again.
S1 (07:39):
And before we get into the latest case and why
we're talking about this area yet again, and some, you know,
very dark crimes, I just quickly want to ask you, Tony,
about your own interest in this area because you are
from Victoria, the not from this region, but you did
grow up on the land elsewhere. So why are you
so interested in these crimes, these stories?
S2 (07:59):
Well, I was fortunate enough in the 1980s, late 70s,
80s to get to know a number of high country
cattlemen who ran their cattle up on the Bogong High
Plains during the spring and summer, and then had to
bring them down before the snow fell. And that was
known as the muster. And I was invited to attend
(08:21):
several of these musters, and they would provide a horse
for me. And in the evenings in the old, old
cattlemen's huts up there in the high country, we'd sit
around a fire and they would tell me stories about
this place, their knowledge, which went back a very long time,
and their father's knowledge and so forth. And so it
became a place of fascination for me and also love.
(08:45):
I just grew to love that country. And so this
place and its stories cast a bit of a spell
on me, I suppose. And and still do.
S1 (09:02):
We'll be right back. Okay, well, let's get into why
we are talking about this now, because of course, as
we're recording this on Tuesday morning, we're now into the
eighth day of a police hunt, a manhunt for Desi Freeman,
an alleged police murderer. As this airs, it'll be the
(09:22):
ninth day. If he's still on the run, then. So he,
too has disappeared into the high country's forest. So, I guess,
does this have anything, do you think, to do with
what he's alleged to have done?
S2 (09:35):
Well, I guess there are a lot of people up there,
some of whom, uh, support his very bizarre views. He's, um,
known as a sovereign citizen and, uh, and lived in
what you might call a compound of like minded people
at the foot of Mount Buffalo with the mountains and
the forests right behind him. And after this event, where
(09:58):
two policemen were shot dead and another was wounded. Desi
Freeman Headed off and was last seen disappearing into the
forest at the foot of Mount Buffalo. Now he's known
as a man who has frequented those areas. He's been
a hunter. He's been a survivalist. He knows the bush
(10:21):
pretty well. And for quite some time, there was this
belief that perhaps he had a hide up there in
the mountain country which would be stocked with food and
so forth, the survivalist thing. And that is no longer
necessarily the major theory. There is now a theory coming
around that he's being helped by one or more of
(10:45):
his supporters, and he may have got away to somewhere
else or whatever, but the facts are that this is
a first class mystery. I suppose there are 450 police
up there trying to find Desi Freeman, a man who
actually changed his name to Freeman from his real name
(11:05):
of Philby because it it fits the myth that he's
created around himself and the sovereign citizen movement and the
free men of the land, uh, as, uh, as some
of them are called. But if he is in that
forested area or on the mountainside or otherwise, then he
(11:26):
has to be in a very secure hide that is
protected from the weather. There are two reasons for this.
One is the fact that helicopters are constantly flying over
the area with heat imaging technology. And it hasn't. They
none of them have picked up a track of him,
(11:46):
which they would have, but it's possible. Some theorize that
he's got an underground bunker. There are a lot of
old gold mining shafts in that whole area which Desi
Freeman would know about. Um, and maybe he has converted
one of them into a hide. Maybe he hasn't.
S1 (12:07):
Now, I really want to ask you, just before moving
on to what the locals in the area told you.
Because we're so lucky you were there on the ground
asking people about him. But I do want to ask,
you know, before we started recording, you told me that
Desi's house is only 60km by road from Glenrowan across country.
S2 (12:24):
Yeah.
S1 (12:24):
Where, of course, Ned Kelly was famously captured by police
at Glenrowan. And you've just mentioned all of these, you know,
bushrangers and outlaws and criminals and quite dark crimes really too,
that have taken place in the area. Is there any
suggestion that he has gravitated to this area because of that,
or is this just where he grew up or just
where he lived, just, you know, happenstance?
S2 (12:44):
I don't think he's gravitated there because of these old stories.
I think he's gravitated there simply because it's a fairly
remote area, and he could afford to to live there.
And there are others of his beliefs with whom he
could live. And I discovered a number of people had
(13:05):
similar beliefs wandering around the place, although they didn't call
themselves sovereign citizens. There were people who sympathized with him,
and the police are very aware of that. He's lived
there for a long time. He lived for quite some
time on the other side of Mount Buffalo at a
place called Nag Nag. So he does know the mountains
(13:25):
very well. He hunts. Those who have, uh, visited him
in the past have seen carcasses of of deer hanging
up and being salted because it's part of his survivalist technique.
I suppose he does know how to hunt. He knows
how to get around the mountains. And so I guess
it was a a useful area for him. Whether he
(13:47):
saw himself as some form of Ned Kelly, I don't know.
But certainly some people are romancing that at the moment
up there. Um, my view about that is that, you know,
the only real comparison that can be made is that
Ned Kelly and his gang murdered three policemen. I don't think, uh,
Dessie Freeman is a Ned Kelly sort of guy. Really?
(14:09):
I mean, I did point out in one of my
stories that even Ned Kelly probably wouldn't have taken the, uh,
the King's shilling in that Desi Freeman has been living
off government benefits while rejecting everything to do with the
government and, uh, and traditional society.
S1 (14:27):
I mean, is there any risk, do you think that
Desi Freeman is being glorified much in the way that,
you know, many of us have romanticized stories of bushrangers
of times gone past?
S2 (14:37):
Oh, I think it's it's it's inevitable that some people
will go down that path because they they want the
romantic story. It's not a romantic story. Two policemen have
been shot dead in cold blood. Another one wounded, and
a man is missing in that area. I think those
who want to turn it into a, uh, a part
(14:59):
of the legend of the past are badly advised.
S1 (15:04):
I'm so interested. You just said that, you know, people
might want to. Or they will want to. They want
the romantic story. Why? Why do they want the romantic
story when so much of the coverage, of course, of
this man and it's just alleged at this point? I mean,
it's horrifying. You know, these policemen were allegedly ambushed, you know,
murdered still in the prime of their lives. I mean,
it really is quite horrific. So why do people want
(15:24):
the romantic story?
S2 (15:26):
Well, Australian history has romanticized bushrangers in the mountains. And.
And Ned Kelly is at the leading edge of that.
I suppose there have been movies about him. There have
been books, endless books. There are those who see him
as a some sort of a freedom fighter, a man
who stood up for the little people and all the
(15:46):
rest of it. Mad Dan Morgan is perhaps less romanticized,
but there has been a movie made of him. I
think that people who are locked to a desk, if
you like, or stranded in a city or in a
life that isn't all that exciting, may well be the
(16:07):
sort of people who need a story like that to
give their their lives a, uh, a bit of a kick.
S1 (16:15):
And, Tony, just as a last question, you know, so
much of our reporting has focused on Desi Freeman's beliefs,
you know, as him being this person who's anti-government, anti-police,
a conspiracy theorist. But what was your impression of him
after your trip there? Like, what did locals tell you?
S2 (16:30):
Well, most most of the locals, of course, don't know
anything about sovereign citizens or the freedom movement or otherwise.
And they're revolted by the fact that two policemen have
been killed and another wounded. But here and there you
would come across people who have gone down the rabbit hole,
as it were, and the conspiracy theories that have grown
(16:53):
over the years, particularly since, uh, the lockdowns of the pandemic.
Desi Freeman himself clearly became seriously radicalized during that period,
and his hatred of authority and police and everything else
came to the fore. Conspiracy theories have always been around.
(17:13):
They quite often are found fairly deeply embedded in areas
of country communities, in particular, where people feel that they
have been bypassed by wider society or are economically and
educationally and all sorts of other ways, and are searching
(17:33):
for for something, for an ideology. And a number of
them have found this particularly strange, imported from the United
States and other nations, views about authority and about pseudo law,
and that they don't have to answer to society. There's
(17:56):
a little bit of that around, and I think you'll
find it in many areas of Australia.
S1 (18:06):
Well, Tony, we're so lucky that you took the time
to travel this area that I know you do love.
So you could give us this report from the ground.
So thank you so much for your time.
S2 (18:15):
My pleasure. Samantha.
S1 (18:24):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Josh
towers with technical assistance by Julia Carcasole. Our executive producer
is Tammy Mills. Tom McKendrick is our head of audio.
To listen to our episodes as soon as they drop,
follow the Morning Edition on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you
listen to podcasts. Our newsrooms are powered by subscriptions, so
(18:46):
to support independent journalism, visit The Age or smh.com.au. Subscribe
and to stay up to date, sign up to our
Morningedition newsletter to receive a summary of the day's most
important news in your inbox every morning. Links are in
the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris. Thanks for listening.
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