February 5, 2025 • 54 mins
On June 23rd, 2000, just after midnight, Robert Paul Long set fire to the Childers Palace Backpackers Hostel in Queensland. He had recently been evicted for not paying his rent and in his anger, he sparked a tragedy.
There were 84 travellers in the hostel that night. They woke up gasping for air and choking on smoke in the pitch-black darkness.
15 people lost their lives, making this one of the deadliest fires in Australian history. Our guest, journalist Paul Cochrane, interviewed the survivors. In many instances, he was the only interview they gave.
Listen to Paul’s podcast Childers here.
Email us at truecrime@mamamia.com.au or send us a voice note to give us feedback or suggest a case for the podcast.
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Guests: Paul Cochrane
Host: Gemma Bath
Producer: Tahli Blackman
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
You're listening to a Mamma Mia podcast. Mamma Mia acknowledges
the traditional owners of land and waters. This podcast was
recorded on It's After Midnight on June twenty third, two
thousand and twenty, four year old Mnushka Tavan awakens to
a loud crashing and crackling noise, jumping off her bunk
(00:33):
in the Childer's Palace backpacks hostel in Queensland. She's beaten
to the door by her roommate. As he opens it,
a thick, tar like wall of black smoke enters the room.
Suddenly there's no light, no oxygen, just darkness. Mnushka grabs
a shirt and covers her nose and mouth, already feeling
(00:54):
her sense of hearing and being awake fading, but a clear,
calm voice tells her to head for the balcony. As
she scrambles to follow the voice, someone trips over her,
but she makes it. Suddenly she's in the open air
she can breathe. Behind her, there's an explosion. Minushka is
(01:16):
the last one out of the fire that will claim
the lives of fifteen people, mostly young backpackers, a fire
that will become one of the worst in Australia's history.
I'm Jemma Bath and this is True Crime Conversations a
(01:38):
Muma mea podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by
speaking to the people who know the most about them.
Childers is a rural town in the Bunderberg region of Queensland.
It's near the coast, about forty five minutes drive from
Harvey Bay and a few hours north of Brisbane. It's
a beautiful town set amongst the rolling hills, and it's
(01:58):
often a pitstop for many travelers and backpackers heading to
the area to fruit pick and make some extra cash.
The Children's Palace Backpackers hostel was Heritage listed, a lovely
old building in the center of town and a popular
place for those passing through. Nine women and six men
fifteen people in total, were lost in the fire that
(02:20):
engulfed the building in two thousand. There were sixty nine survivors.
Twenty four years have now passed since that devastating blaze,
and we are revisiting the crime and the aftermath with
journalist Paul Cochrane, whose podcast Childers re examined the evidence
and gave a voice to the many survivors who lived
through the terror of that night, Paul joins us. Now, Paul,
(02:46):
tell me a bit more about Childers. Back in the day.
It was quite a prosperous little town, right and lots
of backpackers coming through.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, it was. It was a real hub for it.
And under the Australian visa system, for a tourist to
be able to come and work in Australia, there's that
mandatory compulsory you have to go and do your time
on a farm, that type of thing. So it hacking. Yeah,
I mean it had a real vibrancy around different nationalities.
A lot of Europeans coming through, a lot of bricks
coming through and living and working in the town. And
(03:15):
you know, when they weren't on a farm, they were
hanging out together and probably propping up a bar and
sitting on a stool and you know, putting the few
pennies that they'd probably spared for some nighttime nourishment that
they didn't want to allocate to their backpacking adventures, you know,
putting it back into the local town. So I really
did hum. There was a real pulse to it and
the backpackers were central to that.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
So most of them were kind of staying there. It
was a real kind of hub for young people.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah. Well, the Palace Backpacker Hostel was a working hostel,
so as opposed to other hostiles, we you just go
and use it as a residential area. I guess the
appeal of the Palace Backpackers Hostel was you go there
with a guarantee of having work, so people could turn
up at midnight one night and by six o'clock in
the morning they're on a bus getting taken to a
zucchini farm or something like that, you know. So that's
(04:02):
what the appeal of Childers was, and that really did
help sustain the local economy in a big way, and
it kept the farming side of things moving. You know,
they went left on it with a labor shortage and
so everyone win out of the equation. Some of the
backpackers might tell you that, you know, the idea of
picking fruit and vegetables, you know, all day and the
hot coins and sun wasn't necessarily their dream, but it
(04:24):
was a necessary evil under the visa requirements at the time.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
And it sounds like they weren't just staying there for
one or two nights like a tourist. They were staying
there for like long periods of time. So that's a
real camaraderie that you start to kind of foster.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah, we'll talk to anyone who was there at the
time and they'll tell you that how much they fell
in love with the town. And in the wake of tragedy,
that town came together and threw its arms around people
at their time of need. But that really was happening
before you know, any sort of dire circumstances hit that town.
They will welcome, they are embraced, and they were included
(04:56):
as part of that community because people saw them as
you know, helping out keep the local economy going. But
they loved the idea that these different nationalities, different accents
were walking up and down the street. And the main
street of Children is the national highway. It's the Grease Highway.
So if you you know, going from you know at
the time, so like a Bunderberg through to Marabaro, like
(05:19):
keep going south to Gimpi, you'll go to the Sunshine
Coast and on to Brisbane where you pass through Childers.
You don't just pass through Childers, you pass through the
main street. So it was a place where people stopped
to grab lunch. You know, maybe just have a coffee,
put some fuel in their car. So there was a
lot of I guess people just stopping in checking it out,
and that still happens to this day. There's a far
(05:39):
more of an intrigue around the town, you know, in
the wake of tragedy, but that's been happening for years
and years because of the nature of the way the
town's built.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Can you help us visualize the hostel at the time,
it was a two story wooden structure.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Right, Yeah, imagine a big, typical Queensland you know, a beautiful,
big sort of heritage listed verandah on it at the front.
I guess it had the beautiful balustrade that I guess
if you closed your eyes and said, what is a
typical heritage listed owns Land a home look like, except
much bigger. Yeah, that's kind of what the Palace Hostel
looked like it and a lot of the facade of
(06:17):
the building has been retained in the wake of the
of the event itself because it's such a striking, beautiful
building and had a history to it as well. It
had previously been been a pub, but it had been
I guess the local ballroom for some big events, you know,
going back early in the in the century, So yeah,
(06:38):
I mean it. It was a pride of place building
for the town that people looked at him and admired.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
How did this story start for you because you were
only a few weeks into a new job as a
journalist when the fire unfolded.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Well, I was the fifth day of my fifth week
into a career in television, coming out of two years
of working on the local newspaper where I was covering
primarily local sport. I do a little preview of the
cricket match that might be going to be happening, and
I was part of it. So town, where were you?
You might be the athlete and I reporter at the
(07:15):
same time, So you know, I was covering everything from
greyhound racing, the lawn bowls to go karts to a
bit of cricket rugby league in the in the winter.
And I did that for two years on the local paper.
But an approach was made by Channel seven, the local
news there at the time, and said, look there's a
job going he interested. I initially said no, I didn't.
(07:36):
Thought it was sort of not something that was ever
really anything I wanted to do or I was probably
a little bit out of my depth, and then just
had a moment where I thought, you know what, let's
give it a go. And suddenly I was fifth day
and my fifth week later, I was taking carriage of
the biggest story in the world on my own there
for a little bit emotionally.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Has this story been one that's really stayed with you?
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Yeah, it has, and it's probably the reason why I
took on the podcast project. I remember, you know, Channel
seven were very good in offering counseling to anyone who
was involved in and around it at the time, and look,
I can't speak for others, but I certainly didn't take
up the offer. You know, I was adamant that I
was fine, you know. I guess probably in the back
of my mind for a long time I thought there's
(08:19):
probably unfinished business insomuch as being able to lay it
out on a table and talk about it. Now, I
think there's different ways you can go about doing that.
Do you talk to other people? And I probably chose to,
I guess, turn it into a project where I talked
about it in a far more open forum. But being
able to bounce my experiences and understand the experiences of
(08:41):
other people that were part of it was I guess
one of the benefits that a podcast gives you, so
bet I was able to unwrap other people's stories, but
at the same time get a better understanding of what
they went through. And here's a lot of them for
the first time. And I think they probably and some
(09:01):
of the feedback I've had is they probably felt a
sense of security and calm and being able to talk
to me about it because they knew that I had
a little bit of an understanding of what they went
through as well. So I think it was therapeutic on
a whole range of fronts for a lot of people.
And if I look back on it, yeah, I probably
did need to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Just twenty years later. Let's go back to the events
of the night. Where in the hostel did the fire
start and how quickly did it engulf that building?
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Yeah, it happened downstairs, So there's two levels to the
backpack of hostel. And I guess the court trial and
the investigation into unraveled that there were several trigger points
that started that fire by the perpetrator and that happened downstairs.
So what you're really dealing with is a fire that
escalated and rose in height and depth and heat very
(09:55):
quickly to hit the and as we said, we're talking
about two levels, so it hit the floorboards that were
above it where people are residing, people are sleeping, and
so essentially they were sleeping on a hot plate and
hot plate. We know how that how that's going to
work out. I wouldn't hot plate. It's going to perish
very quickly. Yep. And in a backpack of hostel environment,
(10:19):
we can you know, easily assume some of the things
that would have been in there. You know, food stuffs,
you know, different things that people have when they're when
they're living, probably alcohol, yeah, I mean, and you know,
even just furniture and you know different things that make furniture.
You throw that all into one big toxic chemical mix,
and the fumes and the smoke that it generates, it
(10:42):
doesn't all burn the same way, so everything's sort of
melting into this I guess, you know, big barbecue for
one of a horrible term that that may be. That's
lifting very quickly and people are and there's a there's
a wedge of a floorboard between that fire and those people.
So you know, the clock was definitely ticking very quickly,
(11:03):
you know, very quickly and rapidly on those people.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
How many people were staying that night and what did
they wake up to?
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Yeah, well the best count is eighty four people, so
that's a lot. There's a lot of people, you know,
in a fairly congested environment with you know, different rooms.
So now this fire happened just after midnight, you know,
and bearing in mind that they're backpackers, they've been out
for a few beers. Some of them had some birthday celebrations.
(11:31):
There was some people who were leaving the next day,
so there was farewell celebrations that night before. So they've
you know, they've got a few beers in there barely
we all know how well we'd probably sleep straight after
that and you know, lights out pretty quick. So that
fire happens just after midnight. A lot of them haven't
been asleep for very long, and you're usually in.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Your deepest sleep when you first go to.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Sleep, exactly. So in a town like Childre's on the
main street, there's some other pubs around, there's you know,
different nationalities. There's a few beers in this in the belly.
They hear what they think is a fight going on,
so people have woken up. They think it's a fight.
They think maybe some plates are getting smashed, or you know,
(12:11):
there's just or things are happening out on the street.
You know, this is on the National Highway. There's the
opportunity for foot traffic here there and everywhere around that hostel.
So in the wade carp it doesn't immediately occur to
them that hey, there's a fire. They just hear a
lot of noise, but then it escalates really quickly, and
then and then they start to obviously smell it.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Because there's no sirens or anything.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Is there. No, No, there's not. And I guess one
of the key things and the key criticisms of the
whole of the building at the time and everything was
there were no fire alarms and no exits, no illuminated
exit signs. So if you sort of think about that scenario,
the room's dark, so the fires cut the power so
(12:57):
it's gone, so it's pitch black. They can't breathe, they
can't see, they got no direction, so there's no illuminated
So what we take for granted now is a smoke
larm above our head and an illuminated exit signed the
green exit sign. Mann yeah, that gives you a sense
of direction that says, well, the doorways that way or
(13:19):
that way. Well, neither of those two things were there,
so no alarm to wake the mark to say and
the alarm is I guess a way of saying a
wake up. But b that means fire.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
So they woke up kind of a bit, so they
didn't get.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
That sensory awareness that A, it's fire will be Some
of them didn't even we don't know. Some of them
may not have even woken up. So and then but
then worse than that, he's not knowing how to get out.
So that so for some of the people who well
probably for everyone in that building, if you made it
(13:57):
or you didn't, you had to pick a path game.
You chose right or left.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
It was that brutal yep.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
And they don't know which way they're facing that their
orientation is completely gone. It's like they've got a n
fold on and they can't breathe. They take a breath,
they're probably dead from smoke in elation.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Well, let's talk about it through the eyes of one
of the survivors you spoke to. She was one of
those people that knew kind of in the back of
her mind where to go, and that ultimately saved her
life and her roommates perished.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
I guess that's what's really hard to come to terms with,
is that. And I think some of them have got
that survivor's gill where they say, yeah, maybe you know,
I just made a right decision. I mean some of
them were probably a little bit more diligent when they
arrived and thought, Okay, well, I'm in a strange building,
(14:51):
you know, in the rare scenario that something might happen,
where would I get out? How many steps away as
the door if I you know, And and she showed
that due diligence when she arrived, and that probably helped her,
you know. For me like that, that whole conversation is
forever parked in my head, and we've all sat on
(15:14):
a plane and we've all zoned out when the safety
awareness conversation happens, and I do it all the time.
But since I've had that conversation, I always remember that
and think, Okay, I better just be sure in my
head where that exit.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Is, and we should name it. The person we're talking
about is Sarah. She was only seventeen.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Yeah, and that's not unusual to be honest that you know,
the backpackers some of them are on gap years straight
out of school, or they've taken a year off university.
That's the kind of age group that we're talking about.
And in some ways that age group is very relevant
when we start to talk about the perpetrator, you know,
and how that probably discrepancy in age and acceptance and
(16:05):
all those different things all apply. But you know, time
in life, age of seventeen and we've all been there
and yeah, you're over seas or you know, in Sia's instance,
she was Australian, but she was in it just on
a She's a bit of a free spirit herself, and
you know, she's just living your best life, you know,
(16:27):
and trying to get a few bucks in her pocket.
It gets some life experiences, meet some new people, you know,
and hanging out with different nationalities. You know, they're meeting
new people and probably people that you think, how I
really gel with these people and they're going to be
friends of mine that I'm going to hang out with them,
you know, I stay in contact with for the rest
of their life.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
How quickly were the firefighters on the scene and to
set that scene a little bit. We're talking about a
country town, so it's not a huge contingent of fieries.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
No, And I think I think people think that firefighting
by default is fighting fighters, but it's.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Well that goes with the name, but.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
It's actually not. In regional towns, and particularly in a
town like Childers, which is on the National Highway, the
main job that those guys did was probably attending the
car accidents.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Yeah right, extricating people.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
So a car accident happens and they turn up and
make sure that it's safe and clean up the road
and you know, and as you said, probably help someone
out if they're trapped or that type of thing. That
that became probably the bulk of their workload. But they
would do things like going and do checks on the building.
And some of them worked in like a I guess
(17:48):
a part time capacity as a firefighter too, so firefighting
wasn't necessarily their main job. There might be a mechanic.
So one of the firefighters involved had actually been there
in the days leaning up to because he was a mechanic.
He was doing some work on someone's car and he
actually had a had a visual of the building in
the lead up to it. As well, but they were
(18:11):
there relatively quickly. You know, mobile phones weren't really I mean,
we run it. We live a society there where mobile
phones are glued to our hands and the heartbeat of
everything that we do around the intelligence of our life.
But back then we weren't talking about smartphones. So we're
talking about a probably a pager system. And for I
(18:34):
guess any of you listeners who aren't familiar with that,
it's a little it's basically just a little device, little
beep and a little screen, very tiny that might run
almost like the ticker when you're watching the news in
the morning and the news will run along the bottom
of the screen, it would run along the pager with
a little twenty words or at hostel or exactly, and
(18:55):
something as cryptic as that, not a And my understanding
was that the firefighters knew that when that page went off,
then there was a fire, but it certainly didn't understand
the magnitude of it or what they were about to
turn up to. Another thing to take into account on
that child Childre's is a huge sufferer of extreme fog,
(19:17):
right and at that time of year fog really hits
the town. And on June twenty three. There was a
lot of fog. So the firefighters tell the story of
actually knowing there was a fire but driving straight past
the hostel. So in the early stage it because the
station's nearby, he's gone to go to the station. He said,
(19:39):
I drive past the hostel. The fog was that bad.
Actually really didn't understand that. I mean, the fire had
one hundred percent taken into big mass in gold flames
by that stage. But fog played a part that night.
So there was a whole heap of factors that came
into play. But look, they were there relatively relatively quickly,
(20:01):
and certainly quick quick enough.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
By this point when they arrived, a lot of the
survivors had managed to kind of crawl onto roofs or balconies,
and so that was kind of the primary focus, wasn't
it getting everyone down?
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Yeah, it was, And you know, they're trying to get
out as any way they could, And obviously the top
level of the hostel was where people were sleeping or
where they were living. Primarily there was a room downstairs
and that everyone got out of that unscathed, fortunately, but
everyone upstairs had to find a way to get out
anyway they could. So they managed to get out through
(20:36):
an access window and crawl out through the side of
the building. But you know, they were coming out in
clearly people who had been in a fire, covered in
black ash and soot and not really knowing because they
that was the the minute they got out, they were
(20:57):
able to take a gasp of air and breathe, able
to actually see something because I hadn't weren't able to see.
So they've got no idea who's around them. So it's
then coming to terms with, you know, what's just happened.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
When firefighters actually opened the doors and tried to enter
the building. Was there going to be any chance of survivors?
You just spoke about how hot that was.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
I think the firefighters probably didn't know what the first
time they got through that door, what they're about to
sort of face in front of them, And I think
the realization started to kick in the further they got
into it and then could understand the magnitude of the
height of that fire and then get I mean, they
(21:44):
don't have a manifesto of who's in that building or
anything like that, so they're just dealing with what's in
front of them, and they talking to some of the firefighters,
they sort of said, if you didn't get out quickly,
probably weren't getting out. But what was what was really
(22:04):
difficult to hear and and sort of understand was when
they saw the jail bars on some of the rooms.
So one of the rooms have been completely boarded up
with with jail bars on the windows as a security measure,
(22:25):
and that was highly populated. That room. There was nine
people in that room. Some of the firefighters have talked
about seeing bodies in that in that room and they'd
already passed away at that point.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Because that was the room where there was the largest
amount of fatality.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Yeah, And for me, like as a as a journalist
in the local area, when the fire was out and
the brea had been cleared and we're talking about the
second day afterwards, a couple of us were given a
walk through the building with the fire authorities to show
(23:05):
us what had happened. And the image that's still, i
guess is the most stark for me out of the
whole episode of the Childer's Fire is seeing that room
with the bars on it and the windows. We're talking
about jail bars. Therese are metal bars on.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Them even in just normal suburban houses that are on
ground floor. I've seen them around Sydney where we live.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah, Now, under the under some of those windows were
numbers spray painted on the wall in black spray paint.
And the question was asked by someone, what are those numbers,
and they said, that's where we found the bodies. So
that I can't remember the numbers, but it was number
(23:54):
eight and number nine and that type of numbers were
spray painted on the wall and they were right under
the windows. So you can only imagine that those people
were trying to get out, yeah, through those windows. And
that's really difficult to grapple with that these people at
(24:14):
their most delicate moment, we're trying and they won't afforded
that chance for that to succeed. That's really difficult to
grapple with. And that that's probably the image out of
the whole the whole time that I covered that story,
and that probably is front of mine for me, that
that has always sat there, and it's a real it's
(24:36):
a real humbling thing to have witnessed, to have seen,
and then to try and rationalize what must have happened.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Especially so quickly after it happened.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Yeah, And like It's sort of developed from do we
hope everyone's out to something didn't get out? To why
did this happened? To anger? To why have you got
that camera in my face too? Let me alone? You know,
the emotions moved very quickly. And and grief grief. There's
(25:18):
no template for dealing with grief, and you threw it throw.
You know, being so far removed from your family, the
feeling of having nothing must just be horrible. These people
had nothing. I mean some of them was sleeping in
their underwear, so that's all they had was the pair
(25:40):
of undies around their waist. You know, there's a charity
store right next door that opened its doors in the
middle of the night so people could actually get some clothes.
Now people think about Queen's Lane has been warm and
sunny and you know, very comfortable all the time. I
could tell your childers in the middle of the Joune
is bloody cold. It's it's a very cold place. And
(26:03):
you know, so these people had nothing, They had nothing
to identify themselves.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Well, everything would have been lost.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah, like how do you prove who you are?
Speaker 1 (26:10):
A fifteen lives were lost in the fire and looking
at the list of the names of the people who died.
Fourteen were aged between eighteen and thirty one, with one
forty eight year old. We've got all kinds of nationalities
which you've mentioned. Seven from England, two from Australia, two
from Holland, one from Ireland, Morocco, Japan and South Korea.
(26:33):
So this is a fire that wouldn't have just attracted
headlines in Australia. This is worldwide news. This is worldwide grief.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Yea, it is. It was headlines all over the world.
It was the biggest story in the world there, you know.
And for me I was doing radio crosses in the
in the sort of mid morning. I remember the day
after the fire from a public telephone box across the road,
feeding coins into an old, old school telstra phone with
a queue of backpackers standing there wanting to be able
(27:03):
to ring home, but they had nothing. I remember emptying
out whatever coins I had in my pocket and handing
it to one of the British guys saying he made
ring home. You know. I guess the silver lining of
not being in a mobile phone erar is people actually
knew had numbers stored away in their head.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
True, I wouldn't know a number to save my life.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Now. Yeah, but even then, talking to some of the
families who had children who survived that fire, the relief
of getting that phone call, you know, when they you know,
for given the time zone, some of this, they were
waking up to news. But they're building a fire hours
earlier at a place where they knew that their child
(27:40):
was or for some of them not knowing is my
I know my kids in Australia somewhere, they're working on
a farm somewhere. Where are they today? You know, is
that the one they're at? And then you know, consulate
officials and police even not actually knowing. We talked about
(28:00):
eighty four people being in that building, but well who
was in the building. Everything's been burnt. All the records
of who was actually there has been burnt. Who was there, so.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Even identifying the bodies that were found that would have
taken a while too.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Write Yeah, it did. I mean that talking to some
of the survivors, you know that what they what they
did was they quickly there's a pub across the road,
which you know was a traditional nightly sort of communal
hangout for them anyway, So that opened up in the
middle of the night survivors was sort of there, and
(28:37):
you know, they were given a bit of a debrief
on what firefighter and police authorities knew had happened at
the time, and quickly among themselves they were drawing up
a list of who was in the building. So it
might be I know, Jenma was in there, and you know, Jemmy,
you knew that so and so was in there, And
quickly they started to piece together a bit of a
(28:57):
list and that's how it started, you know, in a
very very sort of raw way of building a manifest
of who was in that building.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
One of the positive sides, and there aren't many of
this story, is the way the community rallied around those survivors.
We talk about Australian community spirit. I don't think it
gets much more amazing than what they did.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Yeah, and you know I talked about that community giving
those survivors a communal hug at the time and to
this day they still continue to do that.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
So there's still in touch.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Yeah, there's people who were intimately involved in the I guess,
for want of a better term, the recovery process for
the community you know that still live and reside there.
It still sits with them, and you know it's something
that has become a very pivotal moment in their life.
Who simply opened their doors and said, you know, come
(29:58):
and have a have a sleep, have a shower, clean
your teeth, you know, basic little things that we take
for granted. And you know when those relationships built at
the time, and being able to call upon basic resources
like a box of fruit and food, and the people
did not have a scent to their name, nothing to
(30:21):
identify themselves, no clays, so that community to be able
to wrap its arms around all those survivors, and not
just survivors, but be a point of calm and a
sense of security for family too. You know, thousands of
killometers away in another country.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
And mums and dads it sounds like they were exactly.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
And dealing with the torment of their children being involved
in something that they're only seeing on the news. And
you know, I'm not going to sit here and pretend
that the news would have been giving a really accurate snapshot.
You know that it people can perceive what they see
(31:08):
and hear on the news or on the radio or
in newspapers in many different ways. And you know how
that story is curated. People will probably jump to the
worst conclusion on what they're seeing. So they're waking up
to breakfast TV in London and sort of seeing it
and they're going to think the worst, you know, So
(31:30):
it must have been horrible for those the people who
felt so helpless to be so far away not being
able to help.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
You're listening to true crime Conversations with me Jemma Bath.
I'm speaking with the host of the Childer's podcast, Paul Cochrane.
After the break we talk about the dramatic manhunt that
ended in the arrest of the man responsible for the
hostel fire. How quickly was the fire being treated as
suspicious straight away?
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Right, Yeah, And I'll probably only realized that when I
look back on the event of how quickly that that
I was been talked about a suspicious I know among
the among the media contingent. It was probably by nighttime
of the first night or into the second day where
it started to be speculated that this might have been arson,
(32:25):
and that was jarring for the local community. Actually, there
was a lot of people took massive offense really to
the notion that it would be arson, because that wouldn't
happen in our community. That type of that type of
you know, feeling of the notion that you might be
unsafe and Shulders was jarring and offensive to some of
(32:49):
the long term residents there. But when I've gone back
and looked at it, it's very obvious that that initial
meeting of people of the survivors in the pub across
the road straight away that was talked that we.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
Think we know who did this, So they were already
bringing up the name Robert long Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
And police have already and police then have confirmed that
in conversations were saying, yep, this is a guy that
we're that was already put on our radar very quickly.
At a media conference of the police, he was identified
as a suspect, as someone that they wanted to speak to.
(33:30):
Suspects probably not the word in the first twenty four hours,
but certainly someone we want to speak to. The fact
that he disappeared and was out of mind, out of sight,
probably even raised further suspicions around Robert long Well.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
He'd been staying at the hostel as well. Who was
he what was he doing there?
Speaker 2 (33:49):
He was a very different individual. We talked about the
age demographic of some of those backpackers been sort of
in that seventeen to early twenties kind of kind of
bracket of people. Robert Long didn't fit into that category.
He was late thirties. He was someone that simply did
(34:10):
not fit in with the core of the backpack of
hostel residency among that group. Yet everything I hear almost
lends itself to he wanted to fit in. He wanted
to be part of it. But he was abrasive. He
was abusive to them. He would and I think some
(34:33):
of that probably stems out of his inability to be
able to crack that veneer of being able to fit
in with everyone. He had form. He had criminal form
as well, so he had a history of basically setting
fires to small fires to things. He had form in
(34:54):
domestic violence. Police were able to quickly piece together I
guess a mud map of who Robert Long was. But
he was a disgruntle an individual where stories would were
he would make up tall tails and sit around the
bar and sort of put the hard word on people
for money. He's saying that, you know, he had a
(35:16):
child going through cancer and needed and they were all myths.
There was no truth at all to any of these stories.
But he was trying to I guess emotionally blackmail people
and get on side with people and trying to get
money out of them. He owed a lot of money
to the managers of the hostel.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Well, he'd been evicted a few days before.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
He'd been evicted because he owed money, and there was
a story of him being chased down the main street
of the town and yet somehow he kept managing to
find his way back in and around the premises.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Well, he very quickly became Australia's most wanted man for
about a week there. What happened? How did that hunt
come to an end? Because that was also incredibly dramatic, Well,
it was.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Dramatic even on the man hunt to be honest, because
and as a journalist sort of covering the story, there
were so many layers to the story. So you're dealing
with a victim things and you know, you basically a
crime and then you've got this manhunt going on in small,
little regional towns in Queensland where people don't know what
(36:21):
they're dealing with. So that you've got a man described
as dangerous on the run in a lot of I
guess big properties. So we're talking it's a farming community.
But it's but they're big open properties. You know, it's
not unusual for people to not lock their lock their
doors because they just know everyone around their neighborhood. And
(36:44):
we're not talking about gated communities, so it's pretty easy
to get in and out of different backyards.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Mean people are very isolated too.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
Yeah, and yet suddenly there's a fear factor kicked in
so well, people felt really unsafe in their own little
town and their own and their own home. And so
you had people locking up their doors and not leaving
their house and looking over their shoulder and wondering who
(37:13):
was so Robert long was was eventually seen look somewhere
around forty five minutes away in a small small town
called how It Now by foot that you know, that
would have taken him a little bit of time to
walk there, if you think about forty five minutes high
speed driving on a national highway. So that's a that's
(37:36):
a fair walk from it was three or four days
later when that siding took place. There is some suggestion
he might have jumped on some cane trains to get
himself to some of those areas. So he was spotted
by someone in the special Emergency Response Team commonly one
(37:57):
assert were in and around the area, so some offices
were deployed to that area and a struggle unfolded Robert Long.
They were they had police dogs with them, so Rober
Long he had a knife with him and he did
stab the poor of the.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Dog, which was another headline that took its own.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
Yeah, the British media really got around that. Yeah, the
hero police dog and that. And then he was shot
in the shoulder. Now Long believed that he was about
to die and a police officer and this is on
the back of a wrestling match I guess with one
of the police officers, and he actually the knife went
(38:42):
through his jaw and he lost some teeth in that
struggle with this cert police officer who had the dog.
So rob A. Long was shot in the shoulder and
he believed he was dying and as an officer stood
over him, he said, I'm dying anyway, I lit that fire.
The officer at the time did not have any did
(39:03):
not have a notebook with him, and all he had
was a ten dollar note and he wrote that down
on that ten dollar note. It was admitted as evidence.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
It gets more Australian than that and a ten dollar note.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
I don't know that's the most famous ten dollar note
in Australia.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Probably a confession on a ten dollar note.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Yeah, so I believe that coins and police still have
it in a ziploc bag as a commemorative piece, so
somewhere it should end up in a museum.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Long's trial didn't start for another two years after he
was apprehended. He pled not guilty. Firstly, can you walk
us through the charges because he wasn't charged with all
fifteen deaths.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Yeah, it was a really unusual charge system that was
put in place. So obviously fifteen people died in the fire,
but he was only charged with the deaths of Kelly
and Stacy Slark to West Australian twins. I guess that
did not sit well with the families of Obviously the
thirteen are the victims of the fire. But the rationale
(40:07):
from the prosecutor on that if anything was to go
wrong in the trial, it gave them room for appeal
and they had thirteen other people that they could lay
the charges against. Now, under the judicial system at the time,
(40:28):
two victims or fifteen victims, the penalty would be the same.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
That's a joke.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
It was a joke, and it has been There has
been some amendments made to that system since, but at
the time two or fifteen made no difference to the outcomes,
so that the decision was made in order to, I guess,
give the prosecution process room to progress should anything go
(40:56):
wrong through the initial trial, that there were thirteen other
victims that this crime could be labeled against. Now, the
conversations I had with the prosecutor through the podcast said
the fact that Kelly and Stacey Slack with twins did
(41:17):
assist in that process because with two victims with similar DNA,
then that actually was beneficial to that process of being
able to pin two deaths on him.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
It's understandable when you understand the judicial side of things,
but for the families, that's really heartbreaking.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
Yeah, and it's still heartbreaking for them. I think they
understand it, but still don't necessarily agree with it. It's
still very difficult, and I can only put my own
parent hat on and think that must be very tough
for them. Yeah, very difficult for a parent to think
that that man there's never been charged with the murder
(42:01):
of their child and yet they died.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Did the prosecution have a hard job ahead of them
because they had a confession, as we mentioned on a
ten dollar night.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
Yeah, I mean they've still got to be able to
prove that it was arson, right, it could to be
able to prove it was arson, because if it's not arson,
it could just be an accidental fire in an old building. Yeah,
So that process in itself was really fascinating and how
(42:32):
they went about doing that. What happened was this was
I guess, pre significant digital technology in two thousand, but
a lot of imagery had been taken and it was
a fire expert that was known to coins and police
was based in California, So that the imagery and the
I guess, the measurements and the data and you know,
(42:53):
all that sort of accumulation of evidence that had been
compiled in the building was sent to this gentleman in California,
and from his loungdream he managed to prove that it
was arson. Now not just arson, but that there were
to pull trigger points. Now the multiple trigger points is
actually important because it infers the intent of damage, and
(43:19):
then he kept doing mass damage. Yeah. What was able
to be proved by based on the heat, the height,
and the velocity of that fire was that it had
to have been lit at least twice, because Robert Long
was seen in the vicinity of a fire in a
bin by one of the other survivors of the fire
(43:42):
moments before what they believe was a second fire was lit,
which ultimately caused the deaths of fifteen people. So it's
understood that a fire was lit in a bin. And
if you think about a couch where that I guess
the seat part of the couch is in multiple pieces,
(44:04):
and there's a cushion. He's taken the cushion from the
couch and he's put it. He's created a bridge between
the bin and the arm of the couch to create
a path or a bonfire type type scenario. And it's
been lip multiple times in several points in order to
create that fire that then takes off. And that I
(44:28):
found that fascinating that they were able to do that
from California and the reason he was chosen, this man
out of California was in the nineteen seventies in California,
a whole heap of residential buildings were I guess confined
to science experiments where they said, well, we need to
(44:48):
get rid of these buildings. They're no good for anything.
But instead of just getting rid of them, they almost
handed them over for experimentation, and the fire departments would
go on create fires in them and understand the behavior
patterns of fires. And out of that process, this man
was part of that. He's become a global expert in
(45:11):
being able to prove.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
How amazing is that?
Speaker 2 (45:12):
Listen? Yeah? Yeah, And this was done and this was
done from his lounge room in California. He never attended
the building.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
After nineteen days, he was found guilty and sentenced to
life in prison with a non parole period of twenty years.
Were the victims and survivors happy with that twenty years
behind bars?
Speaker 2 (45:33):
No, I think they would have preferred that that was
significantly longer than the twenty years, particularly when you take
into account, you know, the victim impact statements that were
tabled and the fact that there were fifteen deaths, not
just two. Unfortunately at the time under the Queensland law
at the time, twenty years was the maximum he could get.
My understanding is that's now been extended to twenty five
(45:55):
years before he's considered for parole. Long was up for
parole in twenty twenty, he made an application for parole and.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
That was denied, so he's still in prison.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
He's still in prison. Chances of getting out of prison
have probably taken a slide on the back of a
I guess a grand standing event he did where he
ended up on the roof of the prison at Way
Colin in Queensland last year. I believe it was That'll
do It which made the news. So his chances probably
(46:29):
took a noose dive of that. So he's not close
to getting getting parole. And I think anyone in and
around that fire, and particularly the families of the victims,
would like it to see that that remains forever and
ever a day.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
You said that the hostel has been restored, so is
it a hostel anymore? Is it something else?
Speaker 2 (46:55):
So the area where the fire took place is now
a memorial to the victims and it's a beautiful memorial
that a lot of time and effort was put into
the best way to represent the victims of the fire.
It sits in the Childre's Art gallery and it's a
real center piece of the town. There's a beautiful I
(47:16):
guess guest book where people write their comments whenever they
go in anytime I'm in town, I was going and
just take a moment to sit and reflect. And it's
a giant glass wall with a light reflection box of
photos of the lives of the fifteen victims that have
been laid out on the glass wall. If you had
to look at the aerial view of the main street
of Childers, the pattern of how they've been sent out
(47:39):
actually is the same pattern and the line in the glass.
So it's really classy. It stood the test of time,
that memorial, and it continues to get significant foot traffic
on a daily basis of people going in and seeing it,
and to a large extent was part of the reason
(48:00):
why I wanted to take on the podcast as well,
to make sure that the memory of what happened in Childers,
but particularly the memory of those fifteen victims, was you'd
never forgotten.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
You've obviously spoken to these survivors twenty years after the fact.
What if their lives look like, how have they grappled
with what happened to them?
Speaker 2 (48:19):
Look a lot of PTSD really among them. I don't
think that any of them would stand there and tell
you that their lives are ever the same after the fire.
And I guess that's one of the other really disappointing
elements of the sentencing of Robert Long is that his sentence,
(48:39):
his sentence was applied to the deaths of two people,
not fifteen people, not the thirteen others, But not one
element of his sentence was applied to the sixty nine survivors. True,
his lives have been torn upside down on the back
of that, not one element was referred to that community.
That a lot of people in that community, you still
(49:01):
have sleepless nights of what they heard and saw and
dealt with in the aftermath of that fire as well.
So it's very punishment for the carnage that was caused. Really,
look that they're a really resilient group of people, you know.
And one of the things that came out of doing
(49:23):
the podcast was that some of them spoke about it
for the first time and for many the only time,
you know, and we're prepared to let their guard down
to tell their story what they went through and then
felt better about it, which was probably the most rewarding
(49:45):
thing for me as the person who sort of unpacked
that a little bit for them.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
Just shows the ripple effect. It's not just the survive.
It's their families.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
It's yeah, you know, it's so sad, you know. And
then I spoke to David O'Keefe in the podcaster, Irish gentleman,
you know, and his sister died in the fire. And
they've got another sister as well, and she was in
Bali when the bombings happened, and you know, their mum
(50:17):
saying not again, you know. Fortunately it was just she
couldn't reach her in the middle of the night on
the phone. But she's straight away taken back to Childers
not again, you know, Like it's just I think the
words you use there, the ripple effect a just you know,
so profound. And then there's there's stories like a Mulay,
(50:43):
the Moroccan gentleman who died. No one knew who he was,
they knew his name, they didn't know what he looked like.
So you know, we talk about the memorial there that's
been it's been created, and there's a there's a beautiful
mural that was done by really talented Sydney painter just
only a pilatus and she was able to she sort
(51:04):
of put this mural together of fifteen people in a
field where they would have been working and you know,
depicted as they're all together having a morning tea break,
the type of thing, and Mulays depicted as this sort
of gentleman in the background based on some of the
things that people had talked about, but no one really
knew what he looked like because no one actually had
(51:25):
any photos of him or anything like that. So the
story goes that a couple of years had gone by
after the memorial was opened, and this lady came in
and she said, that gentleman there, where's his photos? And
they said, well, she didn't know who he was, but
we weren't able to track anything down. And he'd been
(51:46):
depicted on I'm San de Moura had previously been to Morocco,
and so he just put in what he you know,
some landscape photos of Morocco and things that he thought
that might have been part of Mulay's life. And this
lady said, well, I'm actually connected to his family and
we're going to get some photos. They're able to correct
it and fix it up, so, you know, and pay
(52:09):
homage to him a bit as well in that. But yeah,
I mean, there's just everyone's got a story, and that's
what I tried to try to be able to pay
homage to those fifteen victims a little bit through there.
You know, their story that they never got a chance
to be able to tell and live out a full
life like we all tape for granted, Has it been
(52:29):
healing for you?
Speaker 1 (52:30):
You're a twenty four year old journo, Yeah, starting a
new job. It's a big thing to deal with.
Speaker 2 (52:35):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, look in a way, look, it's
a project I'm insanely proud of. It took nine months
to do, and I was in no hurry to get
it finished. You know, I wanted it. I wanted it
to sort of be in circulation around the time of
the twentieth anniversary of the fire, and you know, and
that was achieved. But yeah, I mean there is no
(52:56):
doubt that it was. You know, it was profoundly cathartic
for me to be able to dig a little bit
deeper into it, and you know, living experience, I guess
was really important to be able to almost do it properly.
If that, if that's a way of looking at it.
You know, twenty years on, I got a lot out
of it, and I think the thing I'm most proud
(53:20):
of is hearing some of the people who lent their
voices and their stories to it saying the same thing,
and that is the most beautiful thing out of all
of it, I think. You know, as a as a
media professional, we all like to think that no, no,
I'm the good guy. You know, I'm the journey, that
I don't do anything. But the perception outside of our
(53:41):
bubble is that we're all going to stitch someone up.
And that's not true, but that's the perception. And I
think since I've stepped away from mainstream media, I've understood
that a lot better as well. That everyone thinks the
journal is the used car salesman who's going to turn
them over.
Speaker 1 (53:59):
There was enough bad eggs out there to make us
look a bit.
Speaker 2 (54:03):
Yeah, and we but every one of us will be
in denial when you're in the bubble, be in the journey.
So then put yourself in the shoes of the person
that you're trying to tell the most pivotal moment of
the most heart wrenching moment of their life. You know,
the most extreme grief and tragedy they'll ever encounter, and
you know touch Wooden will never happened to them again.
(54:26):
Trusting someone with that story is to me, that was
the most rewarding out of all of it, that they
trusted me.
Speaker 1 (54:34):
Thanks to Paul for helping us to tell this story.
True Crime Conversations is a Muma mea podcast hosted and
produced by me, Jemma Bath and Tarlie Blackman, with audio
design by Jacob Brown. Thanks so much for listening. I'll
be back next week with another True Crime Conversation
You're listening to a Mamma Mia podcast. Mamma Mia acknowledges
the traditional owners of land and waters. This podcast was
recorded on It's After Midnight on June twenty third, two
thousand and twenty, four year old Mnushka Tavan awakens to
a loud crashing and crackling noise, jumping off her bunk
(00:33):
in the Childer's Palace backpacks hostel in Queensland. She's beaten
to the door by her roommate. As he opens it,
a thick, tar like wall of black smoke enters the room.
Suddenly there's no light, no oxygen, just darkness. Mnushka grabs
a shirt and covers her nose and mouth, already feeling
(00:54):
her sense of hearing and being awake fading, but a clear,
calm voice tells her to head for the balcony. As
she scrambles to follow the voice, someone trips over her,
but she makes it. Suddenly she's in the open air
she can breathe. Behind her, there's an explosion. Minushka is
(01:16):
the last one out of the fire that will claim
the lives of fifteen people, mostly young backpackers, a fire
that will become one of the worst in Australia's history.
I'm Jemma Bath and this is True Crime Conversations a
(01:38):
Muma mea podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by
speaking to the people who know the most about them.
Childers is a rural town in the Bunderberg region of Queensland.
It's near the coast, about forty five minutes drive from
Harvey Bay and a few hours north of Brisbane. It's
a beautiful town set amongst the rolling hills, and it's
(01:58):
often a pitstop for many travelers and backpackers heading to
the area to fruit pick and make some extra cash.
The Children's Palace Backpackers hostel was Heritage listed, a lovely
old building in the center of town and a popular
place for those passing through. Nine women and six men
fifteen people in total, were lost in the fire that
(02:20):
engulfed the building in two thousand. There were sixty nine survivors.
Twenty four years have now passed since that devastating blaze,
and we are revisiting the crime and the aftermath with
journalist Paul Cochrane, whose podcast Childers re examined the evidence
and gave a voice to the many survivors who lived
through the terror of that night, Paul joins us. Now, Paul,
(02:46):
tell me a bit more about Childers. Back in the day.
It was quite a prosperous little town, right and lots
of backpackers coming through.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, it was. It was a real hub for it.
And under the Australian visa system, for a tourist to
be able to come and work in Australia, there's that
mandatory compulsory you have to go and do your time
on a farm, that type of thing. So it hacking. Yeah,
I mean it had a real vibrancy around different nationalities.
A lot of Europeans coming through, a lot of bricks
coming through and living and working in the town. And
(03:15):
you know, when they weren't on a farm, they were
hanging out together and probably propping up a bar and
sitting on a stool and you know, putting the few
pennies that they'd probably spared for some nighttime nourishment that
they didn't want to allocate to their backpacking adventures, you know,
putting it back into the local town. So I really
did hum. There was a real pulse to it and
the backpackers were central to that.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
So most of them were kind of staying there. It
was a real kind of hub for young people.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah. Well, the Palace Backpacker Hostel was a working hostel,
so as opposed to other hostiles, we you just go
and use it as a residential area. I guess the
appeal of the Palace Backpackers Hostel was you go there
with a guarantee of having work, so people could turn
up at midnight one night and by six o'clock in
the morning they're on a bus getting taken to a
zucchini farm or something like that, you know. So that's
(04:02):
what the appeal of Childers was, and that really did
help sustain the local economy in a big way, and
it kept the farming side of things moving. You know,
they went left on it with a labor shortage and
so everyone win out of the equation. Some of the
backpackers might tell you that, you know, the idea of
picking fruit and vegetables, you know, all day and the
hot coins and sun wasn't necessarily their dream, but it
(04:24):
was a necessary evil under the visa requirements at the time.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
And it sounds like they weren't just staying there for
one or two nights like a tourist. They were staying
there for like long periods of time. So that's a
real camaraderie that you start to kind of foster.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah, we'll talk to anyone who was there at the
time and they'll tell you that how much they fell
in love with the town. And in the wake of tragedy,
that town came together and threw its arms around people
at their time of need. But that really was happening
before you know, any sort of dire circumstances hit that town.
They will welcome, they are embraced, and they were included
(04:56):
as part of that community because people saw them as
you know, helping out keep the local economy going. But
they loved the idea that these different nationalities, different accents
were walking up and down the street. And the main
street of Children is the national highway. It's the Grease Highway.
So if you you know, going from you know at
the time, so like a Bunderberg through to Marabaro, like
(05:19):
keep going south to Gimpi, you'll go to the Sunshine
Coast and on to Brisbane where you pass through Childers.
You don't just pass through Childers, you pass through the
main street. So it was a place where people stopped
to grab lunch. You know, maybe just have a coffee,
put some fuel in their car. So there was a
lot of I guess people just stopping in checking it out,
and that still happens to this day. There's a far
(05:39):
more of an intrigue around the town, you know, in
the wake of tragedy, but that's been happening for years
and years because of the nature of the way the
town's built.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Can you help us visualize the hostel at the time,
it was a two story wooden structure.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Right, Yeah, imagine a big, typical Queensland you know, a beautiful,
big sort of heritage listed verandah on it at the front.
I guess it had the beautiful balustrade that I guess
if you closed your eyes and said, what is a
typical heritage listed owns Land a home look like, except
much bigger. Yeah, that's kind of what the Palace Hostel
looked like it and a lot of the facade of
(06:17):
the building has been retained in the wake of the
of the event itself because it's such a striking, beautiful
building and had a history to it as well. It
had previously been been a pub, but it had been
I guess the local ballroom for some big events, you know,
going back early in the in the century, So yeah,
(06:38):
I mean it. It was a pride of place building
for the town that people looked at him and admired.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
How did this story start for you because you were
only a few weeks into a new job as a
journalist when the fire unfolded.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Well, I was the fifth day of my fifth week
into a career in television, coming out of two years
of working on the local newspaper where I was covering
primarily local sport. I do a little preview of the
cricket match that might be going to be happening, and
I was part of it. So town, where were you?
You might be the athlete and I reporter at the
(07:15):
same time, So you know, I was covering everything from
greyhound racing, the lawn bowls to go karts to a
bit of cricket rugby league in the in the winter.
And I did that for two years on the local paper.
But an approach was made by Channel seven, the local
news there at the time, and said, look there's a
job going he interested. I initially said no, I didn't.
(07:36):
Thought it was sort of not something that was ever
really anything I wanted to do or I was probably
a little bit out of my depth, and then just
had a moment where I thought, you know what, let's
give it a go. And suddenly I was fifth day
and my fifth week later, I was taking carriage of
the biggest story in the world on my own there
for a little bit emotionally.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Has this story been one that's really stayed with you?
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Yeah, it has, and it's probably the reason why I
took on the podcast project. I remember, you know, Channel
seven were very good in offering counseling to anyone who
was involved in and around it at the time, and look,
I can't speak for others, but I certainly didn't take
up the offer. You know, I was adamant that I
was fine, you know. I guess probably in the back
of my mind for a long time I thought there's
(08:19):
probably unfinished business insomuch as being able to lay it
out on a table and talk about it. Now, I
think there's different ways you can go about doing that.
Do you talk to other people? And I probably chose to,
I guess, turn it into a project where I talked
about it in a far more open forum. But being
able to bounce my experiences and understand the experiences of
(08:41):
other people that were part of it was I guess
one of the benefits that a podcast gives you, so
bet I was able to unwrap other people's stories, but
at the same time get a better understanding of what
they went through. And here's a lot of them for
the first time. And I think they probably and some
(09:01):
of the feedback I've had is they probably felt a
sense of security and calm and being able to talk
to me about it because they knew that I had
a little bit of an understanding of what they went
through as well. So I think it was therapeutic on
a whole range of fronts for a lot of people.
And if I look back on it, yeah, I probably
did need to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Just twenty years later. Let's go back to the events
of the night. Where in the hostel did the fire
start and how quickly did it engulf that building?
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Yeah, it happened downstairs, So there's two levels to the
backpack of hostel. And I guess the court trial and
the investigation into unraveled that there were several trigger points
that started that fire by the perpetrator and that happened downstairs.
So what you're really dealing with is a fire that
escalated and rose in height and depth and heat very
(09:55):
quickly to hit the and as we said, we're talking
about two levels, so it hit the floorboards that were
above it where people are residing, people are sleeping, and
so essentially they were sleeping on a hot plate and
hot plate. We know how that how that's going to
work out. I wouldn't hot plate. It's going to perish
very quickly. Yep. And in a backpack of hostel environment,
(10:19):
we can you know, easily assume some of the things
that would have been in there. You know, food stuffs,
you know, different things that people have when they're when
they're living, probably alcohol, yeah, I mean, and you know,
even just furniture and you know different things that make furniture.
You throw that all into one big toxic chemical mix,
and the fumes and the smoke that it generates, it
(10:42):
doesn't all burn the same way, so everything's sort of
melting into this I guess, you know, big barbecue for
one of a horrible term that that may be. That's
lifting very quickly and people are and there's a there's
a wedge of a floorboard between that fire and those people.
So you know, the clock was definitely ticking very quickly,
(11:03):
you know, very quickly and rapidly on those people.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
How many people were staying that night and what did
they wake up to?
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Yeah, well the best count is eighty four people, so
that's a lot. There's a lot of people, you know,
in a fairly congested environment with you know, different rooms.
So now this fire happened just after midnight, you know,
and bearing in mind that they're backpackers, they've been out
for a few beers. Some of them had some birthday celebrations.
(11:31):
There was some people who were leaving the next day,
so there was farewell celebrations that night before. So they've
you know, they've got a few beers in there barely
we all know how well we'd probably sleep straight after
that and you know, lights out pretty quick. So that
fire happens just after midnight. A lot of them haven't
been asleep for very long, and you're usually in.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Your deepest sleep when you first go to.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Sleep, exactly. So in a town like Childre's on the
main street, there's some other pubs around, there's you know,
different nationalities. There's a few beers in this in the belly.
They hear what they think is a fight going on,
so people have woken up. They think it's a fight.
They think maybe some plates are getting smashed, or you know,
(12:11):
there's just or things are happening out on the street.
You know, this is on the National Highway. There's the
opportunity for foot traffic here there and everywhere around that hostel.
So in the wade carp it doesn't immediately occur to
them that hey, there's a fire. They just hear a
lot of noise, but then it escalates really quickly, and
then and then they start to obviously smell it.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Because there's no sirens or anything.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Is there. No, No, there's not. And I guess one
of the key things and the key criticisms of the
whole of the building at the time and everything was
there were no fire alarms and no exits, no illuminated
exit signs. So if you sort of think about that scenario,
the room's dark, so the fires cut the power so
(12:57):
it's gone, so it's pitch black. They can't breathe, they
can't see, they got no direction, so there's no illuminated
So what we take for granted now is a smoke
larm above our head and an illuminated exit signed the
green exit sign. Mann yeah, that gives you a sense
of direction that says, well, the doorways that way or
(13:19):
that way. Well, neither of those two things were there,
so no alarm to wake the mark to say and
the alarm is I guess a way of saying a
wake up. But b that means fire.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
So they woke up kind of a bit, so they
didn't get.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
That sensory awareness that A, it's fire will be Some
of them didn't even we don't know. Some of them
may not have even woken up. So and then but
then worse than that, he's not knowing how to get out.
So that so for some of the people who well
probably for everyone in that building, if you made it
(13:57):
or you didn't, you had to pick a path game.
You chose right or left.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
It was that brutal yep.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
And they don't know which way they're facing that their
orientation is completely gone. It's like they've got a n
fold on and they can't breathe. They take a breath,
they're probably dead from smoke in elation.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Well, let's talk about it through the eyes of one
of the survivors you spoke to. She was one of
those people that knew kind of in the back of
her mind where to go, and that ultimately saved her
life and her roommates perished.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
I guess that's what's really hard to come to terms with,
is that. And I think some of them have got
that survivor's gill where they say, yeah, maybe you know,
I just made a right decision. I mean some of
them were probably a little bit more diligent when they
arrived and thought, Okay, well, I'm in a strange building,
(14:51):
you know, in the rare scenario that something might happen,
where would I get out? How many steps away as
the door if I you know, And and she showed
that due diligence when she arrived, and that probably helped her,
you know. For me like that, that whole conversation is
forever parked in my head, and we've all sat on
(15:14):
a plane and we've all zoned out when the safety
awareness conversation happens, and I do it all the time.
But since I've had that conversation, I always remember that
and think, Okay, I better just be sure in my
head where that exit.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Is, and we should name it. The person we're talking
about is Sarah. She was only seventeen.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Yeah, and that's not unusual to be honest that you know,
the backpackers some of them are on gap years straight
out of school, or they've taken a year off university.
That's the kind of age group that we're talking about.
And in some ways that age group is very relevant
when we start to talk about the perpetrator, you know,
and how that probably discrepancy in age and acceptance and
(16:05):
all those different things all apply. But you know, time
in life, age of seventeen and we've all been there
and yeah, you're over seas or you know, in Sia's instance,
she was Australian, but she was in it just on
a She's a bit of a free spirit herself, and
you know, she's just living your best life, you know,
(16:27):
and trying to get a few bucks in her pocket.
It gets some life experiences, meet some new people, you know,
and hanging out with different nationalities. You know, they're meeting
new people and probably people that you think, how I
really gel with these people and they're going to be
friends of mine that I'm going to hang out with them,
you know, I stay in contact with for the rest
of their life.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
How quickly were the firefighters on the scene and to
set that scene a little bit. We're talking about a
country town, so it's not a huge contingent of fieries.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
No, And I think I think people think that firefighting
by default is fighting fighters, but it's.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Well that goes with the name, but.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
It's actually not. In regional towns, and particularly in a
town like Childers, which is on the National Highway, the
main job that those guys did was probably attending the
car accidents.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Yeah right, extricating people.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
So a car accident happens and they turn up and
make sure that it's safe and clean up the road
and you know, and as you said, probably help someone
out if they're trapped or that type of thing. That
that became probably the bulk of their workload. But they
would do things like going and do checks on the building.
And some of them worked in like a I guess
(17:48):
a part time capacity as a firefighter too, so firefighting
wasn't necessarily their main job. There might be a mechanic.
So one of the firefighters involved had actually been there
in the days leaning up to because he was a mechanic.
He was doing some work on someone's car and he
actually had a had a visual of the building in
the lead up to it. As well, but they were
(18:11):
there relatively quickly. You know, mobile phones weren't really I mean,
we run it. We live a society there where mobile
phones are glued to our hands and the heartbeat of
everything that we do around the intelligence of our life.
But back then we weren't talking about smartphones. So we're
talking about a probably a pager system. And for I
(18:34):
guess any of you listeners who aren't familiar with that,
it's a little it's basically just a little device, little
beep and a little screen, very tiny that might run
almost like the ticker when you're watching the news in
the morning and the news will run along the bottom
of the screen, it would run along the pager with
a little twenty words or at hostel or exactly, and
(18:55):
something as cryptic as that, not a And my understanding
was that the firefighters knew that when that page went off,
then there was a fire, but it certainly didn't understand
the magnitude of it or what they were about to
turn up to. Another thing to take into account on
that child Childre's is a huge sufferer of extreme fog,
(19:17):
right and at that time of year fog really hits
the town. And on June twenty three. There was a
lot of fog. So the firefighters tell the story of
actually knowing there was a fire but driving straight past
the hostel. So in the early stage it because the
station's nearby, he's gone to go to the station. He said,
(19:39):
I drive past the hostel. The fog was that bad.
Actually really didn't understand that. I mean, the fire had
one hundred percent taken into big mass in gold flames
by that stage. But fog played a part that night.
So there was a whole heap of factors that came
into play. But look, they were there relatively relatively quickly,
(20:01):
and certainly quick quick enough.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
By this point when they arrived, a lot of the
survivors had managed to kind of crawl onto roofs or balconies,
and so that was kind of the primary focus, wasn't
it getting everyone down?
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Yeah, it was, And you know, they're trying to get
out as any way they could, And obviously the top
level of the hostel was where people were sleeping or
where they were living. Primarily there was a room downstairs
and that everyone got out of that unscathed, fortunately, but
everyone upstairs had to find a way to get out
anyway they could. So they managed to get out through
(20:36):
an access window and crawl out through the side of
the building. But you know, they were coming out in
clearly people who had been in a fire, covered in
black ash and soot and not really knowing because they
that was the the minute they got out, they were
(20:57):
able to take a gasp of air and breathe, able
to actually see something because I hadn't weren't able to see.
So they've got no idea who's around them. So it's
then coming to terms with, you know, what's just happened.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
When firefighters actually opened the doors and tried to enter
the building. Was there going to be any chance of survivors?
You just spoke about how hot that was.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
I think the firefighters probably didn't know what the first
time they got through that door, what they're about to
sort of face in front of them, And I think
the realization started to kick in the further they got
into it and then could understand the magnitude of the
height of that fire and then get I mean, they
(21:44):
don't have a manifesto of who's in that building or
anything like that, so they're just dealing with what's in
front of them, and they talking to some of the firefighters,
they sort of said, if you didn't get out quickly,
probably weren't getting out. But what was what was really
(22:04):
difficult to hear and and sort of understand was when
they saw the jail bars on some of the rooms.
So one of the rooms have been completely boarded up
with with jail bars on the windows as a security measure,
(22:25):
and that was highly populated. That room. There was nine
people in that room. Some of the firefighters have talked
about seeing bodies in that in that room and they'd
already passed away at that point.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Because that was the room where there was the largest
amount of fatality.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Yeah, And for me, like as a as a journalist
in the local area, when the fire was out and
the brea had been cleared and we're talking about the
second day afterwards, a couple of us were given a
walk through the building with the fire authorities to show
(23:05):
us what had happened. And the image that's still, i
guess is the most stark for me out of the
whole episode of the Childer's Fire is seeing that room
with the bars on it and the windows. We're talking
about jail bars. Therese are metal bars on.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Them even in just normal suburban houses that are on
ground floor. I've seen them around Sydney where we live.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah, Now, under the under some of those windows were
numbers spray painted on the wall in black spray paint.
And the question was asked by someone, what are those numbers,
and they said, that's where we found the bodies. So
that I can't remember the numbers, but it was number
(23:54):
eight and number nine and that type of numbers were
spray painted on the wall and they were right under
the windows. So you can only imagine that those people
were trying to get out, yeah, through those windows. And
that's really difficult to grapple with that these people at
(24:14):
their most delicate moment, we're trying and they won't afforded
that chance for that to succeed. That's really difficult to
grapple with. And that that's probably the image out of
the whole the whole time that I covered that story,
and that probably is front of mine for me, that
that has always sat there, and it's a real it's
(24:36):
a real humbling thing to have witnessed, to have seen,
and then to try and rationalize what must have happened.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Especially so quickly after it happened.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Yeah, And like It's sort of developed from do we
hope everyone's out to something didn't get out? To why
did this happened? To anger? To why have you got
that camera in my face too? Let me alone? You know,
the emotions moved very quickly. And and grief grief. There's
(25:18):
no template for dealing with grief, and you threw it throw.
You know, being so far removed from your family, the
feeling of having nothing must just be horrible. These people
had nothing. I mean some of them was sleeping in
their underwear, so that's all they had was the pair
(25:40):
of undies around their waist. You know, there's a charity
store right next door that opened its doors in the
middle of the night so people could actually get some clothes.
Now people think about Queen's Lane has been warm and
sunny and you know, very comfortable all the time. I
could tell your childers in the middle of the Joune
is bloody cold. It's it's a very cold place. And
(26:03):
you know, so these people had nothing, They had nothing
to identify themselves.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Well, everything would have been lost.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah, like how do you prove who you are?
Speaker 1 (26:10):
A fifteen lives were lost in the fire and looking
at the list of the names of the people who died.
Fourteen were aged between eighteen and thirty one, with one
forty eight year old. We've got all kinds of nationalities
which you've mentioned. Seven from England, two from Australia, two
from Holland, one from Ireland, Morocco, Japan and South Korea.
(26:33):
So this is a fire that wouldn't have just attracted
headlines in Australia. This is worldwide news. This is worldwide grief.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Yea, it is. It was headlines all over the world.
It was the biggest story in the world there, you know.
And for me I was doing radio crosses in the
in the sort of mid morning. I remember the day
after the fire from a public telephone box across the road,
feeding coins into an old, old school telstra phone with
a queue of backpackers standing there wanting to be able
(27:03):
to ring home, but they had nothing. I remember emptying
out whatever coins I had in my pocket and handing
it to one of the British guys saying he made
ring home. You know. I guess the silver lining of
not being in a mobile phone erar is people actually
knew had numbers stored away in their head.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
True, I wouldn't know a number to save my life.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Now. Yeah, but even then, talking to some of the
families who had children who survived that fire, the relief
of getting that phone call, you know, when they you know,
for given the time zone, some of this, they were
waking up to news. But they're building a fire hours
earlier at a place where they knew that their child
(27:40):
was or for some of them not knowing is my
I know my kids in Australia somewhere, they're working on
a farm somewhere. Where are they today? You know, is
that the one they're at? And then you know, consulate
officials and police even not actually knowing. We talked about
(28:00):
eighty four people being in that building, but well who
was in the building. Everything's been burnt. All the records
of who was actually there has been burnt. Who was there, so.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Even identifying the bodies that were found that would have
taken a while too.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Write Yeah, it did. I mean that talking to some
of the survivors, you know that what they what they
did was they quickly there's a pub across the road,
which you know was a traditional nightly sort of communal
hangout for them anyway, So that opened up in the
middle of the night survivors was sort of there, and
(28:37):
you know, they were given a bit of a debrief
on what firefighter and police authorities knew had happened at
the time, and quickly among themselves they were drawing up
a list of who was in the building. So it
might be I know, Jenma was in there, and you know, Jemmy,
you knew that so and so was in there, And
quickly they started to piece together a bit of a
(28:57):
list and that's how it started, you know, in a
very very sort of raw way of building a manifest
of who was in that building.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
One of the positive sides, and there aren't many of
this story, is the way the community rallied around those survivors.
We talk about Australian community spirit. I don't think it
gets much more amazing than what they did.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Yeah, and you know I talked about that community giving
those survivors a communal hug at the time and to
this day they still continue to do that.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
So there's still in touch.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Yeah, there's people who were intimately involved in the I guess,
for want of a better term, the recovery process for
the community you know that still live and reside there.
It still sits with them, and you know it's something
that has become a very pivotal moment in their life.
Who simply opened their doors and said, you know, come
(29:58):
and have a have a sleep, have a shower, clean
your teeth, you know, basic little things that we take
for granted. And you know when those relationships built at
the time, and being able to call upon basic resources
like a box of fruit and food, and the people
did not have a scent to their name, nothing to
(30:21):
identify themselves, no clays, so that community to be able
to wrap its arms around all those survivors, and not
just survivors, but be a point of calm and a
sense of security for family too. You know, thousands of
killometers away in another country.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
And mums and dads it sounds like they were exactly.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
And dealing with the torment of their children being involved
in something that they're only seeing on the news. And
you know, I'm not going to sit here and pretend
that the news would have been giving a really accurate snapshot.
You know that it people can perceive what they see
(31:08):
and hear on the news or on the radio or
in newspapers in many different ways. And you know how
that story is curated. People will probably jump to the
worst conclusion on what they're seeing. So they're waking up
to breakfast TV in London and sort of seeing it
and they're going to think the worst, you know, So
(31:30):
it must have been horrible for those the people who
felt so helpless to be so far away not being
able to help.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
You're listening to true crime Conversations with me Jemma Bath.
I'm speaking with the host of the Childer's podcast, Paul Cochrane.
After the break we talk about the dramatic manhunt that
ended in the arrest of the man responsible for the
hostel fire. How quickly was the fire being treated as
suspicious straight away?
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Right, Yeah, And I'll probably only realized that when I
look back on the event of how quickly that that
I was been talked about a suspicious I know among
the among the media contingent. It was probably by nighttime
of the first night or into the second day where
it started to be speculated that this might have been arson,
(32:25):
and that was jarring for the local community. Actually, there
was a lot of people took massive offense really to
the notion that it would be arson, because that wouldn't
happen in our community. That type of that type of
you know, feeling of the notion that you might be
unsafe and Shulders was jarring and offensive to some of
(32:49):
the long term residents there. But when I've gone back
and looked at it, it's very obvious that that initial
meeting of people of the survivors in the pub across
the road straight away that was talked that we.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
Think we know who did this, So they were already
bringing up the name Robert long Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
And police have already and police then have confirmed that
in conversations were saying, yep, this is a guy that
we're that was already put on our radar very quickly.
At a media conference of the police, he was identified
as a suspect, as someone that they wanted to speak to.
(33:30):
Suspects probably not the word in the first twenty four hours,
but certainly someone we want to speak to. The fact
that he disappeared and was out of mind, out of sight,
probably even raised further suspicions around Robert long Well.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
He'd been staying at the hostel as well. Who was
he what was he doing there?
Speaker 2 (33:49):
He was a very different individual. We talked about the
age demographic of some of those backpackers been sort of
in that seventeen to early twenties kind of kind of
bracket of people. Robert Long didn't fit into that category.
He was late thirties. He was someone that simply did
(34:10):
not fit in with the core of the backpack of
hostel residency among that group. Yet everything I hear almost
lends itself to he wanted to fit in. He wanted
to be part of it. But he was abrasive. He
was abusive to them. He would and I think some
(34:33):
of that probably stems out of his inability to be
able to crack that veneer of being able to fit
in with everyone. He had form. He had criminal form
as well, so he had a history of basically setting
fires to small fires to things. He had form in
(34:54):
domestic violence. Police were able to quickly piece together I
guess a mud map of who Robert Long was. But
he was a disgruntle an individual where stories would were
he would make up tall tails and sit around the
bar and sort of put the hard word on people
for money. He's saying that, you know, he had a
(35:16):
child going through cancer and needed and they were all myths.
There was no truth at all to any of these stories.
But he was trying to I guess emotionally blackmail people
and get on side with people and trying to get
money out of them. He owed a lot of money
to the managers of the hostel.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Well, he'd been evicted a few days before.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
He'd been evicted because he owed money, and there was
a story of him being chased down the main street
of the town and yet somehow he kept managing to
find his way back in and around the premises.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Well, he very quickly became Australia's most wanted man for
about a week there. What happened? How did that hunt
come to an end? Because that was also incredibly dramatic, Well,
it was.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Dramatic even on the man hunt to be honest, because
and as a journalist sort of covering the story, there
were so many layers to the story. So you're dealing
with a victim things and you know, you basically a
crime and then you've got this manhunt going on in small,
little regional towns in Queensland where people don't know what
(36:21):
they're dealing with. So that you've got a man described
as dangerous on the run in a lot of I
guess big properties. So we're talking it's a farming community.
But it's but they're big open properties. You know, it's
not unusual for people to not lock their lock their
doors because they just know everyone around their neighborhood. And
(36:44):
we're not talking about gated communities, so it's pretty easy
to get in and out of different backyards.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Mean people are very isolated too.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
Yeah, and yet suddenly there's a fear factor kicked in
so well, people felt really unsafe in their own little
town and their own and their own home. And so
you had people locking up their doors and not leaving
their house and looking over their shoulder and wondering who
(37:13):
was so Robert long was was eventually seen look somewhere
around forty five minutes away in a small small town
called how It Now by foot that you know, that
would have taken him a little bit of time to
walk there, if you think about forty five minutes high
speed driving on a national highway. So that's a that's
(37:36):
a fair walk from it was three or four days
later when that siding took place. There is some suggestion
he might have jumped on some cane trains to get
himself to some of those areas. So he was spotted
by someone in the special Emergency Response Team commonly one
(37:57):
assert were in and around the area, so some offices
were deployed to that area and a struggle unfolded Robert Long.
They were they had police dogs with them, so Rober
Long he had a knife with him and he did
stab the poor of the.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
Dog, which was another headline that took its own.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
Yeah, the British media really got around that. Yeah, the
hero police dog and that. And then he was shot
in the shoulder. Now Long believed that he was about
to die and a police officer and this is on
the back of a wrestling match I guess with one
of the police officers, and he actually the knife went
(38:42):
through his jaw and he lost some teeth in that
struggle with this cert police officer who had the dog.
So rob A. Long was shot in the shoulder and
he believed he was dying and as an officer stood
over him, he said, I'm dying anyway, I lit that fire.
The officer at the time did not have any did
(39:03):
not have a notebook with him, and all he had
was a ten dollar note and he wrote that down
on that ten dollar note. It was admitted as evidence.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
It gets more Australian than that and a ten dollar note.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
I don't know that's the most famous ten dollar note
in Australia.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Probably a confession on a ten dollar note.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Yeah, so I believe that coins and police still have
it in a ziploc bag as a commemorative piece, so
somewhere it should end up in a museum.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Long's trial didn't start for another two years after he
was apprehended. He pled not guilty. Firstly, can you walk
us through the charges because he wasn't charged with all
fifteen deaths.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Yeah, it was a really unusual charge system that was
put in place. So obviously fifteen people died in the fire,
but he was only charged with the deaths of Kelly
and Stacy Slark to West Australian twins. I guess that
did not sit well with the families of Obviously the
thirteen are the victims of the fire. But the rationale
(40:07):
from the prosecutor on that if anything was to go
wrong in the trial, it gave them room for appeal
and they had thirteen other people that they could lay
the charges against. Now, under the judicial system at the time,
(40:28):
two victims or fifteen victims, the penalty would be the same.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
That's a joke.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
It was a joke, and it has been There has
been some amendments made to that system since, but at
the time two or fifteen made no difference to the outcomes,
so that the decision was made in order to, I guess,
give the prosecution process room to progress should anything go
(40:56):
wrong through the initial trial, that there were thirteen other
victims that this crime could be labeled against. Now, the
conversations I had with the prosecutor through the podcast said
the fact that Kelly and Stacey Slack with twins did
(41:17):
assist in that process because with two victims with similar DNA,
then that actually was beneficial to that process of being
able to pin two deaths on him.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
It's understandable when you understand the judicial side of things,
but for the families, that's really heartbreaking.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
Yeah, and it's still heartbreaking for them. I think they
understand it, but still don't necessarily agree with it. It's
still very difficult, and I can only put my own
parent hat on and think that must be very tough
for them. Yeah, very difficult for a parent to think
that that man there's never been charged with the murder
(42:01):
of their child and yet they died.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Did the prosecution have a hard job ahead of them
because they had a confession, as we mentioned on a
ten dollar night.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
Yeah, I mean they've still got to be able to
prove that it was arson, right, it could to be
able to prove it was arson, because if it's not arson,
it could just be an accidental fire in an old building. Yeah,
So that process in itself was really fascinating and how
(42:32):
they went about doing that. What happened was this was
I guess, pre significant digital technology in two thousand, but
a lot of imagery had been taken and it was
a fire expert that was known to coins and police
was based in California, So that the imagery and the
I guess, the measurements and the data and you know,
(42:53):
all that sort of accumulation of evidence that had been
compiled in the building was sent to this gentleman in California,
and from his loungdream he managed to prove that it
was arson. Now not just arson, but that there were
to pull trigger points. Now the multiple trigger points is
actually important because it infers the intent of damage, and
(43:19):
then he kept doing mass damage. Yeah. What was able
to be proved by based on the heat, the height,
and the velocity of that fire was that it had
to have been lit at least twice, because Robert Long
was seen in the vicinity of a fire in a
bin by one of the other survivors of the fire
(43:42):
moments before what they believe was a second fire was lit,
which ultimately caused the deaths of fifteen people. So it's
understood that a fire was lit in a bin. And
if you think about a couch where that I guess
the seat part of the couch is in multiple pieces,
(44:04):
and there's a cushion. He's taken the cushion from the
couch and he's put it. He's created a bridge between
the bin and the arm of the couch to create
a path or a bonfire type type scenario. And it's
been lip multiple times in several points in order to
create that fire that then takes off. And that I
(44:28):
found that fascinating that they were able to do that
from California and the reason he was chosen, this man
out of California was in the nineteen seventies in California,
a whole heap of residential buildings were I guess confined
to science experiments where they said, well, we need to
(44:48):
get rid of these buildings. They're no good for anything.
But instead of just getting rid of them, they almost
handed them over for experimentation, and the fire departments would
go on create fires in them and understand the behavior
patterns of fires. And out of that process, this man
was part of that. He's become a global expert in
(45:11):
being able to prove.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
How amazing is that?
Speaker 2 (45:12):
Listen? Yeah? Yeah, And this was done and this was
done from his lounge room in California. He never attended
the building.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
After nineteen days, he was found guilty and sentenced to
life in prison with a non parole period of twenty years.
Were the victims and survivors happy with that twenty years
behind bars?
Speaker 2 (45:33):
No, I think they would have preferred that that was
significantly longer than the twenty years, particularly when you take
into account, you know, the victim impact statements that were
tabled and the fact that there were fifteen deaths, not
just two. Unfortunately at the time under the Queensland law
at the time, twenty years was the maximum he could get.
My understanding is that's now been extended to twenty five
(45:55):
years before he's considered for parole. Long was up for
parole in twenty twenty, he made an application for parole and.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
That was denied, so he's still in prison.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
He's still in prison. Chances of getting out of prison
have probably taken a slide on the back of a
I guess a grand standing event he did where he
ended up on the roof of the prison at Way
Colin in Queensland last year. I believe it was That'll
do It which made the news. So his chances probably
(46:29):
took a noose dive of that. So he's not close
to getting getting parole. And I think anyone in and
around that fire, and particularly the families of the victims,
would like it to see that that remains forever and
ever a day.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
You said that the hostel has been restored, so is
it a hostel anymore? Is it something else?
Speaker 2 (46:55):
So the area where the fire took place is now
a memorial to the victims and it's a beautiful memorial
that a lot of time and effort was put into
the best way to represent the victims of the fire.
It sits in the Childre's Art gallery and it's a
real center piece of the town. There's a beautiful I
(47:16):
guess guest book where people write their comments whenever they
go in anytime I'm in town, I was going and
just take a moment to sit and reflect. And it's
a giant glass wall with a light reflection box of
photos of the lives of the fifteen victims that have
been laid out on the glass wall. If you had
to look at the aerial view of the main street
of Childers, the pattern of how they've been sent out
(47:39):
actually is the same pattern and the line in the glass.
So it's really classy. It stood the test of time,
that memorial, and it continues to get significant foot traffic
on a daily basis of people going in and seeing it,
and to a large extent was part of the reason
(48:00):
why I wanted to take on the podcast as well,
to make sure that the memory of what happened in Childers,
but particularly the memory of those fifteen victims, was you'd
never forgotten.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
You've obviously spoken to these survivors twenty years after the fact.
What if their lives look like, how have they grappled
with what happened to them?
Speaker 2 (48:19):
Look a lot of PTSD really among them. I don't
think that any of them would stand there and tell
you that their lives are ever the same after the fire.
And I guess that's one of the other really disappointing
elements of the sentencing of Robert Long is that his sentence,
(48:39):
his sentence was applied to the deaths of two people,
not fifteen people, not the thirteen others, But not one
element of his sentence was applied to the sixty nine survivors. True,
his lives have been torn upside down on the back
of that, not one element was referred to that community.
That a lot of people in that community, you still
(49:01):
have sleepless nights of what they heard and saw and
dealt with in the aftermath of that fire as well.
So it's very punishment for the carnage that was caused. Really,
look that they're a really resilient group of people, you know.
And one of the things that came out of doing
(49:23):
the podcast was that some of them spoke about it
for the first time and for many the only time,
you know, and we're prepared to let their guard down
to tell their story what they went through and then
felt better about it, which was probably the most rewarding
(49:45):
thing for me as the person who sort of unpacked
that a little bit for them.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
Just shows the ripple effect. It's not just the survive.
It's their families.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
It's yeah, you know, it's so sad, you know. And
then I spoke to David O'Keefe in the podcaster, Irish gentleman,
you know, and his sister died in the fire. And
they've got another sister as well, and she was in
Bali when the bombings happened, and you know, their mum
(50:17):
saying not again, you know. Fortunately it was just she
couldn't reach her in the middle of the night on
the phone. But she's straight away taken back to Childers
not again, you know, Like it's just I think the
words you use there, the ripple effect a just you know,
so profound. And then there's there's stories like a Mulay,
(50:43):
the Moroccan gentleman who died. No one knew who he was,
they knew his name, they didn't know what he looked like.
So you know, we talk about the memorial there that's
been it's been created, and there's a there's a beautiful
mural that was done by really talented Sydney painter just
only a pilatus and she was able to she sort
(51:04):
of put this mural together of fifteen people in a
field where they would have been working and you know,
depicted as they're all together having a morning tea break,
the type of thing, and Mulays depicted as this sort
of gentleman in the background based on some of the
things that people had talked about, but no one really
knew what he looked like because no one actually had
(51:25):
any photos of him or anything like that. So the
story goes that a couple of years had gone by
after the memorial was opened, and this lady came in
and she said, that gentleman there, where's his photos? And
they said, well, she didn't know who he was, but
we weren't able to track anything down. And he'd been
(51:46):
depicted on I'm San de Moura had previously been to Morocco,
and so he just put in what he you know,
some landscape photos of Morocco and things that he thought
that might have been part of Mulay's life. And this
lady said, well, I'm actually connected to his family and
we're going to get some photos. They're able to correct
it and fix it up, so, you know, and pay
(52:09):
homage to him a bit as well in that. But yeah,
I mean, there's just everyone's got a story, and that's
what I tried to try to be able to pay
homage to those fifteen victims a little bit through there.
You know, their story that they never got a chance
to be able to tell and live out a full
life like we all tape for granted, Has it been
(52:29):
healing for you?
Speaker 1 (52:30):
You're a twenty four year old journo, Yeah, starting a
new job. It's a big thing to deal with.
Speaker 2 (52:35):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, look in a way, look, it's
a project I'm insanely proud of. It took nine months
to do, and I was in no hurry to get
it finished. You know, I wanted it. I wanted it
to sort of be in circulation around the time of
the twentieth anniversary of the fire, and you know, and
that was achieved. But yeah, I mean there is no
(52:56):
doubt that it was. You know, it was profoundly cathartic
for me to be able to dig a little bit
deeper into it, and you know, living experience, I guess
was really important to be able to almost do it properly.
If that, if that's a way of looking at it.
You know, twenty years on, I got a lot out
of it, and I think the thing I'm most proud
(53:20):
of is hearing some of the people who lent their
voices and their stories to it saying the same thing,
and that is the most beautiful thing out of all
of it, I think. You know, as a as a
media professional, we all like to think that no, no,
I'm the good guy. You know, I'm the journey, that
I don't do anything. But the perception outside of our
(53:41):
bubble is that we're all going to stitch someone up.
And that's not true, but that's the perception. And I
think since I've stepped away from mainstream media, I've understood
that a lot better as well. That everyone thinks the
journal is the used car salesman who's going to turn
them over.
Speaker 1 (53:59):
There was enough bad eggs out there to make us
look a bit.
Speaker 2 (54:03):
Yeah, and we but every one of us will be
in denial when you're in the bubble, be in the journey.
So then put yourself in the shoes of the person
that you're trying to tell the most pivotal moment of
the most heart wrenching moment of their life. You know,
the most extreme grief and tragedy they'll ever encounter, and
you know touch Wooden will never happened to them again.
(54:26):
Trusting someone with that story is to me, that was
the most rewarding out of all of it, that they
trusted me.
Speaker 1 (54:34):
Thanks to Paul for helping us to tell this story.
True Crime Conversations is a Muma mea podcast hosted and
produced by me, Jemma Bath and Tarlie Blackman, with audio
design by Jacob Brown. Thanks so much for listening. I'll
be back next week with another True Crime Conversation
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