Episode 14 - Martin Bryant & The Port Arthur Massacre

0:15 Welcome back everybody to Two Crime Besties for another week.

0:18 Thank you so much for joining us again.

0:20 We're very excited to bring another episode.

0:22 Yes, we are. We are here, ready and raring to

0:24 go. Yeah, as nervous as we might

0:26 feel when we first get started. I know I feel like at the start

0:29 when we first started the podcast, because we didn't know

0:31 who'd be listening or how many people would be listening out, I

0:34 just sort of didn't think about it.

0:36 But we've had such a great response and so many people

0:38 listening and coming up to us, I'm like, oh God, it's just a

0:41 bit nerve wracking now. It really is.

0:43 I see the the analytics sometimes and that you sort of

0:45 just see them as numbers and then as soon as it hits me like

0:47 that, that's real people that are really listening that I have

0:49 no idea who they are. I don't know anything about

0:52 them, but they're listening to us.

0:53 I just kind of go, oh shit, it's.

0:56 More when people come up to you and they're like, oh, I've been

0:58 listening to your podcast. One of one of the mums from

1:01 school, one of Ollie's friend's mums, she mentioned the podcast

1:06 when I bumped into her during the week this week.

1:08 And she goes, oh, I know it kind of embarrasses you so I won't

1:11 say much more, but I'm loving it.

1:13 Thank you. Yeah.

1:15 So thanks. Claire, thank you listening.

1:17 Yeah, I had a little gather at my office the other door the

1:19 other day, you know, with all a bunch of my work colleagues or

1:21 like talking about saying I'm going to listen to the X fun in

1:24 the car ride home or, you know, and all this sort of stuff.

1:26 And it's like, it's so lovely, but like so embarrassing at the

1:28 same time. I know, I know.

1:30 It's kind of really putting yourself out there.

1:31 Yeah, But how's your week been? What's been happening?

1:34 Yeah, no, it's been a pretty good week.

1:36 Yeah. Pretty stock standard as we just

1:38 sort of like, you know, got to shoot through the calendar in my

1:40 brain of like what has happened because I feel like every day

1:42 just like, you know, like, where have I been?

1:44 Who am I? Like, I just don't know where I

1:46 am every day. But we're just saying we've got

1:48 it's like the Father's Day store this week for the kids at

1:50 school, which is always, always fun and finding out the the

1:54 things that they buy at those things.

1:55 I absolutely love that for Mother's Day.

1:57 It was the best. Oh my God.

1:59 Yeah. I mean, you remember my bell

2:01 that I got for Mother's Day last, which was just amazing.

2:04 I get this little ring bell that I get to tap on my bench for a

2:07 drink that my boy has bought me. How?

2:09 Successful has it been? It's.

2:10 Been moved upstairs so the boys can do it use it between their

2:13 bedrooms. So say no more.

2:16 Yeah, Yeah. A true Mother's Day gift.

2:19 Yeah, but there's like, no in my family, like there is no getting

2:22 rid of one of those gifts at all that you can't like it does not

2:24 leave the house because my eldest remembers every gift he

2:28 gives. Yes.

2:30 And if I happen to not, not there was even this morning was

2:32 giving a bag to him to take for the Father's Day stall.

2:35 And it was one of those, you know, those bags that fit inside

2:37 itself to make a little pocket. Oh yeah, that fit inside your

2:39 bag handy. So I gave that to him.

2:41 I said, you know how to use that, don't you?

2:42 Because Mum, of course I do. I gave you one for Mother's Day.

2:45 Oh, God, did I roll? I'm like, oh, did you?

2:48 That must have been this one. You know that I'm handing him

2:50 and he's like, mum, it's the pink one.

2:53 And I had to do the whole like do I have, do I have the pink

2:55 one? This is.

2:56 The pink one, He's gonna ask me for the pink.

2:58 One, I actually do the whole like, Oh yeah, that's the one I

3:00 carry in my handbag all the time that I use all the time.

3:03 I'm like, I better find that freaking thing and put it in my

3:05 handbag. We were just lamenting the fact

3:08 though, before we started recording that for the Father's

3:10 Day and the Mother's Day stalls, we have to have cash to give to

3:13 the kids, which I don't know about you.

3:16 In fact, I do know about you. You never have cash.

3:18 I never have cash. It is such a pain in the bum.

3:21 Last week I had to pick up some groceries for mum and dad and I

3:25 was giving it to them and my dad's like, oh, and my, my mum

3:28 and dad, old school love, love a bit of cash in fact.

3:30 And my dad always has cash. He's he's in the in the industry

3:34 for cash. But I'm like, I hate it when

3:38 people give me cash. Like we went out for dinner

3:40 recently and a friend of ours gave us gave me cash and I'm

3:42 like, what the hell am I gonna do with this?

3:44 Like I never. Well, no, because she didn't

3:46 give me in the right denomination, yes.

3:49 But when dad, when I was giving the groceries, Dad's like, oh,

3:52 here, I'll pay you for it. And I'm like, no, no, no, don't

3:53 worry about it. Like it was, you know, it wasn't

3:55 that much. And and then he goes, oh, no,

3:58 come on here. I've got cash.

3:58 I'm like, well actually if you've got $210.00 notes, I'll

4:01 definitely take that because that's, you know, save me from

4:04 having to bloody go and get cash.

4:05 And to get small notes out you have to go into like a

4:07 supermarket or something. Well, even then I did that

4:10 thinking, you know, I'll go get cash out and because I needed it

4:13 and so I went and bought something at the grocery store

4:14 and went to the register and went I'll get cash out while I'm

4:17 here for the Father's Day store. It would only let me get A50 or

4:20 A20 so even. Then I'd actually go to a

4:23 person. Yeah.

4:24 And so then I was there's. No people at the supermarket.

4:26 No, there's no one there because I even turned around to the one

4:29 person that was there and I said, can I exchange that for

4:31 some other notes? And he went, no, we don't do

4:33 that. I was like, what?

4:35 That's not fair to help. So I walked out kind of going,

4:37 I'll have to break that at some point and totally forgot to.

4:40 So then yeah, last night I said to my eldest, I was like, do you

4:44 happen to have some money in your in your jar?

4:46 And he goes, Oh yeah, yeah, I've got some $10 notes in there.

4:48 I'm like, wait, can you grab one of those?

4:50 And when I break this fifty, you can then I'll give you the 10

4:53 bucks back, which thank God. So that I actually happened to

4:56 find stash in my wallet somewhere.

4:58 I did have a $10 note for the other one, but yeah, I don't

5:01 know how long that's been there for.

5:02 That's that was free money because I really.

5:04 Don't know how totally. I love that, love that.

5:07 I'm very excited to see what the kids come home with.

5:10 Love it. Love it.

5:11 Like I don't know where the people who source that stuff get

5:14 it from. I know.

5:15 For sure, it's Timo 100% because yeah, I all of my gifts that I

5:21 got from my boys from the Mother's Day stall, I'm like,

5:24 oh, I've seen that on Timo. Another team repurchase, but I

5:27 mean, it's a fundraiser for the school.

5:29 Isn't absolutely. Totally understand.

5:31 But I love that way that the kids will like think about it

5:33 too, like I love. It it's beautiful.

5:35 Yeah, they know I drink. Yeah.

5:38 Coffee. Totally.

5:40 It's not. We've had coffee this morning.

5:42 It's not quite after midday. So we haven't had taken in any

5:45 other yet. Yeah.

5:48 So the case we're talking about today, Meg.

5:50 Yes. Martin Bryant and the Port

5:53 Arthur massacre. Yeah.

5:55 I think we need to pre warn people of this episode.

5:58 It's where I mean even researching this one.

6:01 It's a full on story if you are unaware of it.

6:04 I don't know if anyone is unaware of it these days.

6:06 It's. Maybe some of our international

6:08 listeners might not be fully aware of it.

6:10 Yeah, I mean, it certainly was big news when it occurred, but

6:13 it there's it's it's full on. I mean, in the name being a

6:17 massacre. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

6:19 Not great. So yeah, we'll be talking about

6:21 some Philly. Heavy stuff, I know.

6:23 In researching this for myself, I actually found it really tough

6:26 this week. There's a there's a particular

6:28 moments in it that are really hard.

6:31 Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll get to all of that though,

6:33 so as Meg said, just take this as a warning if this isn't

6:36 something that you feel that you can listen to this week.

6:38 So Martin Bryant was born on the 7th of May 1967 to parents

6:45 Colleen and Maurice. So he was the eldest of their

6:48 kids. They then I think about four

6:50 years later, had his sister and her name was Lindy.

6:53 I don't know a lot about her. There's not a lot about her and

6:56 I can understand that. She absolutely.

6:58 I mean, I can't even imagine how she must.

7:01 I believe she's changed her name.

7:02 She's, yeah, gone into the background very much so.

7:05 Which, yeah. Like, I couldn't even find where

7:07 she's living now or anything like that.

7:09 So in, you know, out of respect to her, I don't think there's

7:12 any need to bring her up anymore or, you know, for anybody to

7:16 necessarily need to know anything further about her.

7:19 No, the incident at Port Arthur or the massacre at Port Arthur

7:22 took place on the 28th of April on in 1996.

7:26 So contextually around that time, I mean, where, where were

7:30 we as a, as a nation? You know, if things were, I

7:33 mean, they're very different to the way they are today.

7:35 I know looking at old footage, seeing all the like, to me in my

7:38 mind, 1996 doesn't seem like that long ago.

7:40 But then you look at the footage and you think, Oh my God, TV

7:43 used to look like that, or cars used to look like that.

7:45 Yeah, you know the. Police cars were those old,

7:48 like, hold on the doors? Yeah, it was.

7:50 Yeah, it was sort of a real trip back in time, but I really don't

7:53 feel like it was that. Long ago?

7:55 Well, because how old would you have been in 96 year?

7:57 11. Yeah, so I was like 15.

7:59 I was in year 10. Yeah.

8:00 Yeah. Because it's, it's really

8:02 forefront of my mind. I remember this very clearly,

8:04 this occurring and the day of and the following aftermath.

8:08 Yeah, of it all. Yeah, very clearly.

8:10 I think it was also because I think I was year ten, it was

8:12 discussed. If so, like literally, I think

8:15 that Monday when we came to school, I remember just walking

8:17 into our first class happened to be I think it was English or

8:20 something like that. And we just didn't do any of our

8:23 core work that day. We literally sat around with

8:25 newspapers and stuff and like picked apart a little bit as AI

8:28 guess. I guess my English teacher

8:29 probably did the right thing in terms of just went with it.

8:32 Use that as a way of, you know, reading newspapers and being

8:35 critical thinkers. But at the same time, like,

8:37 yeah, looking at what happened and discussing it and talking

8:40 about it as a as a whole class as to what this was and what,

8:45 how we all, you know, felt about it, which was really.

8:48 Full. I mean, I think it took, you

8:50 know, weeks for the full story to even be able to be put

8:53 together by the police once they got all of the witness accounts

8:56 and and the lead up to and all of that.

8:59 But so this did happen on a Sunday.

9:02 So the fact that, I mean, obviously it was prime news that

9:05 evening and then in all of the newspapers and Morning News

9:09 shows and everything the following morning.

9:11 And it hadn't really. Probably when those newspapers

9:14 went to print, it wouldn't have even been finished.

9:17 Yet, no, potentially it was still a a siege.

9:20 And at that point in time, I think actually I think I

9:22 remember vaguely a that being like the the headline.

9:26 Yeah. Egypt, Port Arthur or like, you

9:28 know, in Tasmania. It wasn't so much the massacre.

9:30 Well, I mean the massacre was part of it, but it was that's

9:32 where it was at. Was still.

9:33 It was. Still ongoing was ongoing.

9:35 I think it finished on that Monday morning at around 7:30 in

9:38 the morning. So I mean, what an what a horror

9:42 of almost 24 hours for Port Arthur and the people of

9:45 Tasmania. And so much so that even I mean,

9:48 there were police officers from and special operations officers

9:52 from Victoria who flew down. So it impacted, I mean it

9:55 impacted us as a nation and and we will definitely get into this

9:58 because it informed a lot of policy change for us in

10:03 Australia and something. Yeah, a long, you know, and that

10:08 legacy continues to this day. The massacre was the deadliest

10:11 massacre by a single gunman in Australian history. 35 people

10:17 were killed and 23 people were wounded.

10:20 There were children killed. Ranged age from yeah.

10:24 Three and three, yeah, 3 and up. I guess in looking at it, you

10:31 know, I guess it's probably a good idea to start and talk

10:34 about Martin Bryant and, and still leading that way.

10:37 Yeah, I think so. I think we're just being really

10:39 conscious that there's lots of podcasts out there on this

10:42 topic, like short form podcast. There's lots of news stories,

10:45 lots of ways you can get access information about it.

10:48 One particular website, Wikipedia, has a really solid

10:51 rundown of the the events of the day, and you can listen to

10:55 podcasts that read that out to you or read it yourself.

10:58 And it's very detailed. But I think we're just really

11:01 conscious that we want to tell the story a little bit

11:02 differently and give you maybe a little bit broader information

11:05 than just what's already there for people to find.

11:08 So yeah, I think, yeah, starting with who Martin Bryant was is a

11:11 really good place to start because ultimately this is it's

11:15 a horrific and tragic story of a human.

11:18 Yeah, Yeah. From the get go, I think

11:20 absolutely. Yeah.

11:21 Have you watched? In researching this, did you

11:23 watch the interviews with his mum?

11:25 Yes, I did, yeah. What was your take on her?

11:28 So this is Colleen. Yeah, Maurice died in sort of in

11:33 the after, sorry, before Port Arthur, but yeah, sort of not

11:38 that long actually before Port Arthur.

11:41 So we obviously haven't heard from him.

11:43 So that's Martins. Well, as Carlene put it, she

11:46 said it probably would have happened if he was still around.

11:49 Unfortunately so. So Maurice, yeah.

11:52 So all of the interviews that I've seen obviously are just

11:56 with Colleen on her own. Yeah.

11:58 And I have a. Lot of empathy for her.

12:00 She definitely she has chopped and changed a bit right around

12:04 whether she has an opinion of he was it was him that did this or

12:08 whether it wasn't him that did this.

12:09 And I can fully grasp that as a mother, you don't want to think

12:13 that this is what your child could do.

12:16 And obviously, unfortunately, there was conspiracy theorists

12:19 involved, you know, around this and who've planted seeds with

12:22 her that it, you know, you would grasp at anything to go.

12:25 My kid didn't do this. So I can fully empathise with

12:28 that. But I know to this day she has

12:31 changed that opinion and does believe that he did do it.

12:35 But yeah, yeah, it breaks my heart that she's, I mean, she's

12:38 raised a child and in the best way she could, and that this is

12:43 what he's done. To be linked to that is really

12:46 hard. It would be horrendous.

12:48 I can't imagine. I mean, you have no control over

12:52 what your adult child does. We know there are psychopaths in

12:56 the world who've been brought up by very loving families who, you

13:00 know, have no inkling or, you know, any idea that this was

13:06 going to happen. But I what I found interesting

13:08 was that Colleen said that right from a really young age, Martin

13:12 was troubled and there was something different about him.

13:16 She said he when he was around two years of age.

13:19 So first of all, he was really late to start talking.

13:22 He was very delayed in hitting those those early milestones.

13:26 Yeah. And yeah, she so, yeah, very

13:29 slow to develop language. And he also had difficulties

13:33 forming relationships with people.

13:36 She said that she noted that there was a time where and he, I

13:39 think this was around two years of age where he just stopped

13:42 wanting any physical affection from her or from Maurice.

13:47 So there was there was that sort of like stopped at a really

13:50 young age. Yeah.

13:52 And he was very destructive from a young age as well.

13:54 He was like, he'd destroy toys. He'd he'd just, he was

13:59 destructive. He'd he'd go around wrecking

14:01 stuff all the time. Yeah.

14:03 And I look and now looking at it back from like the knowledge

14:05 that we have now, yeah, the and obviously has been assessed

14:08 later in life, but in the 90s it wasn't typical for kids to be

14:13 assessed for various disabilities etcetera.

14:18 So they didn't know that there was possibly a way of knowing

14:23 what this is and working with those needs that he had.

14:27 So I think that's where this story gets really sad because

14:29 this is a boy who's gone through life without intervention and

14:32 acknowledgement of his difference, kind of which is

14:34 not, you know, it's not a bad thing, but to go through life

14:38 thinking that that's his, his brain was, you know,

14:41 neurotypical and to and, and as a family, not knowing how to

14:44 manage this difference, it's challenging.

14:47 So. Yeah, it would have been so

14:49 difficult for them to manage not having that context.

14:53 Yeah, I mean that's the thing we talk about now like, you know,

14:55 being able to know that there's ways that we can work with

14:58 children with either neuro diverse, you know, and into

15:00 adulthood and working with children with adults who are

15:02 neuro diverse and how we can adapt things and accommodate

15:06 different needs. Now it's so important because

15:09 then we grow better humans in general, rather than

15:13 unfortunately for Martin, Martin not being diagnosed in any way

15:18 or any intervention. He has grown up in a very

15:22 isolated world in his own mind. Definitely.

15:25 So. I mean, it's there was a quote

15:27 here from it was actually the no, it wasn't in the I thought

15:31 it was in the transcript of the court hearing, but it wasn't.

15:34 It was actually a news article I read and that they were talking

15:37 about that if we have a wider understanding of the kind of

15:40 brain development and psychiatric issues that can lead

15:43 to such catastrophic disasters, maybe we can avoid them.

15:47 Absolutely. And I strongly believe in this

15:50 case that this could have been avoided had he received the

15:53 appropriate supervision, intervention, medication and

15:57 counselling. And I think what Kathleen says

16:00 with Maurice passing away when he did, I definitely think that

16:04 had an impact on this too because Maurice really kept

16:07 Martin in check and was like, it must have been exhausting for

16:10 him, but he was actively controlling him on a day-to-day

16:14 basis to keep him in line and to keep him focused on something

16:17 other than. But the thing that I do find

16:19 interesting is that Maurice introduced him to guns.

16:22 Yeah, as a way of focusing his attention to something that he

16:27 could be doing. But then Martin being who he

16:30 was, he's taken that to the NTH degree.

16:32 Yeah. So when Maurice gave him his

16:35 first air rifle, he would lie down on a Creek trail and like,

16:41 literally shoot at people going past.

16:43 He'd shoot at birds, Yeah. And torture them if they didn't

16:46 die immediately. There were a lot of behaviours

16:49 there that were potentially. Red flags.

16:52 Absolutely. Could come if weren't if it

16:54 wasn't, yeah, controlled in some way in like in which obviously

16:57 his dad was able. To do, yeah.

16:58 But with him not being around, and that wasn't, I think, the

17:01 forethought in his mind, like, what if I'm not here one day?

17:03 Yeah, exactly. You know, you don't want to live

17:05 life thinking like that. But yeah, I think it was

17:08 obviously a great outlet for him, but at the same time it it

17:11 LED for to something greater. Than that, absolutely.

17:13 Yeah. He became obsessed with guns.

17:15 Yeah. When he was a little kid, he was

17:18 setting firecrackers alight, and he set himself on fire and he

17:22 ended up in the hospital for a week or so.

17:25 And the local TV news interviewed him And go onto

17:29 YouTube and have a look at that video.

17:31 Because it says so. Much it says, so much the late

17:34 the interviewer. The journalist asks him.

17:37 So now that you've done this to yourself, well, you never play

17:40 with firecrackers again. And he's like, Oh no, I will.

17:42 There was no. Question but haven't you learnt

17:44 your lesson and. He's like, no.

17:46 You know, actually he goes, yes, I've learnt my lesson, but I'll

17:47 do it again. And that's that intellectual

17:50 disability there of like not connecting the two of like

17:52 learning a lesson. You don't do it again because

17:54 you get hurt. It's that I've learnt my lesson,

17:56 it's great fun, I'll do it again.

17:58 It was awesome. Yes, I got burnt, but like, it

18:00 was great. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

18:03 I mean, and that was something else about him was that he was

18:06 so typical in every other way. It was one of those he had his

18:09 disabilities were not visible in that sense.

18:12 Yeah. People had expectations of him

18:14 to meet the standard of what would you consider normal.

18:18 And so but his his brain was not functioning at the same level as

18:21 children his same age and into adulthood then not he was

18:24 functioning at 28 at approximately about the age of

18:27 1111 year old. Yeah.

18:28 So an 11 year old with a fair bit of money because of things

18:33 that we can go into and also access to firearms.

18:37 I mean, it's a recipe for disaster.

18:38 Absolutely. He had no impulse control.

18:40 He had, he just acted on every whim without sort of

18:43 consequence. And again, you know, this is

18:47 skipping a little bit further ahead, but when you see him

18:49 interviewed post the massacre, you can see that he has no

18:52 concept of what he's just done or the ramifications of it.

18:57 So he was suspended from school when he was in high school

19:03 because of lots of different reasons, a lot of behavioural

19:07 issues. The psych assessed him as having

19:09 an IQ of 66, so it's a low IQ. That would qualify him for a

19:13 special development school. Absolutely.

19:15 At this point in time, like so, he.

19:17 I believe it did back then. Yeah, it did.

19:18 But there was no access. And this was it.

19:20 There was a special program at the high school, Yeah, which he

19:24 did attend, and he was enrolled in that special program, but it

19:27 wasn't like a special development school.

19:29 The intervention that he could have, that's exactly right.

19:32 And the part of part of that would be TASI is a state of

19:35 Australia, but it's it wouldn't have had all of what would be

19:38 available living on the mainland necessarily.

19:41 In that sense, their education system is fabulous.

19:44 But yeah, I dare say it wouldn't have been as as big and

19:48 accessible in terms of that down in that.

19:49 Area the the population or the demographic necessarily there to

19:53 sustain, you know, a model like that exactly when he was

19:57 suspended from school, he was assessed by a psychologist and

20:01 or a psychiatrist actually, and he was diagnosed with having

20:05 schizophrenic tendencies. Yeah.

20:08 Which I think is really interesting.

20:12 That was a single intervention at the time.

20:16 It's not like he then went to see that psychologist ongoing at

20:20 that point in his life. Yeah.

20:22 And again, I think that's a missed opportunity.

20:25 Yeah, I mean, later on, more diagnosis and more closer

20:29 looking at him, they found that they weren't so here weren't

20:33 schizophrenic. Yeah, tendencies, but they found

20:36 there was multiple other things going on for him.

20:38 But on the surface it could have looked schizophrenia.

20:40 Yeah, but looking deeper, there was a lot more going on for him

20:43 than just yet than that. I shouldn't say just because

20:46 that's something to, you know, for people.

20:47 Many people live with schizophrenia but don't also

20:50 commit massacres. So it doesn't necessarily, it

20:52 sounds horrific having schizophrenia, but it's it's

20:55 actually a manageable condition. It's diagnosed, etcetera.

20:59 So yeah, that, that's really interesting.

21:01 That's what they sort of focused on.

21:04 Yeah. It's a bit of the sign of the

21:05 time though as well. I think so, and I think these

21:08 days we know so much more about it.

21:09 It's so much more out in, you know, in society, like

21:13 everybody, it's, it's a lot more talked about.

21:16 There's not the same stigma that there was back there.

21:18 I'm sure there is absolutely still stigma for people for sure

21:21 with these conditions, but it's not so much as back in the 90s,

21:25 at least people are talking about it.

21:27 We all know neurodivergent children and adults and we

21:31 accept them as part of our community.

21:33 And, you know, you just, I think you and I have discussed this

21:36 before, kids at primary school these days are so accepting of

21:41 the way people are. And I, I love that because when

21:43 I was at school, it wasn't like that.

21:45 If you're a bit different, you were picked on and you were

21:47 teased or there was something, you know, everyone would be

21:50 like, what a weirdo. But I find especially with my

21:54 oldest son, you know, he's 10 years old now.

21:56 He, I love the way he just accepts people for who they are.

21:59 It it really. It's so beautiful, yeah.

22:02 It's lovely and I think. That's weirdness.

22:04 It's great the world go around like, you know, we need more of

22:07 it. And they're so accepting and

22:08 realizing that they're the traits that actually get change

22:12 in the world, you know? Yeah.

22:13 We need all types, yes. Yeah.

22:16 So I guess when Martin was a teenager, his parents were

22:22 having a lot of trouble controlling him.

22:23 So he's going through all these hormonal changes with the brain

22:27 of a much younger child. He became a bit of a nuisance

22:31 around Port Arthur. Yeah, he was really known as

22:34 just doing some fairly mischievous but nuisance type

22:36 things. Yeah.

22:38 Yeah. So he, he would, there was one,

22:41 it turned out to be his lawyer in the end, which they, they

22:44 worked out later on, But he would go to their house and try

22:47 and see he was selling rabbits. He'd go and shoot rabbits and

22:50 then he'd start and try and sell them to the local people.

22:52 But, and he'd got knock on people's doors and like, but

22:54 he'd like peer inside and want to, you know, just that he

22:57 didn't have boundaries. And so he would, like, make

22:59 people feel quite uncomfortable with how he would interact

23:02 because people had an expectation of, say, a 1011 year

23:05 old child standing at their door, but behave more like a

23:08 three or four year old, let's say, you know, of like, kind of

23:10 like what's in your house, Like, don't wanna come in.

23:12 Yeah, yeah. And people found that very

23:14 confronting and and a nuisance. So they really just veered away

23:17 from him, which can, I mean, that's got to be, yeah, really

23:21 impactful. Absolutely.

23:23 He'd bang on people's doors, though, until they opened the

23:25 door. Like for for minutes, he'd just

23:28 be like bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang

23:30 incessantly. Yeah, knowing they were home,

23:32 they obviously didn't want to answer the door to him, but he

23:34 wouldn't let up. No, because.

23:36 Late and later on that grew into because he ended up with a lot

23:39 of money he would travel a lot overseas because people on a

23:43 plane sitting next to you can't walk away from you they can't

23:47 exit the conversation they're stuck with you so and.

23:50 You kind of have to be a bit polite, don't you?

23:52 Because if you're stuck sitting and he'd, he'd go.

23:54 He'd go whole flight. Yeah.

23:56 And some of the time he would actually fly to just then turn

24:00 around and fly back home again. Yeah.

24:02 And so it was. He must have been craving that

24:04 company. And he couldn't.

24:06 He literally. Had he couldn't get it, he had

24:07 hostages there to listen to him and talk and listen to him talk.

24:10 So, yeah, I mean, we'd all, you know, not wanna sit next.

24:13 We wanna play necessarily. No way.

24:15 Thank you very much. Yeah, I'm.

24:18 Yeah, I'm sure plenty of people did the whole like, oh, I'm

24:20 gonna sleep now. Like, yeah, yeah.

24:22 Yeah, it's. Yeah, he's definitely a very

24:25 interesting person all around in that sense.

24:28 A psychologist who assessed him at one point for a disability

24:32 pension. So in Australia, if you're

24:33 unable to work due to a disability, you can be assessed

24:36 for a pension. So you get a A, it's quite a

24:39 small amount of money each week, but it's enough to sort of

24:41 sustain a very basic lifestyle. Yeah.

24:44 And he was assessed by a psychologist who who did say

24:47 that he was, there was no way he would ever be able to hold down

24:50 a job because because he rubs people up the wrong way.

24:53 So even a basic entry level position that potentially he

24:56 could have intellectually being able like was intellectually

25:00 capable of socially he wouldn't have been able to.

25:04 And so he was, he was given the pension.

25:06 But to kind of bolster that a little bit, he decided to start

25:11 his own lawn mowing business. Or anyway, so he'd go and

25:15 incessantly, still incessantly knock on people's doors and say,

25:18 you know, do you want me to mow? I'll mow for you.

25:20 Come on, I'll mow your lawn. And one day, just by pure

25:24 chance, I guess, he knocked on the door woman by the name of

25:28 Helen, now unbeknownst to him at the time.

25:31 So Helen lived in a mansion, but it was incredibly dilapidated,

25:34 overgrown. She had something like 40 cats

25:38 and 12 dogs or something like that.

25:40 So she was a bit of a bit eccentric, a bit of an eccentric

25:42 woman herself. So Brian Martin was 19 at the

25:46 time. I think she was like 54 when

25:48 they first met. And she was like, Yep, you can

25:53 mow my lawn. That didn't quite work out the

25:55 way it was supposed to because Martin couldn't quite figure out

25:57 how to use the lawn mower or something happened to the lawn

26:00 mower. And so she then decided that

26:02 she'd allow him to help her look after the animals and sort of,

26:07 you know, help clean up after them.

26:10 But this developed actually into what I can only gather as a

26:16 platonic friendship. From what I can see, there was

26:19 no sexual element to it, although they did come across

26:23 like that. They would go out into the

26:25 community like they were boyfriend and girlfriend or

26:28 mother and son. Like it's, it's, it's a really,

26:30 it's a relationship. An odd relationship, yeah, but

26:33 there's no evidence of it being like a sexual relationship

26:35 whatsoever. I mean, quite senior to him, but

26:39 she didn't have any children. No, I think she just really felt

26:43 for him and really talking. I wonder whether she saw

26:47 something of herself in him, like she was quite a recluse.

26:49 She lived in, as I said, lived in this mansion with her mother

26:53 at the time. She was actually heir to a

26:56 portion of the Tattersall's fortune.

26:58 So she was incredibly wealthy but had never worked real, I

27:03 think. Actually, I think she did have a

27:04 job at some point in her life, but for the for the majority of

27:06 her adult life, she didn't work and she was supposed to be

27:09 caring for her mother who was living in the house at one

27:13 point. Somebody, I think suggestions

27:15 have been made that it was Maurice who might have reported

27:18 them to the health authorities, but they reported this

27:22 dilapidated house to the health authorities.

27:24 They turned up and they've basically declared that the

27:28 house was just complete, a complete biological hazard

27:32 because apparently it was just so disgusting.

27:34 There was like animal excrement everywhere and they took both

27:40 Helen and her mother who I think her mother's name was like Hilda

27:43 or something, I can't remember. But they took her, took them to

27:47 the hospital and they X-rayed the mum and she'd actually had a

27:50 broken hip and it hadn't been treated.

27:52 So all that Helen had done was moved her from the bedroom

27:56 upstairs where she had a bed. Yeah, into the kitchen because

27:59 she could no longer get up and down the stairs.

28:00 And she was sitting upright in a kitchen, sleeping.

28:03 Sorry, upright in a kitchen chair.

28:05 I. Did not know if any of this.

28:07 For what was potentially up to two years, they don't know for

28:12 sure the timing of it. Once they got her into a nurse,

28:17 once they sorry, so she'd been in hospital, they got her all

28:19 better. They sent her off to a nursing

28:21 home and she died not that long after.

28:22 Well, that's interesting. I sort of thought you were

28:25 actually gonna say like, oh, she she came, you know, like did her

28:28 she was 38180 and she. Was in her 90s at the time.

28:32 Yeah, wow. But very malnourished.

28:34 And yeah, it was, it was not a good living situation.

28:37 Wow, Yeah, that's. Great.

28:39 So that kind of gives you a bit of an idea as to how Helen was

28:42 living with all this. So actually at that time,

28:46 Maurice took some long service leave and helped Helen and

28:50 Martin clean up the house and then moved into the house

28:53 shortly thereafter. Yeah, with, with Helen.

28:56 What did they do? They.

28:57 My God, what a what a time they had after this.

29:00 So they went on spending sprees. They would buy clothes and

29:06 shoes. In the space of three, two

29:09 years, sorry, they bought 30 brand new cars.

29:12 I can't find. Yep, I can't find what they did

29:15 with them. I don't.

29:16 I don't know whether they gave them away, whether they kept

29:18 them, I don't know. I know Martin Brighton had two

29:21 cars at the time of the massacre, which both were

29:23 originally. Well, well.

29:24 That's two, not 30, Martin. Martin couldn't own a car

29:27 because he didn't have a driver's license.

29:28 Well, yeah, so he they were registered in his name.

29:30 One of them was not the other one.

29:32 One of them wasn't registered. Helen was OK, but yeah, no, he

29:34 didn't have a driver's license. But yeah, he had two cars at the

29:38 time, which I understood were from Helen, but 30. 30 So yeah,

29:42 I couldn't find what they did with them, but Can you imagine

29:44 like and they were all brand new they just.

29:46 They were just regular cars. It wasn't like they were going

29:48 around buying like, you know, specifically.

29:50 No, they were like Volvos and Commodores.

29:52 There was not. I don't think there were any.

29:54 It's not like they were like buying these hotted up

29:56 collectibles. No, no, they were just regular

30:00 go down the local dealership and buy a car that you're gonna, you

30:02 know, the family car it was. Yeah, yeah, OK.

30:04 Interesting. And they'd, they'd eat out every

30:06 day as well. Like they'd go to local

30:10 restaurants and cafes and eat out every day.

30:12 And the cafe owners, I think didn't really like it when they

30:15 came around because they'd be wearing really odd clothes.

30:18 They'd behave, they'd put people off, put other customers off

30:22 because of the way they were dressed, the way they spoke, It

30:25 was all just a bit odd. Yeah, that's, that's really

30:28 super weird. It's super, super weird.

30:31 So Helen came to an untimely end because of at Martins hand.

30:36 Well, it's actually never been proven.

30:38 I mean we know this action, we know incidents like this had

30:41 happened in the past. That's that's been proven.

30:44 So they'd be driving along Country Rd. and Martin would

30:49 yank the steering wheel and like, make Helen swerve off the

30:52 road. So much so that she actually

30:54 confessed to a friend that she'd never drive more than 60

30:57 kilometers an hour. Because she was.

30:59 She knew. He would potentially do that and

31:01 this is that goes back to that sort of impulse control, not

31:04 thinking through the consequences.

31:05 That childlike brain just went adult body fun, Yeah.

31:08 So unfortunately there was an incident where he's, well, this

31:13 is what we think has happened, that he's done that and she's

31:17 swerved and rolled the car and in that she died.

31:22 Martin sustained some really pretty.

31:25 Yeah, serious. Injuries at the time, yeah, he

31:28 sustained a neck and a back injury.

31:31 Again, don't know specifics, but he was in hospital for seven

31:34 months after that. Very extensive.

31:36 Rehab stay. Yeah.

31:38 Yep, Yep. So that's like, you know, that's

31:41 horrible. So he's gone from living with

31:43 this woman. She's, you know, she's kind of

31:47 become his family. They're doing.

31:49 They spent all day every. Day together.

31:53 He's then gone through this hospital stint.

31:55 He's come out the other side, the beneficiary, the sole

31:58 beneficiary of Helen's fortune. Yeah.

32:01 So I think it was something like $550,000 in cash, yes, plus all

32:06 of her assets. I don't know how many cars they

32:08 still had in their possession at the time, but the the house they

32:12 also bought a farm. Yeah, there's a farm, there's a

32:13 couple of different properties. Currently there's a cottage.

32:16 Yeah, a couple of properties. There was, yeah, the farm,

32:18 'cause he did end up selling that.

32:20 Yes, I believe the assets were well over $1,000,000 in 1996.

32:25 Yeah. Yeah.

32:25 So a lot of money. Yeah.

32:27 And his mum and dad were quite sort of worried about that.

32:30 Yeah. So they actually petitioned the

32:32 state trustees to take over management of his money because

32:35 they wanted this money to last him.

32:37 Yeah, forever. For the rest of his life.

32:39 He'd had control over it. Well, for the for the very short

32:43 period of time, he did have control over it.

32:45 What was he buying? It's like bloody surfboards that

32:48 cost, you know, so much money. Yeah.

32:51 He didn't even surf. He never surfed.

32:53 He liked the surfer boy image, and he'd popped the surfboard on

32:57 the roof rack of his car. Tell everyone he was gonna go

32:59 surfing. Yeah, but he'd just sit on the

33:00 sand. Like, I don't think he ever got

33:02 in the water. Didn't like being in the water.

33:04 No, not just liked the look of it.

33:06 Yeah, yeah. So I don't know if I think did

33:09 he have a boat? He had a dinghy like it was a

33:12 blow up, like I think motorized, but like a blow up dinghy,

33:16 right? Yeah, OK.

33:18 Yeah. So he had, like he did buy

33:20 things. He had a lot.

33:21 Of and I guess his parents would have been like, this is not

33:23 going to end well, Yeah. So good on them for doing that

33:25 and for taking the responsibility away from

33:27 themselves as well. It's not like they wanted to

33:29 manage his money. No, it wasn't about them going

33:31 oh, well, let's get a piece of this pie ourselves, because they

33:33 were quite I think they weren't exactly, you know, they weren't

33:35 on the bones of their butt, their butts either, like I think

33:37 they would. They were fine financially.

33:39 So it wasn't that that would they would, you know, trying to

33:41 get their hands on the money. It was about making sure that

33:44 Martin had a, you know, a future and not going to just get rid of

33:48 all this money straight away and just buy random things, which, I

33:50 mean, Helen kind of instilled that in him.

33:52 Really like, Yeah. So I think very well done on

33:55 their behalf to do that. But yeah, it still meant that he

33:57 had plenty of just, you know, cash just dispose of daily.

34:01 Yeah. Yeah.

34:02 He became more eccentric around this time, too, in the way that

34:05 he dressed. Yeah.

34:06 And the way that he presented himself out in the community,

34:08 which people then it just made people sort of, you know, more

34:12 wary of him. He'd be wearing like cravats and

34:15 bell bottom suits and top hats and just weird.

34:19 Stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

34:22 Let's imagine it's like, you know, it's when you think about

34:24 your kid. And we used to walk out with

34:26 them all wearing, you know, Spider Man costumes and stuff

34:29 all the time and sit and have a coffee at the cafe with Captain

34:31 America. Yeah.

34:32 It's kind of that version of it, isn't it?

34:34 Like really in a bit, just in an adult version.

34:37 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're getting to the point

34:41 now where Maurice was becoming more and more depressed, I

34:46 think. So this is Martin's dad.

34:47 He had been actively managing Martin for such a long time and

34:51 I think it took its toll on him. He was increasingly dependent on

34:56 alcohol and I believe other drugs, like I think he was on

35:01 antidepressants. I degrade that, I think.

35:03 Yeah, yeah. And so when he was helping out

35:07 at the farm to were they was he getting ready, was Martin

35:10 getting ready to sell it at that point or was that not, not yet?

35:14 Yeah, no, he sold the farm. Yeah, you mean so?

35:17 So Maurice, in preparation to help him for that then, must

35:20 have been around that time he went there on his own for a

35:23 weekend to try and get stuff tidied up, I think.

35:26 Yeah. And I guess at some point

35:29 decided to take his own life. He put a weight belt around,

35:33 like a diving belt around his neck and around his waist.

35:37 He took out of a packet of 30 antidepressants.

35:42 He took eighteen. I think they found alcohol in

35:45 his system post mortem as well. And he went and drowned himself.

35:48 There were four dams on the property.

35:50 He went and drowned himself in one of the dams.

35:53 So what actually happened was somebody came to the farm

35:57 looking for or was looking to buy something and knocked on the

36:01 door. No answer.

36:03 And then saw that there was a note pinned to the door and all

36:05 it said was call the police. And so this young man called the

36:09 police and it took the police two days to find him because

36:14 they assumed he was on the property given the note.

36:17 Yes. And he'd actually so Maurice the

36:21 night before had actually phoned his wife and his daughter to

36:25 say, well, basically his wife says Colleen said that it was a

36:29 really strange phone call because she expected him to call

36:32 and say, Yep, I've arrived. But at the end of the phone

36:35 call, he said, I love you. And she said he just never said

36:38 that on the phone. And this the their daughter had

36:41 a very similar story. So the police kind of I think

36:44 knew that they were potentially looking for a body.

36:47 And Yep, they found him in one of the dams.

36:50 So again, another blow to Martin because really Maurice was his

36:57 only ally. I think from look, it's hard to

37:00 get a read on Colleen and where she was at at this time, but I

37:03 really feel like she'd kind of potentially distanced herself a

37:06 little bit from Martin because she just couldn't, she couldn't

37:10 cope and and quite understandably.

37:14 Yeah, I got that vibe to you. It's never said anywhere or

37:17 anything, but actually, because I actually started thinking,

37:19 were her and Marie separated because the way things were

37:22 written, it was at points where I kind of went, well, maybe they

37:25 were like, because it was, it was Martin and Maurice and then

37:28 there was Carlene. Like it was really, it was.

37:30 There was a distance there for sure.

37:32 Yeah. Yeah.

37:33 But I mean, they were still absolutely together.

37:36 Yeah. But yeah, the way things, I

37:38 don't know, just it's the way the vibe it sort of had around

37:40 it was very separated. Yeah.

37:42 Yeah. Maurice was clearly the carer of

37:45 Martin. It's really sad, but yes.

37:48 And as you said, I feel like this was, well, in fact, it

37:50 absolutely was another turning point, Yeah.

37:53 For Martin. Well, they, yeah, they certainly

37:55 believe that that was fairly much a trigger for what happened

37:59 at Port Arthur. Yeah.

38:00 He felt, Martin obviously felt very much like other people had

38:03 taken his dad away from him, you know, and out of his life.

38:06 There was obviously there was some other incidents where they,

38:09 he sort of felt that people had maybe done the wrong thing by

38:12 his dad. And so that's where this all

38:15 sort of triggered this action. Yeah.

38:17 So one of those things that he felt really strongly about was

38:20 that his dad wanted to buy a cottage, a holiday.

38:24 Like an AB and BB. But just back in the 90s, yeah,

38:28 just AB and B, like the regular style called Seascape, which was

38:32 a, a beautiful spot down in, in not far from Port Arthur, on the

38:36 highway into Port Arthur. And so his dad had wanted to

38:40 purchase that. However, some other people

38:43 didn't want to sell it. They wouldn't, they wouldn't

38:46 sell no matter how much money he was offering them.

38:48 And So what truth is behind that in terms of?

38:51 I actually thought that the place was on the market.

38:54 Sorry, you're right, there was another.

38:56 Place a little while to get the money together like he just

38:59 didn't have enough liquid assets at the time and so this other

39:02 couple Oh my gosh, I've written their names down.

39:05 I can't believe I've just. It's a.

39:07 Scared David and it's Sally, but she goes.

39:10 Her real name is. I'll find it.

39:12 It's in my notes somewhere. But they they bought the house

39:16 sort of in the interim while Maurice was trying to get the

39:18 money together for this house. They just went in and bought it.

39:21 And the real estate agent said, well, basically like you snooze,

39:23 you lose. Yeah.

39:24 Yeah. These people had the money ready

39:25 to go. That's right.

39:26 I sell it to them. Yes.

39:27 So. Yeah.

39:28 For the Martins was their surname.

39:31 Yeah, I know that that was. Confusing, but yeah, they're the

39:33 Martins and I'm fairly sure it's Sally.

39:36 And but she had that was her like she went by Sally, but she

39:38 had a full of something else. Yeah, yeah.

39:41 So but there was another block of land even that they did own

39:45 in the local area that that his dad wanted to purchase and that

39:48 that's what they didn't they they wouldn't sell that.

39:50 There was basically no, we're not selling that.

39:52 That's not for sale. So that was, there was another

39:54 cottage not far from Seascape. And he was like, well, if I

39:56 can't buy that because you've got in and purchased it, how

39:59 about if I buy that off you and that way I can have one too?

40:04 Yeah, but we weren't selling it. We don't want to sell it.

40:06 No matter how much money you offer us, we don't want it.

40:08 I see. Yeah, we want to keep that.

40:09 So because there was, it was quite a stretch of land that

40:13 they had in that area. So, yeah, there was sort of

40:17 those two hits, I think from that, from the same people for

40:20 the that Martin really assumed that that was what triggered his

40:23 their dad, his dad wanting to commit suicide.

40:26 He sort of felt like that was the the nail in the coffin of

40:29 like, well, if I can't have that land, then I'm really, you know,

40:31 I'm no good 21. And that's why where the

40:33 depression really hit hard. So whether that's why his dad

40:37 was thinking or not, I mean, we'll never know.

40:39 He didn't leave any more of a note other than call the police.

40:43 So you can only assume, and obviously that's what Martin has

40:46 assumed, that's what his dad felt.

40:49 And who knows really at the end of the day, but that is what

40:52 they basically believe has triggered him to for the actions

40:55 of the 28th of April. Yeah.

40:57 So I guess we're. We're at the date we're.

40:59 At that which is like full on. At the time, Martin had a

41:03 girlfriend and she'd stayed the night the night before, and her

41:07 account is that he set his alarm and she thought that was a bit

41:10 weird because he set up for 6:30 in the morning.

41:13 Now he had no job, no responsibilities, no

41:16 commitments, nothing to get up for.

41:18 So she thought it was a bit weird they got up.

41:20 Did you hear how old she was? His girlfriend.

41:22 No, tell me. 16 so I think she may have even been 17 by the

41:26 time this took place because they were together for about 8

41:28 months. I know she was definitely 16

41:31 when they first started dating and he was 27, so he was 28 when

41:34 this occurred. So she maybe she had a birthday

41:36 also. So maybe she was 17.

41:38 But yeah. Wow, I did not know that

41:41 actually. All that poor girl.

41:43 Wow. But apparently they had

41:45 breakfast. They had some cereal, toast with

41:47 honey and a cup of tea, had a shower and she went back to her

41:51 place. She went to go see her parents.

41:53 Yeah, and. Well, what happened next, Meg?

41:58 So, yeah, the morning of was yeah.

42:01 So he did quite a few things this morning after leaving the

42:03 house. He went to first of all, he, he

42:07 drove and went to like service station a number of places.

42:11 And in that situation, he, he clearly had a bit of a plan in

42:15 mind because. I feel like he had a plan, but

42:19 he didn't. He couldn't.

42:22 It's like he remembered it one step at a time.

42:25 Yep. And so like he went to two

42:27 service stations. The first one he went, he bought

42:29 a lighter. Which he he went in and then

42:32 went do you sell lighters? Yeah, you do great.

42:35 Then went back to his car and got the money to go in and buy

42:38 the lighter like. Against that's a really like

42:41 yeah, it's it's an odd. His whole actions throughout

42:44 this, I mean, are odd, that's for sure.

42:47 But yeah, he's it was quite methodical in what he was doing.

42:50 It was like almost like he mapped out every part of it.

42:53 But one of his like, interactions in that morning,

42:55 because so many people like, have been given, given evidence

42:58 in terms of, well, not evidence because there wasn't a trial,

42:59 but have given their side of the story to police that it's sort

43:04 of he had these interactions which people noted they like,

43:07 they remembered it because it was so odd.

43:09 And one of them, he even said to a guy just about the day as he

43:12 was chatting, he was like, well, you should go and have a coffee

43:14 down at Port Arthur later. Like, I just find that really

43:18 creepy. That's that he knew like, and

43:20 this is so this is prior to him getting anywhere near Port

43:23 Arthur, which I mean, we're talking about trying.

43:25 I was trying to actually look it up.

43:26 I forgot to look it up how far he travelled exactly.

43:29 But I. Think it was like 25 kilometers.

43:32 Yeah, It wasn't next door, like it was a bit of a drive down the

43:34 highway. He had to go.

43:36 Yeah. And through past Eagle Hawk Neck

43:38 and all that sort of thing, that it's quite a windy bit of Rd.

43:41 It's quite on the coast. So he obviously knew early on

43:45 that's where his ultimate goal was, was to get to the cafe at

43:49 Port Arthur. But for what reason other than

43:52 what he had? Well, because he obviously had

43:54 in his car already. He had his guns all in the car

43:57 ready to go. So he'd like, I think the week

43:59 before he'd gone to Maya, which is a department store, an

44:03 Australian department store, with his girlfriend, and they

44:07 bought a sport bag and he told her that he needed it for

44:10 squash, even though he didn't play squash.

44:11 Yeah, and he bought this bag and he was like, oh, it has to be

44:14 able to hold a lot of weight. And she sort of thought, oh,

44:18 weird, but OK mate, OK, whatever.

44:20 And so he bought this sports bag and then turns out that's what

44:23 he used to carry the guns and ammunition for, for the.

44:26 So he did this had been well like if you if you go by that at

44:29 least a week in the planning. This is it, yeah.

44:32 That he knew he was going to put his guns and things in the air.

44:34 Yeah. To take wherever he was going to

44:36 go. Yeah.

44:36 So. But so after his stops along the

44:38 way of the service stations, et cetera, he ended up at Seascape.

44:41 Now they. Like can I just just interject

44:44 there for one SEC? Go for it.

44:46 After stopping at the two petrol stations, he actually stopped at

44:48 a supermarket and just bought tomato sauce.

44:51 Yes. What was with that?

44:52 And he, they even asked him about that in the police

44:54 interviews. And he was like, I don't know.

44:56 Like, yeah, he, he couldn't, he had no answer.

44:58 No, I just bought tomato sauce. Like it was like there was no

45:01 rhyme or reason for it. Like I can understand obviously

45:04 at one of the petrol stations he bought gasoline, like the

45:06 canister of gasoline, the other one, the lighter.

45:08 And we know he then used that in the, in the, in the sort of

45:12 sequence of the crime. Yeah, tomato sauce.

45:15 Yeah. I don't know.

45:16 Was he thinking? Was I just?

45:18 Yeah. Yeah, was he like I'm going to

45:19 buy pie while I'm down there, but I there is no way I'm paying

45:22 $0.20 for sauce. Well.

45:23 They have the the cheap brand sauce.

45:25 I want the real good stuff. Yeah, I don't know.

45:28 Or my other thought was was he going to use it to, I don't

45:32 know, fake something somewhere, I don't know, like use it as

45:35 fake blood? That was my only other.

45:38 I hadn't thought about bringing. In the the bringing in the

45:41 tomato sauce because I was like, well, that's weird.

45:44 So weird. But I don't think you can ever

45:47 understand how his brain works really fully.

45:49 No, No. Yeah.

45:51 So, yeah, after his odd purchases, he headed to

45:55 Seascape, which is where the Martins were and were living.

45:59 And that we believe that he entered that house and and he

46:04 killed him at that that point. Yeah.

46:05 So this was at 11:45 in the morning.

46:08 Yeah. So to give you a bit of context

46:09 on time, he shot the wife 1st and then he stabbed the husband

46:16 to death. Yeah, yeah.

46:18 So that would they, he, they were, he's drawn pictures of

46:22 this event he's done in in the police interviews etcetera and

46:26 with his lawyer and all that sort of thing.

46:28 He drew these pictures of what he did, which is something in

46:31 that just oh, actually we'll go, I'll say it now.

46:33 So the pictures he draws, there's these little stick

46:35 figures and and drawings of what and very detailed drawings of

46:39 the events of the day. And I would love a psychiatrist,

46:41 psychologist, somebody to come and tell me the answer to this

46:44 because it did just stand out to me.

46:45 It was never mentioned in one of the must have been the Channel

46:47 Seven one, I think it was that I saw the pictures in.

46:49 So when he draws himself at Port Arthur, he is black and all the

46:54 victims that he draws are red. Now, to me that makes some sort

46:57 of sense in terms of color coding of things, totally.

47:00 The Martins. However, when he draws that

47:02 scene, he is red and the Martins are black.

47:06 I don't know. Psychologist hat, please bring

47:09 it. Just going to Chuck that on

47:10 quickly. Yeah, my very, very incredibly

47:13 amateur psychologist. Hat yeah, I've got my thoughts,

47:15 but I want. Is it that he felt like he was a

47:17 victim to the Martins? That's what that was my take of

47:20 it. OK, I.

47:22 Was like, and I'd love someone to tell me I'll get over your

47:25 you know, you got no idea or Yep, you're on the money like I

47:28 just it really stood out to me as I say, nothing was mentioned

47:30 of it was just here are the pictures in the in the the the

47:33 story that I was watching, but it just jumped off the page to

47:37 me of like something out of me of like this real difference of.

47:40 He clearly, I mean, color, definitely, yeah.

47:42 And he definitely felt like there were victims to this and

47:45 that the Martins were like bad people because they'd taken his

47:50 dad's dream away from him. Yeah, Yep.

47:53 Yeah, I just found that. Really.

47:54 Fascinating it is, anyway. So yeah, that's what so Seascape

47:57 that's occurred. So they've already passed away,

48:00 unfortunately, the mountains. He leaves Seascape and heads

48:04 further down the road and heads towards Port Arthur.

48:07 He arrives at Port Arthur at a roundabout.

48:10 It was around about 12/30, 12:45, I believe.

48:13 Yeah, yeah. And he goes and sits.

48:15 It goes into the, goes to the cafe there, the Broad Arrow

48:17 Cafe. There's two cafes on the side.

48:19 Have you been to Port Arthur? No, I never have.

48:21 Have you? Yeah, I have.

48:22 I, I went back in like 2008, I think I was there.

48:24 OK. Yeah.

48:25 So obviously after all of this occurred, which, you know, yes,

48:28 because everyone, it's well, it's a tourist destination.

48:30 And at that time purely a tourist destination in terms of

48:33 it was the old penal colony. It's fascinating to go and see

48:37 the space. It's beautiful, you know, these

48:40 ruins of buildings now that kind of you can go in and sort of get

48:43 an idea of how they were used. It was obviously, you know that

48:45 they used to send all the the real bad cooks down to Tassie

48:48 and and to live there. It obviously doesn't operate

48:50 anymore. Yeah, but it's beautiful like

48:52 jetty and things where the you can catch a ferry in as well

48:55 around from Hobart or you can come in via Rd. like it's it's a

48:58 really picturesque place and very interesting to see.

49:01 Not a tourist, you know, not not saying like that's.

49:04 Yeah. Anyway, I.

49:05 Think, I mean it's a really popular part of Tasmania.

49:08 I think it attracts something like 250,000 visitors a year.

49:11 Yeah. Well, on the day there were

49:12 about 500 people on site, which is a pretty average Sunday.

49:16 Yep, viewing at that time and in that time it.

49:19 Was a nice sunny day. It was about like 15 or 16° I

49:23 think. So, you know, people were out

49:24 and about wandering around, having a good look.

49:27 Yeah. How much was the cafe?

49:29 It was just the tail end of the lunchtime mad rush when he's

49:32 arrived, so the cafe was still quite full and busy.

49:36 And he goes in and orders himself a coffee and something

49:39 to eat and goes and sits outside with his big bag, his big sports

49:42 bag with him. He sits down outside and people

49:45 will say that he sat there and sort of almost talked to

49:48 himself, like talking to other people, like sort of been

49:51 talking to himself. And he commented on Wasps that

49:54 they weren't that were there were there were lots of Wasps

49:56 around or either there weren't enough Wasps around.

49:58 There's a lot of Wasps around today.

50:00 What a Wasps around today. Yep, and also he commented

50:03 around that there weren't many Japanese tourists on at the site

50:06 at the time. And this and the the reason this

50:09 is quite significant really is that his girlfriend also

50:12 commented to the police that he he often spoke about Wasps and

50:17 Japanese tourists. They were topics of conversation

50:19 that were quite obsessive to him.

50:21 So clearly a glink there if this was, this is who he was, who it

50:24 was that was there. Just really quickly a WASP is a

50:27 white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. I thought you meant Wasps as in

50:31 like European Wasps as in no. I read that inclined entirely

50:34 wrong then, did I? Yep, I thought he meant Wasps as

50:36 in genuine Wasps. No, no.

50:38 No, like he he was against Protestants for some reason.

50:41 Oh yeah. OK, how naive of me.

50:45 I know I've I've got the Japanese tourists one, but I

50:48 resumed that he meant genuine, like insects.

50:50 No, There you go. Yeah, but they were definitely.

50:53 But Topics, I think there was, yeah, I think there was a a

50:56 patron at the Broad Arrow Cafe who survived.

50:59 And he said he'd heard him make this comment.

51:01 I think he's the one who actually said in his statement

51:04 that Martin had said, oh, there's a lot of Wasps around

51:08 today. And he thought the same thing.

51:10 He thought, oh, Wasps like, oh, it's cool.

51:12 It's a cool day. Like, I don't think Wasps are

51:14 around at this time of year. Yeah.

51:17 And then it wasn't until a lot later that, you know, gathering

51:21 the back story and all of that, he said it was years and years

51:23 later that he was like, oh, right.

51:26 That's where he was going with that.

51:28 Interesting. I don't know how you can tell by

51:30 looking at someone that they're a Protestant, but OK.

51:34 I know lost on that one. Yeah, OK, cool.

51:36 Anyway. All right, moving on.

51:38 So he's finished his coffee and his food and has walked himself

51:41 back into the cafe. And unfortunately, this is where

51:45 he sits down at a table in the cafe, casually opens his bag and

51:50 pulls out. Now I'm going to pull this out

51:52 because I'm not a gun person. I.

51:55 Think we said this in our last episode too.

51:57 I've got no idea. I had to write.

51:58 I had to write it down as well. And even if we wrote it down, I

52:01 had to like, yeah. Well even I don't even know how

52:03 to read it because I know he had he had three guns in the bag the

52:07 and what he pulled out first was the Colt AR 15.223 semi

52:12 automatic rifle. Yes, he also had in the bag an

52:16 SLR semi automatic .3 O 8 rifle, a semi automatic Daewoo 12 gauge

52:22 shotgun and this blows my mind. 150,000 rounds of ammunition.

52:30 Any wonder he needed a really strong bag?

52:32 Yeah, I can't. How heavy would 150,000 rounds

52:35 be? I kind of imagine how heavy the

52:37 three guns would have been. Little on the ammunition.

52:39 Yeah, that's surely. He couldn't have carried that

52:41 all in one bag. Don't.

52:43 That blew my mind when I read that number like.

52:45 I read that, I read that same number and I was like, well,

52:48 maybe that's a typo. This is it was it was that I

52:50 read it in multiple places that I went. 15,000 rounds, you would

52:53 think is a lot. Yeah.

52:56 And where did he, where did he get all of this ammunition?

52:58 Well, I mean, it's I guess it's why what happened afterwards is

53:01 the right decision, because how come someone can access that

53:03 much ammunition? Who's letting someone purchase

53:06 that amount to go? Yeah, that seems legit.

53:08 Sure, sure, sure. Why not?

53:09 You need that Any any farmer needs that many rounds anyway.

53:15 God, sorry, pulls out his AR15 and starts to shoot now I won't

53:23 go through. Exactly the events of who was

53:27 shot at when and all that. So because as we say, you can

53:30 literally go to Wikipedia and it goes through shot by shot.

53:33 But something that really stood out to me was that there was 29

53:39 rounds fired in the cafe in approximately 90 seconds.

53:45 And those 29 rounds he killed 20 people which just apps.

53:51 Absolutely blows my mind. And seriously injured 15.

53:55 Yeah, and the people who were injured because the apparently

53:58 that shotgun can fire up to 600 meters away like the a distance.

54:03 Of 600. Meters.

54:04 And this is in a tiny little cafe, like it looks from the

54:07 photos I've seen, it looks really small.

54:10 A lot of the injuries and even some of the deaths were because

54:13 the bullets had ricocheted off like other people.

54:17 Other people or other Yeah, like walls.

54:20 And I was actually reading the transcript from the court

54:23 hearing when he plead guilty and they were going through like

54:27 that. There was, I think it was it

54:29 started out as 70 odd counts, right?

54:32 But what they all they decided between the judge and the

54:35 lawyers was that because many of the counts were like one, what

54:39 they called one action with multiple effects.

54:42 So, so then they what they did was for legal reasons, whatever,

54:46 they narrowed down how many counts he was going to be

54:49 charged with, convicted of, because and instead of naming it

54:53 as saying there was one cause, but there was, you know,

54:56 multiple counts, it became a single count with multiple.

55:01 OK, sure. So as in like the one bullet

55:05 that might have, like, killed somebody and then and injured

55:07 someone else? Someone else?

55:08 Yes, As that was counted as one sort of one count, one event.

55:12 Yeah. Oh, wow.

55:13 Yeah, yeah. And there was a legal reason why

55:16 they needed to do that. Sure.

55:17 But, yeah, because I, I don't know, I, I can't remember

55:20 exactly what the, the judge, it's all in the transcript as to

55:22 why the judge decided to do that.

55:25 And the lawyers did all agree that.

55:26 Yeah, that's, that's yeah, that's why it should be done.

55:29 Yeah. So it was more counts that he

55:31 originally was charged with. But by the time they got to

55:33 conviction, they actually narrowed it down.

55:34 I think there was about eight or nine incidences of where it was

55:40 one person, one shot, but one killed and one injured.

55:43 Like kind of. Situation.

55:44 OK, I see. Yeah.

55:46 Yeah, yeah. God, just sickening.

55:49 I mean, these people had nowhere to go.

55:51 They were trapped in this space with a huge rifle that he had.

55:57 I know that people have sort of said I had to have been some

55:59 sort of really great shot to have killed that many people

56:01 that quickly. But in that small space, I mean,

56:04 many of these hits were so close range they had no chance

56:09 whatsoever. They were trapped.

56:10 Rats literally. Absolutely.

56:12 People were trying to get out and they were locked doors and

56:15 things, you know, just part of part of being in businesses and

56:19 things like that. And you know, and trying to get

56:20 out just would have been absolutely horrific.

56:24 I can't even imagine. There were people further away

56:26 from the cafe who were hearing these gunshots who then were

56:30 like, what is that? Some people thought that it was

56:32 a show like that. They were, you know, re

56:35 reenacting things from the penal colony back in the day and

56:37 started heading towards the gunshots.

56:40 Because we live in a fairly peaceful society, generally

56:43 speaking, so that you know, the naivety of like walking towards

56:47 it to go, oh, what's interesting and happening.

56:50 And then they realized that this was not OK and had to then exit

56:53 and get out. So and he headed from the cafe

56:56 to a gift shop. Again, very small space shot

57:00 more people there headed out from the cafe and the gift shop

57:03 and towards there were coaches of buses parked up.

57:06 From hiding behind the coaches to kind of take shelter.

57:09 Everyone trying to hide, everyone trying to, you know, he

57:12 entered onto the buses. There was coach drivers who were

57:16 shot and killed doing their job like just Yeah, I read an.

57:21 Account I read an account of a family who hid under the jetty

57:26 and the the now woman, but she was a young child at the time.

57:29 She said she remembers looking at her dad's hand and all of his

57:33 hair was standing up on end and his hand was shaking.

57:36 And she said that's when she knew that something like really,

57:39 really, really bad was happening because she'd never seen her dad

57:43 in that state before or since. Like, you just can't imagine the

57:47 terror that those people would have felt.

57:49 There's another account of a, a survivor who was in the cafe at

57:53 the time. And he just played dead on the

57:56 floor. And Martin Bryant stepped over

57:59 him twice. And he thought, he said both

58:01 times. I he said, for I just had the

58:03 most peaceful feeling come over me because I'd resolved myself

58:07 to the fact that I was going to die God, and he didn't.

58:11 So Martin must have believed he was dead and stepped over in

58:15 both times and like, but you can't imagine that terror that

58:18 that man now has lived with for his the rest of his entire life.

58:22 He was interviewed not that long ago and he said that he still

58:27 can't sleep properly. He still has flashbacks.

58:29 He's a much older gentleman now. This will never end for them,

58:33 No. And I, I saw an interview of two

58:36 women who obviously survived, but both their husbands were

58:40 killed. And they, they both witnessed

58:42 each other's situation. They had, they never knew each

58:44 other at the time, but they're now very close because they both

58:47 had the similar situation of their husbands protecting them

58:51 and who who died. You know, it's just.

58:54 Heartbreaking. I've got goosebumps talking

58:56 about this. It's so horrible.

58:58 It's horrible, yeah. And to be honest, we haven't got

59:00 to the worst of it yet. No, this is the bit that I

59:02 found. I mean, all of this is so

59:04 horrible to think about and look into, but I think it's really

59:08 important to keep these people's memories alive because so many

59:13 people were brave in these situations, like those two

59:15 husbands who were sheltering their wives.

59:17 Like, what an absolutely heroic act for them.

59:21 The next, I guess Martin got back in his car after he

59:25 obviously decided I, I don't know whether this was in his

59:27 plan. Who knows?

59:28 We we won't know, but he gets back in his car and starts

59:31 driving back up the driveway out of Port Arthur.

59:34 Yeah, which apparently he as he was driving out, he's honking

59:36 his horn and yelling and just firing shots out of the car too.

59:39 Yeah. So even if people are thinking

59:42 like there was the people in Port Arthur around the cafe and

59:45 every area there and the coaches who are now reeling from his

59:49 destruction, if you're in any way thinking we're safe now, he

59:53 made sure people didn't feel safe at any point with that.

59:57 He he was. It's that nuisance like that

1:00:00 menace kind of attitude like he was.

1:00:03 He didn't give a fuck or he couldn't, couldn't think further

1:00:06 than what he was doing in that instance or but as he was going

1:00:10 back up the road, a mother and her two daughters, well, she

1:00:15 stopped him because she thought he was fleeing.

1:00:17 She had run 6. 100 metres thinking to try and get away

1:00:21 from where the. Three was and a six year old.

1:00:24 He stopped and he killed the mother first, then the

1:00:30 three-year old. The six year old was hiding

1:00:32 behind a tree and he haunted her down and murdered her too.

1:00:38 So this was Alana and Madeleine Mikak and their mother and their

1:00:44 father Walter Mikak subsequently started the Alana and Madeleine

1:00:50 Madeleine Foundation, which look in the in the events that

1:00:56 unfolded in Port Arthur on the day.

1:00:57 I think this is 1 positive that's potentially come out of

1:01:00 it is this foundation. It's horrible that it even had

1:01:04 to come to. Free to exist, It's.

1:01:06 Yeah. But you know, it still exists to

1:01:08 this day and it's going stronger than stronger than ever.

1:01:11 And you know, hats off to to Walter being left without his

1:01:16 daughters and his wife to start such a legacy for them.

1:01:19 And I think everyone in Australia knows the Alana and

1:01:22 Madeleine Foundation. It's everywhere.

1:01:24 Yeah, there's a lot of schools that use their E smart program.

1:01:27 So basically the idea of the foundation is to protect

1:01:30 children from violence. And so they they have a buddy

1:01:33 program where they you buy a buddy bag.

1:01:35 And so to set up children who come from traumatized

1:01:38 backgrounds, etcetera, to have the things they need to go to

1:01:40 school. They do all sorts of amazing

1:01:43 work for children. So I mean, huge, huge kudos to

1:01:47 Walter to come out of that situation, which I can't even

1:01:52 imagine his his grief. I can't.

1:01:56 It just breaks me. I think that's the moment of all

1:01:59 of this where Martin Bryant is the most evil human being to be

1:02:04 able to close range, do that to a child.

1:02:09 Two children I just and the fact that he haunted Alana.

1:02:13 Not, not to just he wasn't in any way in any sort of rush to

1:02:17 get away from there. That's he was.

1:02:21 He was there to absolutely destroy the world.

1:02:25 Yeah. After his evil knew no bounds.

1:02:28 Like if you're if you're able to do that to a child, what?

1:02:31 Does. You're not.

1:02:32 Human. No, absolutely not.

1:02:34 It's absolutely disgusting. So yeah.

1:02:36 So he's left Port Arthur now by this point, Yeah.

1:02:40 And he ends up, I think, OK, so this this bit, he's basically

1:02:46 driving out and he gets to another service station, does

1:02:49 he? Or was it a toll booth?

1:02:51 Toll booth, Yeah. I I just couldn't remember what

1:02:53 was. There, that stopped at.

1:02:54 Yeah, it was the toll booth. Could you pay to come, Eddie?

1:02:56 Could you come into the area to the tourist attraction?

1:02:59 Like. Yeah.

1:02:59 And there's the toll booth on the way out that he's again shot

1:03:02 more people. Yeah, and he actually.

1:03:05 So he took a hostage at that point too.

1:03:09 That could have been the service station.

1:03:10 I changed cars, yeah. So from the toll roof then to

1:03:13 the service station where I believe there was four people I

1:03:17 think in the car 3/4. I think initially there were

1:03:21 three in the first car, but then he, I think he murdered all

1:03:25 them. Yeah.

1:03:26 Did he? And then because he then there

1:03:27 was a fourth that he took hostage.

1:03:29 Yeah. Is that right?

1:03:30 So we got boyfriend and girlfriend couple.

1:03:34 He murdered the girlfriend after torturing her for a bit.

1:03:38 Like it was like, will I kill her?

1:03:39 Will I kill her? Will I kill her?

1:03:40 Won't I kill her? There was like something going

1:03:42 on there. Really, really fucking fun.

1:03:45 He then at at gunpoint, puts the boyfriend in the boot.

1:03:50 So yeah, he'd switched into their car, puts him in the boot,

1:03:53 and then he drives back to to. Seascape, Seascape.

1:03:57 Even on the way into Seascape though, there was actually the

1:04:00 there was an incident in Tasmania where a lot of police

1:04:03 had been called to. There were only two police

1:04:05 officers available in the area, which says a lot about this, the

1:04:08 demographic of the area too. So these two cops very smartly

1:04:13 decided to travel. They were getting the calls,

1:04:16 obviously people calling in for triple O like, you know, madly.

1:04:19 So they dispersed from where they were in two separate

1:04:22 vehicles, which I think was very intelligent, the two of them.

1:04:25 The rule of policing is that you never travel alone.

1:04:28 But in this situation that when there were only two cops

1:04:31 available, they decided to take two, two different routes to get

1:04:33 to where they were heading towards to make sure they're

1:04:36 covered all bases. And so when they did arrive

1:04:38 though, and they got to Seascape, I think, I believe

1:04:41 they're sort of, it's really hard to tell the timing from

1:04:44 what was what I've been reading. But from what I can gather, when

1:04:47 they've arrived and found where Mount Martin is at Seascape,

1:04:50 they have tried to ambush him a little bit, but they've ended up

1:04:55 in a ditch to escape him shooting at them.

1:04:58 And they were stuck in that ditch for hours.

1:05:01 He would literally like pop them anytime they moved or tried to

1:05:04 like get out of there. He would fire shots off it at

1:05:06 them, which that long as we're saying that long range rifle

1:05:09 that he had, he could shoot them from all sorts of, you know,

1:05:12 from anywhere to try and hit them.

1:05:14 And he had, he did have a scope on it.

1:05:15 Yeah. So they don't really know.

1:05:17 They don't know the extent of his ability with the rifle

1:05:20 either of like how if he did have the skills to be able to,

1:05:23 you know, sight and aim and get from that far away or exactly

1:05:26 how far away he even was because they couldn't if they stuck

1:05:29 their head up, banged, they'd shoot at them.

1:05:32 So I can't imagine that either. Like they had to sit it out for

1:05:35 so long. But they were able to radio to

1:05:38 their control like their boss. But yeah, because by this stage,

1:05:42 you know, they've they've got on the radio to Victoria and

1:05:45 there's people, there's the special operations unit coming

1:05:48 over. Yeah, which are in Essendon

1:05:50 Airport within 40 minutes or something of like in an

1:05:53 aeroplane. Yeah, within 40 minutes, which

1:05:55 is only like a. Half hour flight down from

1:05:57 Melbourne to to Tassie. Yeah.

1:05:59 So they were there pretty quickly.

1:06:00 When you think you know that to bring in, you know the, you

1:06:04 think you know Tassie, this island that's far away, but it's

1:06:07 not that far, really. Yeah.

1:06:09 Did you see an interview with the special operations officers?

1:06:13 I listened to the podcast version of that.

1:06:15 What's it called? I was actually there.

1:06:16 Yeah. It's a really good series.

1:06:17 It's. An ABC series, it's phenomenal.

1:06:19 There's lots of different. Yeah, I believe that was like

1:06:22 episode. One, it was episode one.

1:06:23 Yeah, it's it's really brilliant.

1:06:25 And I highly recommend people go and look at it because it really

1:06:27 gives a human element to all of this.

1:06:29 Yeah. What lovely men.

1:06:32 Just incredible men. But he said that I found this

1:06:35 actually very funny. He said they had no jurisdiction

1:06:38 in Tasmania, so when they arrived they had to be sworn in.

1:06:43 Yeah, and they couldn't find a Bible anywhere haha lol.

1:06:46 And so he's like, oh, just get a phone book.

1:06:48 It's got all the same letters and numbers in.

1:06:50 It I love their enthusiasm. Now let's just get this done

1:06:52 like so we can get into there and count these people like.

1:06:55 That was and they knew exactly what they were doing.

1:06:57 They were trained for this, yes. Not that we'd ever seen anything

1:07:00 like this in Australia up until that point, but thank God they

1:07:03 were trained. And you know, I think what

1:07:06 incredible human beings they were, they, you know, set up a

1:07:11 post, they got to, got to work. This particular officer, he said

1:07:16 at the end of all of it, when it was all wrapped up, he rang his

1:07:18 mum and his mum said why don't you just shoot him?

1:07:20 And he said because I'm not, I'm not like him.

1:07:23 I'm not as bad as him. That would make me just as bad

1:07:25 as him if I were to shoot him. And that was the thing their

1:07:27 rule is that they, I mean with it legal, their legal bound of

1:07:31 what they are down to do. They're only allowed to make

1:07:34 that shot if someone's being directly threatened or if he's

1:07:39 aiming and shooting at them. So they followed all the

1:07:42 protocols and the laws around what they can do.

1:07:45 And, you know, that's what they, yeah, they stuck to that because

1:07:49 I'm sure plenty of people would have just pot shop bang, like

1:07:53 gone. But yeah.

1:07:55 So this siege, I guess, happened like overnight.

1:07:59 So the police didn't know. They assumed he had a hostage.

1:08:02 In fact, they knew he'd taken at least one person from the

1:08:05 service station. They didn't know.

1:08:07 They thought he they that he had three hostages.

1:08:11 Well, he told them they had three because, well, they knew

1:08:13 that the the Martins were in there, but they didn't have no

1:08:15 idea if they were alive or dead. That's right.

1:08:17 So, but and so he did say to the cops that he wanted them to, he

1:08:22 would take one hostage with them and he wanted a helicopter to go

1:08:25 to Adelaide. Why Allen, Adelaide.

1:08:27 But anyway, who wants to go to Adelaide?

1:08:29 Don't come for me. Yeah.

1:08:30 So he want he wanted to take one hostage with him to Adelaide and

1:08:33 the other, he'd let the other two hostages go, but they were

1:08:36 already dead. Dead.

1:08:37 It all sort of, I mean overnight, you know, these

1:08:40 officers were at the command post.

1:08:42 You know what what one of the officers said was they were a

1:08:45 bit close to start with, so they decided to move a kilometre back

1:08:47 up the road. The real specialists in this

1:08:50 kind of situation rocked up and went, I think we might move the

1:08:52 command center back just because he started shooting at them, I

1:08:55 think from there and he could. Have gotten them like it was

1:08:57 within firing. Yes.

1:09:00 So luckily the specialists came in.

1:09:02 Yeah, yeah, guys. I think yeah, not right.

1:09:04 Yeah, but they were there until like 7:30 in the morning when

1:09:08 they actually started to see smoke coming from the house,

1:09:11 which is some. Pretty odd things overnight

1:09:13 though, too, like, and this guy was so interesting listening to

1:09:16 him saying like how it like literally they will lay there in

1:09:18 their filth, their own filth to like, just focus on like through

1:09:22 that site on what his job is. Yeah.

1:09:25 And so they could see him doing various things throughout the

1:09:28 night, even though we're talking hundreds of metres away.

1:09:32 Yeah. But they knew he knew what he

1:09:33 was doing. But he did some very odd things

1:09:34 overnight, like, yeah, did you read what I read what went on

1:09:38 overnight? I have a vague idea.

1:09:40 Yeah. Do you want to get into it?

1:09:43 No. You go.

1:09:43 Oh, he he just did a lot of strange, strange things.

1:09:49 He at what point? At what point do you think he.

1:09:52 So do you think he killed Greg? I think was the name of the

1:09:57 hostage. Is that right?

1:09:58 Mr. Peers? Mr. Peers?

1:10:00 Yeah, I think he was. I don't know.

1:10:02 I don't know when he would have done that.

1:10:04 Like at what point, whether, Because The thing is he, he

1:10:06 simply had no control over himself.

1:10:09 There were plenty of gunshots firing at the police, et cetera,

1:10:12 that at some point they couldn't pinpoint.

1:10:14 You know, we're hearing a gunshot go off.

1:10:16 To know that that's when he would have killed him.

1:10:18 That's right. There's no way of telling that.

1:10:21 I I honestly think that he's probably done that pretty early

1:10:23 on. I I don't know that.

1:10:24 I suspect so as well, yeah. Depending on like what leverage

1:10:28 he thought he had. But I mean.

1:10:30 Again, he always knew he was gonna kill him.

1:10:32 Yeah, exactly. We're talking about, you know,

1:10:33 someone's brain that we really can't.

1:10:35 There's not that ability to. He didn't.

1:10:38 Plan. No, I don't think one step

1:10:40 ahead. No, I don't know that he knew

1:10:42 from what he was going to do from that point on.

1:10:44 He was. Doing weird stuff like through

1:10:45 the windows and like he was popping his head up and.

1:10:49 Doing some he was taunting them and everything very odd, odd

1:10:52 things. I did read that he was naked

1:10:54 running around and stuff. He.

1:10:56 Was naked when he came out of the house once.

1:10:58 So at sort of 7:30 in the morning, the police see smoke

1:11:02 billowing out from the house. And I think actually they'd,

1:11:05 they'd had phone contact with him as well.

1:11:08 So the, the cordage had a cordless phone only.

1:11:12 And he was, you can listen to the actual recordings of the

1:11:15 phone calls on yes online. And he's just having these

1:11:19 regular old chats with the police officers and they're

1:11:21 like, so who have you got there with you and what are they

1:11:23 doing? And have you fed them?

1:11:25 And how much water have you had to drink today?

1:11:27 And just like, really? Trying to calm keep.

1:11:31 Trying to keep the situation under control, yeah.

1:11:34 But at some point the cordless handset, the battery died.

1:11:39 He never redocked. It they tried to get him to dock

1:11:41 it that many times, he would not do it.

1:11:43 And so once the battery went dead, they had no more

1:11:45 communication into the house. And that obviously put them into

1:11:48 sort of even more of a hyper vigilant mode.

1:11:51 Yeah. 7:30 in the morning, they see smoke billing out of the

1:11:54 house. And Martin Bryant, well, the the

1:11:58 special operations, the Victorian special operations cop

1:12:01 says I could tell it was a male because I saw his genitalia

1:12:04 running at me. So he was naked when he ran out

1:12:08 of the house. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:12:10 I believe potentially covered in his own filth as well, like.

1:12:14 He was, Yeah. Yeah.

1:12:15 I didn't hear that. Yeah.

1:12:17 Yeah. I don't know.

1:12:18 Yeah, what? I don't know what he was

1:12:19 thinking. Or what was going on in that

1:12:21 house for that time. So just horrific.

1:12:24 Horrific. Yeah, stuff.

1:12:27 Yeah. Sorry, the man's name was Glenn,

1:12:31 not Greg Glenn. Yeah, Glenn Pears.

1:12:34 Yeah. Yeah.

1:12:35 So Martin sustained some fire injuries, like some burns, no

1:12:40 gunshot wounds at all to his body, which, as I said, goes to

1:12:44 the integrity of the police officers who were managing that

1:12:49 that scene. To this day, the motives are not

1:12:52 clear. We have no idea why Martin

1:12:55 Bryant did this. No, why he went to Port Arthur,

1:12:58 we don't know. He was at one point banned from

1:13:01 Broad Arrow Cafe because he just, he was weird and he would,

1:13:04 he would make patrons feel like really uncomfortable.

1:13:07 And so they'd banned him before. So they don't know whether or

1:13:10 not. And he used to walk his family

1:13:13 dogs around Port Arthur, right, for hours and hours and hours

1:13:17 and hours and hours on end and to the point where he was like

1:13:19 an absolute nuisance. And the security guards who were

1:13:23 there would say to him, come on, mate, it's time to move on.

1:13:25 Like, you've been walking around the gardens for, you know, the

1:13:28 grounds for hours. So maybe he had, like, a weird

1:13:30 fascination with the place. I really don't know.

1:13:33 Or was it more to do with Japanese tourists and Wasps that

1:13:36 he had some sort of weird obsession with?

1:13:39 I don't know. I think he I know about the fact

1:13:42 that he knew it was a place where there was going to be a

1:13:43 lot of people in a small space. Yeah, I.

1:13:46 Don't know what else was it about that place that he chose

1:13:49 it. Don't know when he was

1:13:51 interviewed by police. It's disgusting.

1:13:53 The interview is awful. He laughs.

1:13:58 He looks disinterested. Yeah, they say to him, you know,

1:14:01 you murdered 35 people. And he goes, that's sad, isn't

1:14:04 it? That's horrendous.

1:14:06 Yeah, there's a real disconnect there and a real like, I mean,

1:14:08 you see them mentally, not mental or else he doesn't have

1:14:11 mental, mental, intellectual disability.

1:14:14 You kind of see they're that disconnect.

1:14:15 He's absolutely got a mental illness as well.

1:14:18 Yeah, I think that that's probably, yeah, you're probably

1:14:20 right. But like there was one moment

1:14:22 where he he thinks the cameras off.

1:14:25 Yeah. And he says, guess you will find

1:14:27 the person who who did this. Me like, yeah, it's really.

1:14:32 And then like, and the guy goes and then he sort of says to the

1:14:34 cop, you know, he probably should have your cameras on for

1:14:36 that, you know, and the cops, like we do actually still have

1:14:39 the cameras running. And you can see this look on his

1:14:41 face kind of change of like, oh, crap.

1:14:44 Yeah, yeah. He also says to them, he's like,

1:14:48 you see, if people didn't do these unfortunate things, you

1:14:51 guys wouldn't have a job. I find that so interesting

1:14:55 because the cop really literally just goes, you're not wrong.

1:14:58 And and The thing is, it's not like these cops do this job

1:15:00 because, oh, they want people to do these actions.

1:15:02 A world where we don't need police to investigate these

1:15:05 things would be amazing. Yes, but unfortunately there are

1:15:08 people that commit these horrendous acts.

1:15:11 Although I mean, there was a massive reduction after this

1:15:14 because I mean, OK, I think 2 positive things came out of

1:15:18 this. The first positive thing being

1:15:20 the Alana and Madeleine Foundation.

1:15:21 Yeah. And the second positive thing

1:15:23 being gun reform in Australia. It was public outrage at the

1:15:26 time. How did this person get these

1:15:28 guns? How did he buy all this

1:15:29 ammunition? Our Prime Minister at the time

1:15:32 was John Howard and he really took immediate action on this.

1:15:35 Immediate like within 12 days, Yep of this occurring, Yep, he

1:15:39 was like on it and said this has got us, this cannot happen.

1:15:42 Yeah, so he instigated a buy a buyback scheme.

1:15:45 Yep. And there's images online as

1:15:48 well of this and I actually remember this as a kid.

1:15:50 Mm hmm. Of 10s of thousands of guns

1:15:52 getting crushed. So basically the government

1:15:55 would give you had to surrender your weapons.

1:15:58 So this was semi automatic rifles?

1:16:01 Certain ones that were listed, yeah.

1:16:02 And then they also change the laws around how do you can

1:16:05 access guns. So it's not doesn't mean people

1:16:07 do not own guns in Australia. Yeah, people own guns, but you

1:16:10 need to have a legitimate reason and also meet criteria to be

1:16:12 able to own a gun. And also, you can't just go out

1:16:14 and buy one. There's nice waiting of

1:16:16 criteria. There's waiting periods.

1:16:18 Yeah, you have to have them stored appropriately.

1:16:20 Yeah. There's lots and lots of

1:16:22 conditions that need to be met now in order for an Australian

1:16:26 person or Australian resident to acquire a gun.

1:16:28 Mm. Hmm.

1:16:29 It really changed the landscape of our nation in that way.

1:16:33 So in the lead up in the preceding 18 years to Port

1:16:37 Arthur, there had been 13 mass shootings in Australia, a mass

1:16:41 shooting being of four or more people since 1996.

1:16:46 In this gun reform we have not had well actually.

1:16:50 Depends on how you. It depends on how it's defined.

1:16:52 Defined because if it call it, if it's family within a

1:16:55 household, then there's more, but if it's public, yeah,

1:16:58 there's none. Yeah, zero.

1:17:00 So we don't have the school shootings etcetera that America

1:17:03 have on a regular basis. Yeah, I have to say, like I'm

1:17:07 not a big one on politics and politicians, right.

1:17:10 But this is one act that a politician did that is.

1:17:13 So I feel like has impacted our society in such a positive way

1:17:18 that John Howard is like the only Prime Minister that I

1:17:20 really connect with in terms of that.

1:17:22 I have a whole lot of respect for any other politician, you

1:17:26 know. Take them or leave them.

1:17:28 Take them or leave them. Like I couldn't care less.

1:17:29 But yeah, John Howard to the point where I remember being, it

1:17:32 would have been in 2006, I think.

1:17:35 Yeah. Commonwealth Games.

1:17:36 So this is well past 10 years past this all occurring.

1:17:39 Yep. I was at the Commonwealth Games

1:17:41 and he just happened. I was coming out of the hockey

1:17:43 and he was going into the netball sort of stuff.

1:17:45 And I realized from that the crowd was gathering kind of

1:17:47 thing, that somebody was around and kind of like, oh, yeah,

1:17:50 celebrity, whatever, all that kind of thing.

1:17:52 And then when I realized it was John Howard, I was like, no,

1:17:54 gone over. I shook his hand.

1:17:57 And it's one at the moment where I kind of go, I'm really proud

1:18:00 of Australia to make those decisions.

1:18:01 And that this man was the one who did that, that I, I really

1:18:05 resonate with him in terms of that way that I was like, no,

1:18:08 this is someone I want to shake a hand off.

1:18:09 And I do. I always think of that moment

1:18:12 like that. We are so lucky to live in

1:18:14 Australia where we do have strict gun laws because to send

1:18:18 my kids to school in America, I don't think I could.

1:18:20 I couldn't. I absolutely couldn't.

1:18:22 But I agree with you and all of the things that you were saying.

1:18:24 Although I would like to attack John Howard's eyebrows with some

1:18:28 eyebrows. That's you and your eyebrows

1:18:29 situation. See I can see the difference in

1:18:31 the videos. Lack of care of eyebrows for

1:18:34 eyebrows. And look, he, he was a bit of a

1:18:39 bit of embarrassing, you know, you would watch some interviews

1:18:43 with him and you think, oh. God, yeah.

1:18:45 And there's certain things about him that.

1:18:47 Oh. Yeah, he.

1:18:48 Did do, but this was one thing. God.

1:18:50 He was our Prime Minister at the time, I think.

1:18:52 Our Prime Minister could have done what he did, No, Because I

1:18:55 mean, there's images of gun nut people, you know, with him, with

1:18:59 a bulletproof vest on, with them protesting around what he was

1:19:02 doing. I mean, I have to say the Venn

1:19:05 diagram of gun nuts and conspiracy theorists, well, it's

1:19:08 like a full circle. I.

1:19:09 Was going to do that fully over. That what is with that?

1:19:12 Yeah. So I mean, he did something

1:19:15 that. I mean, I know in America

1:19:16 they've tried a number of times to bring these things, you know,

1:19:18 and try and do it in ways because they never get anywhere

1:19:22 because no. It's their Second Amendment,

1:19:24 right. If you want to go a little

1:19:25 deeper into this, there's some really, really good stuff out

1:19:29 there. Yeah, In particular, there is a

1:19:32 John Oliver Peace. So he's a British journalist,

1:19:36 essentially. He's a comedian as well, but he

1:19:39 interviews American parliamentarians or whatever

1:19:42 about gun rights. Yeah.

1:19:44 And then he interviews Australians.

1:19:46 So he interviews John Howard. He interviews a politician from

1:19:50 Queensland who basically sacrificed his entire career to

1:19:53 support John Howard's reform. And the juxtaposition is

1:19:59 incredible. Yeah, the Americans lack.

1:20:01 Yeah. Yeah, totally.

1:20:02 We should. 100% have our right and we we shouldn't have to wait

1:20:07 even an hour to get a gun if we want to buy a gun, that's our

1:20:09 right to buy a gun yeah, I know this is getting a little

1:20:12 political now but it is a really interesting thing so just Google

1:20:16 John Oliver gun reform and watch it's a three-part little mini

1:20:21 yeah mini series go and watch it he's.

1:20:23 Just so old with that stuff I like.

1:20:24 You enjoy it? Yeah, it's really good.

1:20:26 Another thing is what what we were talking about before he's

1:20:30 watching. I was actually there on the ABC.

1:20:32 That is an awesome series as well.

1:20:34 And the other thing that I watched to sort of that was

1:20:38 entertaining and it wasn't it was based on truth, but it was a

1:20:43 dramatization. It's called Night Tram, which is

1:20:46 Martin backwards and he used to be teased and that was sort of

1:20:51 like a nickname that kids called him when he was younger.

1:20:54 Another really good little mini series to watch if you want to

1:20:57 sort of look at more about Martin's early life and what led

1:21:00 up to Port Arthur. The actual Port Arthur massacre

1:21:03 isn't sort of part of that series, but there's so much

1:21:06 information out there about this and you know, everything that's

1:21:11 happened in Australia since with thanks to the gun reforms.

1:21:14 Yeah, I think between, you know, gun reforms, which I think we've

1:21:18 got right in Australia now what we need to get right is mental

1:21:21 health and also diagnosing and etcetera of these disorders in

1:21:26 people correctly, then we might be able to intervene better with

1:21:31 these. And yet earlier, like, I mean,

1:21:34 it's not to say that just because you behave oddly that

1:21:36 you're going to be a person who's going to murder someone

1:21:38 or, you know, commit a complete massacre, but that is one way of

1:21:42 preventing horrific things that can occur.

1:21:45 And so I think we're, you know, slowly, slowly getting there.

1:21:49 As we say, we're definitely our generate our kids generation are

1:21:52 better again at accepting people and making sure that then that

1:21:55 then mental health isn't impacted by difference.

1:21:58 Yeah, that way we've got a long way to go through still.

1:22:00 Agreed. Yeah, agreed.

1:22:01 Just in closing, I think for us as Australians, this was sort of

1:22:06 nation defining the fact that we had these nationwide gun reforms

1:22:10 following this horrific event that is so, so etched into the

1:22:15 minds of all Australians. I know homicides using guns have

1:22:18 been decreased by 60%. Suicides using guns have like

1:22:24 basically dropped off. Yeah.

1:22:26 And we, as we said before, there haven't been any publicly mass

1:22:30 shootings since. So thank God we live where we

1:22:34 live. Oh yeah, definitely, definitely.

1:22:37 It's something that, yeah, I'm very proud of Australia for.

1:22:39 Me too. Yeah, that's probably a good

1:22:42 note to leave it on. Do you have any shout outs for

1:22:44 this week, Meg? Well.

1:22:44 There is one actually. What's that on YouTube?

1:22:48 It was a person by the name of I've got a Mayor Rice, I believe

1:22:52 it was. She's been commenting a fair bit

1:22:54 on our YouTube clip of the Meninders brothers.

1:22:57 It was has been released recently.

1:23:00 And so it was loving that the comments are coming through and

1:23:02 chatting back and forth. Love that, love it.

1:23:04 Yeah, love it. So please keep keep commenting

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1:23:38 Yeah, sounds great. Yeah.

1:23:40 All right. Well, have a great week

1:23:41 everybody, and thanks again for joining me.

1:23:43 See everyone, bye. Stay curious, crying besties.