Episode 58 - Childers Palace Backpackers Hostel Fire

0:15 Welcome back, crime besties for another episode.

0:17 Here we are again. Hello Friday again love.

0:21 Friday's best day of the week. I think so, especially when

0:24 you've had a week like you've had, you've had a a busy one and

0:27 what's going? On yeah, lots going on.

0:29 It's been crazy. We're just caught up.

0:31 We're we're, we're nicely caught up.

0:33 Yeah, yeah, that's it, Catch. The people up now.

0:35 Yeah, that, that's exactly right.

0:37 We actually haven't spoken a lot this week because you've been so

0:40 busy. The boys have had those extra

0:42 days with their dad which means we don't see each other at pick

0:45 up on those days and really throws things out actually.

0:48 But weirdly my boys have now decided that a kiss and go is

0:51 the way to go, which wonderful not matter.

0:56 Yeah, normally in the mornings that's my clear threat.

0:58 I can aim at them if like we're running late, if we are any

1:02 later guys, we have to do a kiss and go.

1:04 So it get you to go though and they normally then like pull

1:08 power through and 30 seconds are in the car.

1:10 Yeah, they've leaned into it now.

1:12 And if that threat is a oh, OK, well, so we got like 10 more

1:16 minutes then and we can just do a kiss and go like, well, yeah,

1:20 if that's what you want to do. Sweet, especially on a wet when

1:23 the weather's been shit like it is today.

1:25 That and like, then I actually get to work on time.

1:28 Oh. Yeah, that would help.

1:30 And I've said this, I was saying this to him for a long time,

1:32 saying the whole, like, kissing goes aren't that bad.

1:34 Guys like walk in, walk straight into school.

1:36 Like, you get more time to get ready.

1:38 Yeah. And I get to work on time.

1:40 Whereas if I walk in with them. It's like 10 minutes, you end up

1:44 chatting with someone. Someone, someone, someone.

1:48 Takes up all your time. I mean, I don't get to work

1:51 until like probably quarter past 20 past sometimes like depending

1:54 on what's happened, traffic, all those sorts.

1:56 Of yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas, yeah, if I do a kiss

1:58 and go with them, I'm at work by 9, yeah, by 9:00, like sort of

2:03 stuff. So it's far better, yeah, that

2:06 I'm there on time. Yeah.

2:07 So yeah, like if that I'm. Not keep keep that rolling.

2:11 Yeah. Plus it's, it's like it's easier

2:13 because there's so much more time.

2:14 We have a good 1015 minutes more in the mornings.

2:17 Yeah, because you gotta get ready.

2:18 Find a car park. This is it.

2:20 Walking, flipping. Yeah, yeah, great.

2:23 The. Crossing Lady.

2:24 I am loving the kiss and go other than the other parents.

2:28 Oh, the parking. OK, so friends of ours, we've

2:32 got a group chat and yesterday. So if we see shocking parking

2:37 jobs and we actually see shocking parking jobs a lot, I'm

2:41 sure. Everyone does around school.

2:42 Oh. It's so bad though I'm like

2:44 anyway parking but this one I feel like this one takes the

2:47 cake. The.

2:48 One that was it was bad, especially when I spoke to them

2:50 afterwards, like about the details of it.

2:52 OK, well, do you wanna say that? Say what happened then.

2:55 Well, yeah, well, so the photo we got was literally what had

2:58 happened was this car had just mounted the curb with the front

3:03 wheels. But literally wheels.

3:06 So they'd gone in front wheels, they'd gone in bonnet first into

3:09 a spot that wasn't quite long enough for them to like parallel

3:12 par. Like 4 wheel drive a Ute thing

3:15 like. A Dodge Ram type.

3:16 Oh yeah, car too freaking big, and clearly someone who can't

3:20 drive a car that big shouldn't be.

3:21 Yeah, yeah. And they've pulled in like, you

3:24 know, bonnet first over the curb, 2 wheels up on the street,

3:27 whacked the hazards on. So they don't even know they've

3:29 done the wrong thing by putting the hazards on.

3:31 And then the mum in the passenger seat gets out with the

3:35 kid and walks them in while dad sits in the car with the hazard

3:39 lights on, parked like that. Mind you, the the person who

3:43 sent us that photo was saying there was two of them standing

3:45 there. There was a clear, easy park for

3:48 them in front of where they were standing, which was no problem.

3:51 Yeah, like 10 metres further down the street than where this

3:54 ridiculous spot was. Yeah, but this is so friggin

3:58 entitled. It's, it's actually ridiculous.

4:00 Absolutely. You know what makes you so

4:02 special? But also, how dangerous is that

4:04 to mount a curb where there's 'cause this was at the

4:07 kindergarten next to our school. Yeah, but you could have bloody.

4:11 Oh, it's just so dangerous, so inconsiderate.

4:14 But fuck some of the parking. I sent one to the group the

4:17 other day and it's. It literally looked like this

4:19 person had driven. Yeah.

4:21 And just stopped in the middle of the street and decided that's

4:24 where to park. Yeah.

4:26 Yeah. They sort of angled their front

4:27 wheel slightly in, so I assume that meant that they thought

4:30 that was OK. Yeah, Oh my God.

4:33 But even the kiss and go drives me mental.

4:35 Oh yeah, that's shocking. Like.

4:36 I because I pulled up to like today behind another car and you

4:40 kind of like, there's always that do I wait and pull up and

4:43 keep moving up with the other cars to, you know, let everyone

4:45 else behind me? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

4:47 Because I was down low, very low in the in the rung that I was

4:50 like, oh, what's the car in front of me gonna do?

4:52 And as I looked the, the girl in got out of the schoolgirl, got

4:55 out of the car bag on back or before I even like blinked, you

4:58 know, that I'm like, oh, that mum's gonna pull out.

5:01 So I'll wait and pull in first. They're up so that the person

5:03 behind me can pull in too. Yeah, right.

5:06 Nope. All of a sudden, driver's seat

5:10 door open. Mum jumps out, walks around the

5:12 car, standing there hugging her daughter.

5:15 Oh, have a good day. And I'm like, OK boys, this is

5:19 it. We're here.

5:20 Like, come on, you guys out. My boys were out.

5:22 Got balls out of the boot, all that stuff.

5:24 Boot closed and I'm ready to go. Before she was even back in her

5:27 car. And I'm like.

5:31 It kind of defeats the purpose of a kiss.

5:32 And go doesn't. I know.

5:33 I mean, the kiss and go says 2 minutes.

5:35 Yeah, but 30 seconds is all you need.

5:37 Tapes. Yeah.

5:38 So you could. You barely need to stop the calf

5:40 moving. I'm like as we're as we're

5:41 driving down like the main road towards where the kiss and go

5:44 is. I'm like right boys, before we

5:46 get there right tonight, we've got this song, we've got that.

5:49 I'll meet you here and do it all the.

5:51 All the admin. Yeah, before we even get to the

5:54 kiss and go, so that when we get there, you know, we've had the I

5:56 love yous. Have a great day.

5:58 See you later. Yeah, literally kick him out the

6:01 door. Bye.

6:02 Because then you can. Just as I'm pulling out, I watch

6:05 them that they've gone through the game.

6:06 Yeah, that's it. And that's it.

6:07 You're fine. You know, I mean, teachers are

6:09 on duty by then. And yeah.

6:10 And I mean, mine aren't little little.

6:12 So it's, you know, yeah. Like I'm just gotta, I don't

6:13 know how I'd go doing it with a preppy, but the girl in front of

6:16 the car, in the car in front of it was not a preppy.

6:17 She would have been grade four, grade 5 easy.

6:20 Yeah, OK. Like kind of stuff.

6:22 And that's not the first time that's happened.

6:23 That's pretty regular. It's so annoying.

6:25 Yeah, so annoying. Yeah.

6:27 People are so selfish. Anyway, Yeah.

6:29 Now, because we haven't had a huge amount of time to catch up,

6:32 I did wanna talk to you about a couple of things that have been

6:35 in the media this week, but we actually have to like, what the

6:38 fuck is she gonna come out? And do like I don't know.

6:40 Anything. So the first thing I wanna know,

6:43 Yeah. How did you feel about Taylor

6:45 Swift's announcement? I'm sorry.

6:48 I love Travis Kelsey. So do I.

6:50 You know that he's in the new Happy Gilmore 2 movie, right?

6:53 I'm watching it with my boys because.

6:54 And they watched it without me and so.

6:57 And I was like, oh, we're watching it again because I

6:59 haven't seen it yet. Yeah.

7:00 Mad Happy Happy Gilmore. So we watched that and I'm like,

7:05 hello, that's Travis Kelsey. And my boys are like who, what,

7:09 who do? They not know who he is.

7:11 My kids know who he is. I said, don't you know who he

7:14 is? They're like, Oh yeah, Travis

7:15 Kelsey, guys, they knew who he was.

7:18 As in like, Oh yeah, Travis Kelsey, Taylor Swift boyfriend.

7:21 I just don't think they knew who he was when they saw him.

7:25 Like, and he does look a little bit different in I guess a

7:28 little bit, yeah, But I'm like, no, no, that's I I there's no

7:31 question about it. That's definitely him.

7:33 Yeah. So.

7:35 Oh, I loved her announcement. Oh, mate.

7:37 And it was and you know what, 2 girl, I have to say, like their

7:40 podcast, the two, the two brothers.

7:42 I mean, it's, it's so bogan. Yeah, but I love it.

7:44 Yeah, I love the bogan, you know.

7:45 They got paid $100 million for that, if anyone wants to pay us.

7:50 So hello, we'll take it take. It half that.

7:55 Sure. All right.

7:56 Fine. OK 'cause we're not dating

7:59 Taylor Swift. Fine.

8:00 Take half. Yeah.

8:02 But this is the thing, I feel like she really spoke to the

8:03 people, you know, by being on the, you know, bring it to the

8:06 bogans as well. Taylor like.

8:08 I think, you know what I think, I think they are for everyone.

8:12 And I think that's what her announcement on the podcast

8:14 shows. They are for everybody.

8:16 And, you know, a lot of the rhetoric around them is about

8:19 how they are really approachable.

8:21 You know, Taylor Swift is one of those people who one of those

8:24 celebrities who, you know, she'll go to a restaurant or

8:26 whatever and she'll tip somebody $15,000 or she'll pay for their

8:30 college tuition. And yeah, she's an amazing

8:32 person and. And I love the show.

8:35 No, no. And I love that about her.

8:37 However, she is now like a billionaire, right?

8:41 Yeah. Now if her and, say, Selena

8:44 Gomez, who is, I think also listed as potentially A

8:47 billionaire now. Yeah, the two of them are pretty

8:49 good friends. Yeah.

8:49 If the two of them got together, they could literally solve world

8:52 hunger. Yeah.

8:53 So that kind of. But then why does the

8:57 responsibility lie on them? No, it's, but this is the thing

9:00 that that someone needs to start something of like the

9:02 billionaires going, hey, we need to give back here.

9:04 Yeah. Again, I feel like they are the

9:05 people that should, that could potentially show what it should

9:09 be looking like. Yeah, Yeah.

9:11 I don't know. I just, they don't need to

9:13 potentially do it themselves, but have a fairly good whack at

9:15 it. Yeah.

9:17 I think they've got to like that.

9:18 I love that how they give back. They do give back, but I think

9:21 they, I mean, they could afford to do more.

9:23 Yeah. Yeah.

9:24 Yeah, but yeah, no, but I loved, I loved how the two of them,

9:28 like Travis and Taylor, I don't know, the way their banter,

9:31 Yeah, I I genuinely believe their relationship's real.

9:34 I don't think it is APR stunt and I know that's something

9:36 that's out there, but Oh no. I think it's genuine, yeah.

9:39 I think it's real. I have to believe that it's

9:41 real. Because I was kind of hoping I

9:42 knew that the announcement was coming and I'm like, oh, hope

9:45 she's pregnant. Well, apparently.

9:47 So I, I was listening to some commentary and apparently she

9:50 had a like she had AT shirt tucked in.

9:52 Yeah. And someone was like, I think

9:53 she's done that. So that there's no speculation

9:56 that this was a potential pregnancy announcement.

9:58 Yeah, you can. See how flat her tummy?

9:59 Is it's flat, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh wow.

10:03 I'm I'm. I really hope that for them

10:05 it's. Yeah, it's forever.

10:07 It's a real deal. Yeah, they're great.

10:08 They're great. Love it.

10:10 Oh and obviously love Oh my God having mental blank.

10:13 Jason. Jason's wife, Jesus, what's her

10:16 name? Kylie.

10:17 Kylie. Listen to Kylie Kelsey.

10:19 I love her podcast. Do you?

10:20 I'm, I'm like, it's a bit samey for me.

10:23 I think I, I like her. I really like she loves her down

10:27 to down to Earth and yeah, great.

10:28 But I've listened to a few podcasts of hers and I'm like,

10:31 oh, they're a bit samey. Yeah, you'll see.

10:32 I mean, I don't listen consistently.

10:34 Yeah. I've only listened like

10:35 probably, you know, more sporadically.

10:37 Yeah, sporadically, yeah. So maybe like in that sense that

10:40 I've enjoyed it. Yeah.

10:41 Yeah. Because I do like some of her

10:42 conversations. That she had yeah.

10:43 Agreed. Yeah, yeah, she's, she's also.

10:45 But I also love how humble she is in that she brings on people

10:47 that, you know, like she fully fangirls.

10:50 And I'm like, I'd fangirl over you.

10:53 Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

10:55 Yeah. And then the other thing I

10:57 wanted to ask you about because, and I think this actually came

11:00 out over a week ago, but we still haven't actually discussed

11:03 it. Oh yeah, discussed it.

11:04 And this is, you know, those Skims, the new Skims face things

11:07 that have come out. Have you seen these?

11:10 So yeah, so skims have come out. With it like you're gonna Kim

11:16 Kardashian. Yeah.

11:17 Kim Kardashian. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

11:19 Google it now get your phone out.

11:20 Yeah, yeah, have a look. And just like Google skims face.

11:24 To anything photos or like images.

11:26 Yeah. So what it actually is, I'll try

11:28 and give a a verbal description of it, but it's basically like

11:31 this thing that you wear overnight Skims material and it

11:35 kind of like it's meant to like help define your jaw.

11:39 I'm like, what the fuck has the world come to?

11:43 Well, there's a she inversion with $6.

11:46 Maybe we should give that a grab.

11:48 Might not have the quite the compression of the Skims

11:51 version. Yeah, found the ear hole.

11:53 Gets me, I know, but then also I wouldn't I I get the ear hole

11:57 I'd. Say I wouldn't, it would really

11:59 like and because I'm guessing this thing's fucking tight.

12:02 I think so. And the whole idea is that it

12:04 helps like, you know, tighten up.

12:07 What I just, I just just scrolled and saw a picture of

12:11 what's his name? Silence of the Lambs.

12:16 Hannibal Lecter. He's actually quite Hannibal

12:20 Lecter esque. Yeah, I'm like what the fuck is

12:23 the world coming to that we as women now need shapewear for our

12:27 face? No, but.

12:28 Come. On We're wearing it in public.

12:30 Yes, yes, people are wearing them in public.

12:34 They're meant to be worn overnight, I think.

12:36 Yeah. Oh, that's what I assumed.

12:37 And now that now I'm scrolling, going.

12:39 But hang on, these people are in public, Yeah.

12:41 Yeah. I thought you'd wear it

12:42 overnight and then next day if. I don't know, sucked in a bit.

12:46 I don't know. Oh, no, sorry.

12:48 I don't compression for your face, that's a hard no for me.

12:51 Oh yeah, Hard no. Hard no.

12:53 No, man. Yeah, I know, 'cause weirdly

12:56 Brody came home the other week going like Mum, mum, look, I've

12:59 got I've got a triple chin, not gonna sucking his face back and

13:02 stuff and he's like so excited. I'm like, oh man, you actually

13:06 don't want. That no.

13:07 And he's like goes no, no, it's great.

13:09 And he goes what about you? Can you do it?

13:11 I'm like, don't need to do what you're doing together.

13:14 I just need to just you. Know be me and he goes oh,

13:19 you're so lucky. No, that's not that's.

13:23 OK, babes, isn't that beautiful? You're so lucky.

13:27 Yeah, Thanks, mate. Thank you.

13:28 Appreciate that. Skims in his world would not be

13:31 Oh. No, he wants an anti skims.

13:32 Anti skims he wants, he needs like one that'll like smoosh

13:37 everything down. It's like you would create the

13:39 kins. Ricky Gervais when he used to do

13:40 that character in the bath. Oh, that.

13:42 Oh yes, so good, so so good now. Oh God, we have so many shout

13:50 outs this week. It's.

13:51 Insane. Yeah, my first shout out is OK,

13:55 This is to my mum's audiologist, Gavin, OK?

13:58 Really random one. So random.

14:00 So first of all, Gavin, I have to say #1 thank you.

14:05 Thank you so much for making my mum wear hearing.

14:09 Things. Is that a thank you do you mean?

14:11 Oh, no. Which would you prefer?

14:12 Oh, no, it's a massive thank you.

14:15 She's resisted for a while or she reckons they didn't work for

14:18 a whatever. Yeah, but one of the it's

14:20 actually so funny in our house because in our family, because

14:25 my mum and dad, when my nephew was really young, my youngest

14:29 nephew, I think he was maybe 1 or he wasn't really talking yet.

14:33 And we'd say to him, hey, Jack, what does grandma say?

14:36 And he'd go, hey, hey. Because like, she never, can

14:41 never hear anything any of us say.

14:43 And then we'd say to him, what does Pennsylvania say?

14:47 And he'd go, 'cause Pa's a grumpy old coat.

14:50 So. Dad.

14:55 Some of the time he can be pretty grubby actually.

14:58 Our kids, the mum and dad had the four kids for a sleepover

15:01 last week. Yeah, Oh yeah, we had a 40th and

15:04 Matt and Monica had, I think they had a 40th too.

15:07 Anyway, and they had the four of them for a sleepover the next,

15:11 the day after the sleepover, I think it all went fine.

15:15 Yeah. The day after the sleepover, Dad

15:16 puts a message in our group chat.

15:19 Family group chat. Who bloody picked all the

15:22 mandarins off the Mandarin tree? There's only one Mandarin left

15:25 out there and we've been growing those all season and blah blah.

15:28 That's hilarious. Anyway, so I looked at that and

15:30 I was like. Lol I'll be around.

15:33 Matt Matt and filmed Jack and Louie asking them the question.

15:37 Oh yeah, and Jack's like Ollie ate them all.

15:44 Threw under the bus immediately. The bus?

15:46 No, it turns out I'm not going to name names, but somebody

15:49 threw them over the fence, like into the neighbour's yard.

15:52 So wasn't my. So the neighbors got a nice

15:57 bunch of mandarins. That's right, I don't know how

15:59 good a quality they would have been and whether I don't think

16:01 they were ready for picking necessarily yet.

16:03 So Power was pretty bloody grumpy.

16:05 But anyway, sorry. All that to say, thank you Gavin

16:07 for being patient with mum, because you know anyway, he

16:11 loves true crime. He's listening to our podcast

16:14 and loving it. Thanks Gavin.

16:16 Appreciate that all. Got that one on a tangent,

16:18 sorry. No, that's all.

16:18 The tangents are great. We love it.

16:21 We've had a few buy me a coffee this week.

16:23 We've had someone. Yeah, someone.

16:26 Someone who also gave an extra coffee so that we could buy or

16:30 so that you could buy. A plan for Kyle.

16:34 Kyle needs his own fanbase I think.

16:36 This is hilarious, I'm sorry I could have him.

16:41 Someone else reading one of the comments like I'm here for the

16:43 Kyle contest. I'm like fuck, are we gonna have

16:46 to do a fucking Kyle update every week?

16:48 No, no. Oh God, no I can't.

16:50 He's just. He's still slimy, he's still

16:52 creepy, and he's still gross. Yeah.

16:55 Yeah. And Brody still loves.

16:57 Obsessed. Yeah, obsessed.

16:59 We also had Becks Pateri, Mel Ruffly who sent a really nice

17:03 message for Luna and Donna Lesko who said she's merely caught up

17:08 on all of our episodes, so she was a bit devil about that.

17:11 Oh yes, now another one that just touched me.

17:15 You just showed me this Instagram reel.

17:18 I don't know, 5 minutes before we started recording.

17:21 I haven't seen it. It actually brought tears to my

17:25 eyes. So thank you a million times

17:28 over to Aluca dot Hair. That's their Instagram handle, E

17:33 double Luca. They're based in Canberra,

17:36 hairdressers based in Canberra. And a specific shout out to

17:39 Chelsea and Stace who put on their Instagram stories that,

17:43 you know, to listen to us. It's like, Oh my God, there are

17:48 people who found us who are now recommending us.

17:51 Blows my mind. That completely blows my mind.

17:53 Absolutely blows my mind. So thanks Bills, and thank you.

17:56 We, as Meg said in the message back to you, if only we were in

18:00 Canberra, we would we would be at your cell on in no time.

18:03 Down there for a haircut and a chat about crime?

18:05 Absolutely. Always up for that, always up

18:07 for that. So thank you very much.

18:09 We also have a new listener, Kirsty, who sent us a really

18:13 lovely message through I think it was on Instagram or

18:16 somewhere, but she was really enjoying our content.

18:19 So thanks for that, Kirsty. And then bring we've had our

18:23 first Patreon, so our very first ever Patreon is Jacinta so.

18:29 Thanks and welcome. Back, I feel like she must have

18:32 listened to the episode and gone straight away and signed up

18:34 because she was right on top of it.

18:38 So thank you very much. And then we've also had Erin,

18:40 Alyssa and Emma also join us over on Patreon.

18:44 So in the next week or two, we'll get our first bonus

18:47 episode up there. So if that's something that you

18:48 might like to listen to, please go ahead to our Patreon.

18:52 So it's Patreon dot com forward slash 2 crime besties.

18:55 The link is in our BIOS and wherever you need it.

18:59 So I'll. Put some more stuff up on the

19:01 social this week too. Get it out there a bit more and

19:04 we'll build our little community over there.

19:06 Come and join us. We're yeah, spilling the tea

19:08 over there. We're also just honing in a

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19:18 Yeah, put up in there. So that'll be up there very soon

19:21 and can start enjoying that. Yes.

19:23 So thanks to everybody who's who's joined.

19:25 It's great. It's great to have.

19:27 We're building like a a new community.

19:29 Yeah. Jump in that group chat and tell

19:31 us what you want. Yeah, please.

19:33 Yes, please, please, please. That's exactly.

19:35 What you want? All right, Oh my God, Peter will

19:38 probably almost be at work by the time this band is.

19:40 Over. Poor Peter.

19:42 Sorry, Peter. So let's get into today's case.

19:46 This is iconic, an iconic Australian event.

19:50 Yeah. So we're discussing today the

19:52 Childers Palace Backpackers Fire and I obviously, you know, I

19:59 remember it, I remember it happening, but in looking into

20:02 it I'd forgotten so many of the details.

20:05 Do you feel like? I feel like I had forgotten

20:07 details. I didn't know full details even

20:09 like it was. So it was definitely all over

20:12 the media when it happened. Oh yeah.

20:13 But months, yeah, it did, but I didn't remember.

20:17 Sort of. I'm beyond the actual fire

20:20 occurring. So I think I didn't really

20:23 understand the aftermath of it and what happened there and, you

20:28 know, in terms of any convictions and things like

20:30 that. Yeah, yeah.

20:30 So. And lack thereof potentially.

20:32 So, yeah, I didn't really understand all of that side of

20:35 it at all. I I really didn't have a grasp

20:37 of that. So I was, I was fascinated at

20:40 the same time as just, I feel better as an Australian, I think

20:44 now understanding this case because I just feel like I

20:47 didn't, hadn't, hadn't had its service put to me of like, you

20:50 know, like what it actually is like, yeah.

20:52 And what it means to people, because this is, it was, it's

20:54 impacted so many people. And I think that's something

20:57 that we can fully get into as we go on is, you know, we always

21:01 talk in our episodes about the ripple effect of crime.

21:03 And that's absolutely true. And generally, it's it's

21:07 immeasurable. We don't you don't know the

21:09 extent of that, really. Yeah, I think in this case,

21:12 there's so many factors in that realm to consider.

21:15 And that's something we can talk to when we get to it, for sure.

21:17 But first of all, well, let's talk about Childers itself.

21:20 So it's 300 kilometers north of Brisbane in Queensland and about

21:25 40 kilometers from Bundaberg, which is probably the next

21:28 closest town that people would know.

21:30 Because generally speaking, if you asked me a week ago where

21:34 Childers was, I knew it was in Queens.

21:35 Well, I actually even didn't even know it was necessary

21:37 Queensland because I was kind of like, I know it's somewhere

21:40 between sort of the north, NSW, South QLD ish like kind of on

21:44 that. I knew that that was the

21:45 roundabouts where it is. Because I do get, I have to

21:48 admit I do get confused sometimes with those that area,

21:50 yeah, whether it's not NSW or Queensland, Yeah.

21:53 So don't know it. Well, I haven't spent much time

21:55 in that area. So yeah, I was kind of like, OK,

21:58 Queensland, right, QLD? Where in Queensland?

22:00 Where in QLD? Yeah, you.

22:01 Know 40 KS from Bundaberg. Bundaberg's known for rum Rum,

22:07 one of my dad's favorite. Drinks.

22:08 Yeah, same with my dad too. I like I should get together.

22:10 And have a Bundy. Bundy.

22:11 And Bundy. And Coke.

22:13 Yuck, the smell of it makes me wanna vom.

22:16 Oh God, anyway, but that's also known for like there's a lot of

22:23 sugar cane grown up there. You can buy, you know, Bundaberg

22:26 branded sugar. Yeah.

22:27 And like ginger and there's lots of crops and and some fruit

22:31 picking fruit, yeah, fruit that are that are grown up there.

22:35 And it is a beautiful place. Like it's absolutely stunning in

22:39 terms of landscape and it's really lush.

22:42 The weather in Queensland is, you know, fairly temperate and,

22:47 you know, obviously lends itself well.

22:48 The conditions lend itself well to being able to sustain all of

22:51 these crops. The soil up there is rich and

22:54 it's red and really fertile. So it's it's, yeah, a really a

23:00 place that attracts a lot of itinerant workers because, you

23:04 know, around fruit picking seasons, you know, that's

23:07 something that the farmers need a.

23:09 Lot they need a lot of help. With, yeah and it lends itself

23:12 really well to backpacker type work.

23:15 And if you need, if you want a visa in Australia these days and

23:18 you want to extend it a little bit longer, you can do so by

23:21 doing a certain number of hours in working in rural Australia.

23:25 Yeah, that's also like a good spot to in terms of location of

23:29 like visiting Australia and getting a really great, you

23:32 know, feel of more sort of, I guess outbackish kind of

23:35 Australia. But you go a little bit further

23:36 north and head to those great beaches and do the Gold Coast

23:39 touristy thing or further again and head up and, you know, head

23:42 to this really to the top end there and or we can head South

23:45 and head towards Sydney and those sorts of bits.

23:47 So it's it is a really big thoroughfare for tourists,

23:51 little and backpackers particularly for that reason

23:54 that it's a great stopping off point to pick up some money

23:57 through the the season for picking and then keep moving on

24:00 whether it be north or South that you're heading.

24:02 Yeah. So yeah, it's a really popular

24:03 area for that. It's not a it's not a big town,

24:06 no, but it's as you said, there's lots of people going

24:09 passing through all the time because it's actually on the

24:11 main, the Bruce Hwy., which yes, you know, it's, it's on, on the

24:15 highway basically, or it is on. The highway.

24:17 Yeah, you. Can't get around it.

24:18 There's no bypass, no. So to that end, there's lots of

24:22 pubs and bakeries. I think someone in one of the

24:25 podcasts I was listening to someone who said that they it's

24:28 home to one of the best bakeries in Queensland.

24:32 Right? Great for a meat pie and a

24:34 vanilla slice. Oh God I love a vanilla slice.

24:37 See, I'm not into the vanilla slice thing, probably more the

24:39 pie might be slice. Yeah, Yeah.

24:42 I mean, in Australia, like you can't go to a country town

24:44 without hitting their bakery. It's like rule you must and go

24:47 and check out and rate them. Or the pub.

24:50 Yeah, the pub or the pub? Yeah, one or the other.

24:52 Check out the Parma. Yeah, the meat pie and the

24:55 vanilla slice. You know whether or not it's a

24:58 pretty good town. Yeah, that's exactly right.

25:01 Absolutely. So in 1902, there was actually a

25:06 a fire that ripped through Childers and took out about 100

25:10 meters of the Main Street. Yeah.

25:12 And it was absolutely devastating to the Township at

25:16 the time. The the Palace Hotel, which

25:19 we're talking about, it only just been built.

25:21 It was pretty new at that point. I think it had been built three

25:23 years earlier. Yeah, right.

25:25 I believe in 18. I think it's 1897 or 1899 it was

25:30 built. And yeah, as you said it, the

25:33 fire ripped through the entire, basically what was the entire

25:37 Main Street. And it took them many, many

25:39 years to rebuild, but they did rebuild, rebuild it.

25:43 They completely rebuilt it. And because it was all then

25:46 rebuilt at the same time, sort of in that early 1900s.

25:50 Yes, all of the. Buildings are in that have been

25:53 built in that vein. So in that time.

25:55 And so a lot of the buildings there were heritage listed, or

25:58 at least their facades were heritage listed, Yes.

26:00 And so it is that really beautiful old kind of town.

26:04 And it still is to this day. Yeah, still.

26:06 You know, you drive in there and I've, I've, I mean, I've never

26:09 been. Have you ever?

26:09 Been No. I haven't been through Childers,

26:10 no. But when I was looking at Google

26:13 Maps, you can see as you drive through, it's a beautiful,

26:16 beautiful place. Yeah.

26:18 And it's what you would expect a country town in Australia, rural

26:22 Australia to be. Yeah, really, really lovely.

26:25 So after it was rebuilt, it was then they so they rebuilt it as

26:31 a hotel over its lifespan. It was a hotel.

26:35 It was a pub. They had a ballroom at one

26:37 point. So really, Yes, yeah.

26:40 Back. That was in the early 1900s.

26:42 After local dances in. There, Yeah, yeah.

26:46 And in 1993, it was converted into a backpackers and that was

26:51 born out of necessity really, because there was nowhere for

26:55 these itinerant workers to really stay.

26:57 A lot of the farm, the farms had sheds essentially that the

27:02 backpackers would stay out when they were coming to fruit pick.

27:04 But that wasn't an ideal situation.

27:06 It certainly wasn't comfortable, no.

27:09 And so the idea, the business idea came that they would turn

27:13 it into turn the palace into a backpackers and really great

27:17 idea. I mean, it meant that, you know,

27:20 people who were coming in had somewhere a little bit nicer to

27:23 stay and and yeah, that's, that's sort of how that all came

27:27 about. We've stayed in backpackers,

27:29 kind of like accommodation. Only in Europe, never in

27:32 Australia. Yeah, right.

27:33 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've stayed in a fair few

27:34 different ones I've done definitely London, Australia and

27:38 some in Europe. Yeah.

27:39 And I mean, they're great atmosphere to stay in.

27:42 I loved staying in all of them. You get to know different people

27:44 from all over the world, but it's always a really community

27:48 atmosphere. You go in, you sort of, I know

27:50 my first initial, the place I first stayed at was one in, in

27:53 London and I was very like, I was only very, I was very young

27:56 and didn't really know. And I was like, how does this

27:57 freaking work? But you literally within 5

28:00 minutes being in sort of in a communal area, you chatting away

28:03 with somebody and you know, they're offering you some of

28:06 their two-minute noodles, you know, like kind of stuff.

28:08 It's like everyone just sort of pitched in and did things and

28:11 there was, you always felt really comfortable.

28:13 I, I mean, I would have thought, you know, sharing a bedroom

28:15 really basically with people that you don't know, you'd feel

28:17 a bit unsafe, but not at all like everyone was, yeah.

28:21 Like minded, yeah, yeah, I mean, I guess there's safety in

28:24 numbers if you're all kind of there for the same reason.

28:27 Yeah. Most people are good people,

28:29 like and and there's no, it's not like backpackers, you know,

28:32 the degenerates of society. You're you're probably young,

28:36 like demographically. I'm sure most backpackers are

28:38 young, don't have a huge amount of money.

28:40 No. And you're wanting to experience

28:43 the world, You're eager, you're keen, you're enthusiastic, you

28:47 know, And if you've got all of those like minded people in the

28:49 same spot, yeah, the camaraderie is great.

28:52 Yeah, I mean, I've got a friend who like she met up with, met

28:55 these people who is Canadian girls backpacking around Europe

28:58 and things like that. And we're still all friends with

29:00 them, like it's just to this day.

29:02 And like, so they they come out here a bit more than we get to

29:04 go there even. But yeah, like it's, it's

29:06 amazing what the community feel of them is.

29:09 I know. I think I can imagine children's

29:11 being very much that. Yeah, I believe.

29:13 And that's, I mean, well, the they could fit 101 people in

29:16 that building for at in at this point in two in the year 2000

29:20 because they'd obviously built extra rooms in and everything.

29:23 So it was pretty sardine ish I think.

29:27 Absolutely, yes. So I mean this is kind of going

29:31 a little bit ahead now, but at the inquest it was actually

29:33 found that the building was only licensed to carry 53 and so it

29:38 had 100, it had 101 people, a capacity of 101 and on the night

29:42 of the fire it had 8088 people in there.

29:45 So it was well and truly over capacity, but not even quite to

29:49 the capacity of how many beds they had.

29:50 So you can imagine if it had have been full, full, how much

29:54 more devastating this would could have been.

29:56 So let's get into the what actually happened on the night,

30:00 do you think? And then we'll go back and we

30:01 can talk a little bit more. Yep, sounds like the way to go.

30:05 Cool, so on the 23rd of June in 2000 it was just after midnight

30:11 and. Then the 24th.

30:13 Oh, so yeah, early in the 24th. So yeah, the night, yeah, OK,

30:16 actually the night of the 23rd, yes, there were two.

30:19 Well, actually, there's so many stories because.

30:22 Yeah, which way you want to come at?

30:23 But yeah, so I'm going to talk about these two particular

30:26 blokes. Yeah.

30:26 They'd been across the road at the pub, had a couple of drinks.

30:29 They've gone back to the hostel and they were in separate rooms

30:33 at the time. They've both needed to go to the

30:36 loo at the same time and met each other in the hallway.

30:38 And they're like, yeah, you need to pee do.

30:40 The little night bed. Go, let's do it.

30:43 Just after midnight. They've gone to the toilet and

30:46 one of them has actually gone downstairs to go to the loo.

30:50 And when he's come out of the toilet, he's seen a man who has

30:55 since been actually, we'll get to that in a SEC.

30:59 But they, he sees this guy sitting at a computer.

31:03 Yeah. And next to him there is a, a

31:06 rubbish bin, a waste paper bin. Yeah.

31:08 On fire and. Had like a cushion from a couch

31:13 on top of that, Yeah. Which then bridged that to the

31:16 couch. That's right.

31:17 Makes sense. Yeah.

31:18 So it the pillow hadn't, or the cushion hadn't caught fire yet,

31:22 But I mean, what the fuck are you doing?

31:25 So this guy actually took the waste paper basket outside,

31:29 extinguished the fire, left it out there and was like, what the

31:31 fuck are you doing, mate? Like fucking what the fuck?

31:34 But then he thought, oh, well, I've put the fire out, it's all

31:36 good. He's gone back to bed.

31:38 Yeah, not really thinking that much more of it unfortunately.

31:42 I mean, this is not in no way. His fault?

31:44 No. There's so many bits of it,

31:46 yeah. 15 minutes later, what we know is there were three

31:51 deliberate fires, 3 separate fires lit in that hostel in that

31:56 room. So this is the ground floor of

31:59 A2 story building. As you said, there were 88

32:02 occupants at the time and most of them were asleep because a

32:07 lot of them were doing fruit picking.

32:09 They would go to bed fairly early.

32:11 They had to be up in the very, very early hours of the morning.

32:14 So most of them would be in bed, but somewhere between 9:30 and

32:17 11:00 PM So this happened at about 12:30 in the morning.

32:21 And it. Yeah, it most, in fact, I think

32:26 almost everyone was asleep by that point.

32:28 Yeah. So what the a lot of the

32:32 accounts of the people who survived are that they started

32:36 to hear noises. There was like smashing of

32:38 glass, things like that, that really that's probably what woke

32:40 them. Yeah.

32:41 Because you don't get woken up by the smell of smoke that that

32:45 apparently will not wake you. But yeah, they they were hearing

32:48 loud crashes and. And somebody thought it was like

32:51 a bar fight. Someone else thought like maybe

32:53 there was a car crash out the front.

32:54 Like they didn't really know. They were quite disoriented.

32:57 Yes. So they anyway that so whatever

33:03 happens, a lot of them were woken up.

33:06 There were some people who then tried to turn on the light to

33:09 try and see what was going on. Apparently someone flicked on a

33:12 light and then instantly the the power went out in the building,

33:16 but it gave them a split second of.

33:19 Where am I? Where am I?

33:20 What's going on now? As you said, you mentioned this

33:24 earlier, the place was like a rabbit warrant.

33:27 So the original building, the original Palace Hotel was the

33:31 middle building. It had then had extensions done

33:35 since 19 O three or nineteen O 4 when it was rebuilt and it had

33:39 two other arms to the building, so and little corridors joining

33:46 the two the three buildings together essentially.

33:49 Yeah, we put some pictures up of the layout, the floor plan,

33:51 yeah. And there were there were rooms

33:54 in the hostel, especially upstairs, there was a room that

33:58 we it's known as Room 7. Yeah, this was a bunk room.

34:03 It had I. Think it had it had double and

34:07 triple bunks in it all around. I think that room alone had a

34:11 capacity of something like I wanna say like at least 15. 15,

34:14 I think you're right. And I think there were maybe 10

34:17 in there at the time, or 11 actually, I think were in there

34:20 at the time of the fire. The way they'd configured this

34:24 room, they'd actually put a bunk bed against one of the doors, So

34:27 there were two doors into this room.

34:28 This room had actually previously been a lavatory.

34:32 Yeah. And but it was massive.

34:34 It was a really big room. So the owners decided to make it

34:38 into a They had enough toilets, so they decided to make it into

34:42 another dorm room, and in doing so they blocked off one of the

34:48 access points with a bunk bed. With a bunk bed and also had

34:51 like nailed it shut I think too so it was even if they'd pulled

34:55 the bunk bed out, I don't believe they still would have

34:57 potentially been able to get through that door.

34:59 That's right and they'd also which I couldn't work this out

35:01 from the floor pans. I was saying there must have

35:03 been AI thought it was quite central this room yes, but

35:06 apparently there was windows as well, but that this was the only

35:10 room for whatever reason the windows had been put had put

35:14 bars on them. Yes.

35:15 So that was because when it was a hotel, yes.

35:18 And it was only that building. So the annexes, the other two

35:22 buildings hadn't been built yet. And there was like, apparently

35:26 someone said there was like some crime that was going on.

35:28 And so the hoteliers at the time decided to put bars on.

35:31 Them so people couldn't climb in through the windows at night and

35:34 stuff like that. So they'd put.

35:35 That's what they'd said, yeah, yeah.

35:37 So there were bars on windows. So the only way he'd get out of

35:40 that room was one door, which was right.

35:43 So this room was actually directly above the room where

35:46 the fire started. So this was basically like the

35:49 the heat from the fire was coming directly up to them first

35:53 sort of thing. Yeah, now again, this is an old

35:55 building. All of the floors were made of

35:57 wood, so it was all wooden beams and structures.

36:01 And the fire was obviously lit with an accelerant of some

36:07 description because apparently the flames went from the floor

36:10 of the bottom like the ground floor.

36:13 Yeah, through the floor of the OR through the ceiling, I guess,

36:18 into that room, like, like a jet almost.

36:21 It was so ferocious. There was one of the survivors

36:24 commented that when she was exiting and trying to get out,

36:28 that was what one thing that's really stuck with her was how

36:30 hot the floor was. So it wasn't like, I mean, you

36:33 think about trying to, you've meant to stay low in a fire.

36:36 So they were trying to get low, but it was so hot on the floor

36:39 that they felt like they couldn't touch it.

36:41 So it was almost like, you know, this full floor is lava kind of

36:44 feeling as they were trying to exit this building and get out

36:47 like. I believe from room 7 only one

36:48 person successfully escaped yes and lived to tell the tale.

36:53 The other thing is that because it was such a rabbit warrant, so

36:58 sorry, when the power went out, it was the IT was so dark in

37:04 there that you couldn't even see your hand in front of your face.

37:07 So not only dark because it was the middle of the night, but

37:11 also the thick black smoke from everything that was burning, all

37:15 of the all of the fuel that was burning.

37:18 Apparently the smoke was accurate.

37:20 It was disgusting. They couldn't breathe.

37:22 There were light up exit signs that should have then helped,

37:26 but the batteries in those had not been changed for seven years

37:33 so they didn't. They failed as well in that

37:35 moment when they should have clicked in as as back up to the

37:39 central power. They didn't turn on, so they

37:41 also weren't illuminating to give anyone direction.

37:43 So they're when they were coming out of their rooms to try and

37:46 find where to go from there, it was pitch black trying to find

37:50 which direction and quite disorientating of which way

37:52 they're gonna go to get out. And for some of the people who

37:56 died, it was a, a 5050. Do I go left here or do I go

38:01 right? And the people who went left

38:02 were able to get out of a window and onto a roof of the building

38:05 next door and escape that way. Yeah.

38:07 The people who went right ended up in a dead end.

38:10 There was literally one survivor's account.

38:12 She said that she was going in One Direction to get out and

38:16 randomly this person ran up behind her, grabbed her by the

38:20 arm and dragged her in the opposite direction.

38:22 And she that that was what made her.

38:24 She would have she would have kept going in the wrong

38:25 direction and would have been totally dead, absolutely no

38:29 question. To this day, she does not know

38:31 who that was that grabbed her arm and pulled her out.

38:34 Oh wow. But that's that person saved her

38:36 life, no question. Oh my gosh.

38:39 Another one was a guy named of the name of Brett.

38:42 He had walked into the room. There was two other guys he

38:46 never met. Didn't know these guys for a bar

38:47 soap. They were asleep, dead to the

38:50 world asleep in their in their room.

38:51 He was in the same room as them. He actually punched them both in

38:54 the stomach to wake them up like, you know, do what you got

38:57 to do like kind of stuff. So he punched them both in

39:00 stomach to wake them up and he screamed at them.

39:03 We've got to get out, get down low, grab my legs.

39:06 And so he crawled in front. Obviously that's how you know

39:10 what you're supposed to do that. The other two blokes, one on

39:12 either side of him, holding onto the his legs as they all then

39:15 crawled out, basically congolining it sort of stuff.

39:18 And the three of them managed to find their way out and get out.

39:20 These guys would have just perished because they didn't

39:22 hadn't even woken yet. And if they literally had

39:24 minutes, seconds to do this, seconds.

39:26 Yeah. I mean, so Brett saved both of

39:28 their lives by crawling, crawling them both out like.

39:32 Some of the deceased did die while they were asleep, so from

39:37 smoke inhalation we'll get, we'll get to that a little bit

39:40 later. So this was a very cold and

39:43 foggy night. Very, very foggy.

39:46 And the first that any of the authorities knew about it was

39:50 that just after midnight or 12:31?

39:53 Yeah. Was it the?

39:54 First triple. A call, yeah.

39:56 Was made from the phone box, which was on the other side of

39:58 the road. Yeah.

39:59 To the backpackers. And the local chief fire officer

40:05 had his pager, gets the page and he's like, oh, yeah.

40:08 All right. So he he just thought it was

40:10 probably a building fire. Or a little graphic, he didn't

40:14 know. Really.

40:15 So he gets he gets in his car, goes down to the station and

40:17 starts getting everything ready. They so and other officers have

40:24 sort of come to attend. They had a brand new fire truck.

40:28 It was less than five days old. And they've packed that all up.

40:32 And he, so this the the chief fire officer said he drove past

40:38 the backpackers to get to the fire station.

40:41 Right. Yeah, he didn't know because it

40:44 was so foggy. He couldn't even see that that's

40:48 what was on fire. Wow.

40:49 That just goes to show how foggy it was.

40:52 Wow. Well.

40:53 That. There was something going on in

40:55 the area we. Hadn't got to the point of

40:56 knowing where that was yet. To their credit, though, they

40:58 arrived on scene at 12:38. Yeah.

41:01 So, I mean, 7 minutes, yes. For them to get to the station,

41:04 get their shit together and get to that fire they trained.

41:08 That's right. Amazing.

41:09 Amazing. Yeah, when they pulled the fire

41:11 engine up, so they parked out the front of the at the front of

41:15 the out front of the backpackers.

41:18 Yeah. And apparently this just goes to

41:21 the ferocity of this fire. Yeah, it was so hot that all of

41:26 the plastic in now they were parked out the front at in this

41:29 spot for somewhere between 30 and 90 seconds.

41:32 Yeah, 'cause they basically what they do.

41:34 And this is typical of what a fire truck would do at any

41:36 service, where they pull up, get all this stuff off where they

41:39 what they need and attach what they need to attach those sorts

41:42 things. And then they move the truck

41:43 away to give them access to where they to getting in and

41:46 out. But they need the stuff off the

41:47 truck first. So I'd rather try to lug the

41:49 stuff from where they've got to park the truck kind of thing.

41:51 They pull the truck in as close as they can, get what they need

41:53 off, then move the truck. Yeah, that's just protocol.

41:57 Yeah, they reckon potentially 30 seconds, like 90 seconds would

42:00 be worst case scenario. Yeah.

42:02 Yeah, they can do it bloody fast.

42:03 Yeah, it was so hot. It's melted all of the plastic

42:06 light covers of the front of the truck.

42:08 It has melted the vinyl seats of the truck.

42:11 There was an old Nokia brick phone in there and it was so hot

42:14 that that it basically exploded. Exploded.

42:16 Yeah, it was so. Extremely.

42:19 Hot and that's that's the outside of it let alone being in

42:22 that building and that that hate that they the.

42:24 Only thing that that makes me think is I hope then that those

42:28 who died, died very very quickly.

42:31 Well from what I can gather, all bar 1 I believe died of carbon

42:39 monoxide poisoning and smoke inhalation.

42:41 That's not fun. Although I do think you pass out

42:46 pretty quickly. Yeah, right.

42:47 Anyway, we'll get to that because I've, I've got the

42:49 governor's report that kind of goes through all that.

42:51 Yeah. Right.

42:53 So, oh God, it's really where are we at now?

42:58 Well, it took them 4 hours to actually get the fire under

43:01 control, which to me even seems pretty damn good.

43:05 But it was a very intense fire, as we were saying.

43:07 So yeah, 4 hours of them working their absolute asses off.

43:10 Yeah, to get this fire under control.

43:12 Yeah, they eventually get that fire out.

43:15 And so this at this point now we have 73 survivors, but trying to

43:23 to try and work out who everyone was, who they're still looking

43:26 for, etcetera. Was it absolute nightmare

43:30 because one that all their passports of were inside the

43:34 fire and therefore don't exist anymore.

43:36 So they can't even work out who they're looking for.

43:38 Because what the backpackers did was they had a very good system

43:41 for checking people in, but they didn't have a great system for

43:45 departures. So they actually couldn't have,

43:48 didn't have much of a record of like, oh, well, we don't know if

43:50 that guy's actually still here or not.

43:52 So whenever we're looking for him.

43:53 And because people would often not book in for a time like they

43:56 would yeah, come not really know when they were going no sort of

44:01 be on a week to week basis most of the time.

44:03 Even day-to-day sometimes be literally like, go to the front.

44:05 I mean, I've done it myself. Like, oh, we've changed the

44:07 plans. We're gonna go tomorrow.

44:08 So you'd go down the desk and you'd say, you know, like, yeah,

44:10 we're gonna depart tomorrow and like, OK, cool.

44:12 Yeah. You know, pass your keys in when

44:13 you get when you do it. Yeah.

44:14 But obviously they weren't keeping a record of that so

44:16 much, you know? So yeah, they really didn't know

44:20 who how many were missing, but not only that, obviously without

44:23 the passports etcetera to kind of check off things.

44:26 And these people weren't locals, you know, there was, you know,

44:28 even local to Australia, their family, etcetera were overseas.

44:32 So even trying to identify people through DNA, say to check

44:36 that they didn't have DNA samples of family members close

44:39 by to achieve that. So that was that was an absolute

44:43 nightmare to work out. But eventuated was that they

44:46 discovered it was 15 people had had perished in the fire and

44:50 then yeah, in 73 of the 88 had escaped.

44:54 Now this left like so 73 people in the town of Childers who they

44:59 were passes through, they had zero, all their possessions on

45:02 them were in that those rooms, they had nothing.

45:06 The town of Childers absolutely rallied.

45:09 And it's really fascinating listening to the locals who are

45:12 now elderly people themselves talk about these young people

45:17 who were, you know, in need and how they looked after them and

45:20 that you hear them sort of talk about them as, like, their

45:22 children. Yeah.

45:23 It's so beautiful. Embraced.

45:25 They 100% did. They invited them into the

45:27 homes. There was a centre set up at the

45:30 Isis community centre I want. To say so Isis was the name of

45:34 the Isis Shia Shia council, Yeah, yeah.

45:36 And they were actually in the in the midst of building this

45:39 community centre. So it wasn't even finished yet.

45:41 It was still under construction. Yeah, they opened it

45:43 specifically for them to go have have somewhere to go to be able

45:47 to stay. But they also all the locals

45:49 though were like come and have a meal with us, come and have a

45:52 shower. Like they offered them whatever

45:54 they needed. Any spare clothes they had.

45:56 That's all. Yeah, because they had no

45:57 clothes, but they also had no money or anything.

45:59 So the farmers who these people had all been working their butts

46:02 off for was so beautiful that they paid them straight up two

46:05 weeks wages whether and whether they came to work or not, like

46:08 kind of thing for the next two weeks.

46:09 That was not what it was about. It was about giving them some

46:12 money to be able to go buy themselves some clothes, you

46:14 know, food, things like that, that they needed, you know, to

46:18 get by or just getting their passport fixed up so they could

46:21 get home to their families after this horrific tragedy.

46:25 But these survivors were, they were traumatized entirely.

46:28 Oh my God. The stories that they talk about

46:30 of like the particularly those first few nights after the fire

46:34 are really harrowing in terms of like there was one guy I heard a

46:37 story of how the first night particularly, he was put at this

46:42 community centre to be able to sleep, which very grateful for,

46:46 but he just could not sleep inside.

46:48 And he ended up sleeping, pulled out all his stuff and dragged it

46:50 out onto the street and slept out there because he just the

46:53 claustrophobia of being inside a building and the fear of

46:57 something happening again, yeah, meant that he slept outside on a

47:00 on a map. One of the local hotels had some

47:03 vacancies that night. Yeah, and also offered up any

47:06 spare rooms, but again, the stories are that most of those

47:10 people then slept with their hotel door room doors.

47:13 Open. Yeah, because they couldn't.

47:15 The thought of being trapped inside a room, just.

47:18 I'm sure there was no sleep that.

47:19 Night no, many of them no. And I'm sure that even to this

47:21 day, those people carry that trauma with them of like,

47:24 they're, I mean, I've never been in a fire to feel fear of fire,

47:28 like kind of thing. I don't think like that in my,

47:30 in going into any building. I don't sort of think, you know,

47:32 how would I get out of here if there was a fire?

47:34 But I'm sure that they have, when they go anywhere these days

47:38 have that. That's probably one of their

47:40 first thoughts of like, you know, so how do I exit here?

47:42 What what's what's the strategy? Yeah.

47:44 You know, that level of trauma is really debilitating.

47:48 And I can't even imagine it. No, I can't even imagine it.

47:50 Thank. God, yeah, absolutely.

47:53 Thank God we. Can't.

47:54 Yes. You know, it's just horrific.

47:56 Yeah. So I guess at this point, you

47:59 know, the police are like looking at this and the fieries

48:03 of being able to establish the fact that there were three

48:06 incineration points. Very quickly they worked.

48:08 Out very, very three trigger points, which equals arson.

48:11 Like that's that's a a given. Yeah.

48:15 So these people were murdered and they had to find out who'd

48:19 done this. And pretty quickly they were

48:22 able to, I guess, have a a person who they really felt was

48:29 probably more than likely responsible for this.

48:33 And they identified Robert Paul Long as that person.

48:35 Yeah. And a number of things that sort

48:36 of triggered them to this being that one, he was known to them

48:41 that to the police, but also he he was a very odd man.

48:45 And he when you we were talking earlier about the demographic of

48:49 someone who stays in these, in these hostels and like, yeah,

48:53 absolutely. Are Australians staying in that

48:54 hostel? Just the fact he was Australian

48:55 didn't make him stand out. But how much older he was.

48:58 So he was 37 I believe, whereas the average age of a person that

49:02 uses the hostel is something like 22.

49:04 Early 20s, yeah. You know, so he did stand out in

49:07 that sense. But also he had in the days

49:10 building up to this, he had threatened to burn down the

49:13 hostel. He had been staying at the

49:15 hostel for I think it was let me.

49:20 Find Oh he I'm sorry. He checked in in March of that.

49:22 Year. Sorry.

49:23 He did check in in March. Yeah, and he also was then he

49:26 was then asked to leave shortly, not too much longer after that

49:30 was a bit. I'll leave.

49:31 It was the week before, the week before the fire, he was evicted

49:35 because he owed about $200 in lodgings.

49:39 So he wasn't up to date with that.

49:41 So they kicked him out. Fair enough.

49:42 And because of that, he then started these threats.

49:45 So around town, he he was known to be around the around town

49:48 still. And was he also actually, I

49:51 think it was the day, Yeah. No, it was the day before the

49:54 fires. He had put a note at the local

49:57 Tavern saying that he was gonna commit suicide.

50:01 He'd also put a similar note at the backpackers.

50:04 And literally the local cop had been, he'd received being given

50:07 these notes as like sort of this is weird.

50:09 Like just think we'd better give this to you guys so you're aware

50:12 and had had looked at these notes and seen them and kind of

50:15 going, OK, something I need to look into like but.

50:17 Also, it wasn't the first time he'd done that.

50:19 No, threatened suicide before. Yeah, he'd also, God, he's a

50:23 he's a fucking unit. He'd told people that his

50:26 children had cancer. Doesn't have any kids.

50:29 He told people he had cancer. Oh, he didn't have cancer?

50:31 Doesn't. Have cancer.

50:32 Yeah, he was. He racially threatened like he

50:37 was? Yeah.

50:39 He taunted people based on their race at the backpackers, which

50:44 made people feel really, really uncomfortable.

50:46 Yeah, he threatened to kill one of the backpackers because they

50:49 weren't Australian. What the actual fuck?

50:53 Yeah, he also was really, really creepy towards some of the

50:57 female backpackers, so he'd go and follow them to the pub and

51:01 sit there and stare at them and just make them feel really

51:04 uncomfortable. Yeah, what a fucking piece of

51:07 shit. Oh.

51:08 He's gross. He's so fucking gross.

51:10 On the night of the fires too. So obviously we were saying

51:13 earlier that we, there was a man identified sitting in that

51:16 common room, you know, and that they had, they had the fire

51:18 sitting next to him. But prior to that, he, it was

51:24 later worked out that he was actually outside the, the

51:27 building chatting with a couple of other actual tenants from

51:31 the, the hostel. And he had said to them later

51:35 tonight, when you go in, just leave the back door open for me

51:37 so I can get in. So because I need to get in and

51:39 beat the shit out of my old roommate in there, this Indian

51:41 bloke. What?

51:44 Thankfully these guys did decline.

51:46 They did say to him, no, we're not leaving the door open.

51:48 Like that's, that's not safe for people.

51:50 No, you're not getting access. And they didn't leave the door

51:52 open, but in saying that to him, they said they weren't going to

51:55 do it. His return to them was oh, it

51:58 doesn't matter, I've got a key anyway.

52:00 So yeah, when he'd been kicked out, he took his key with him.

52:03 Fucking piece of shit. Which I do a little bit, kind of

52:06 go, OK, so there's .1. Yep.

52:08 Why didn't they then go inside and go, you know what, we need

52:10 to tell someone that this guy's got a key and then he wants to

52:13 beat the shit out of someone in here.

52:16 That bugs me a bit. And then again, that that little

52:19 bit of a bug of like, why don't you do more about that fire that

52:22 was, you know, that to walk into that, wouldn't you be like,

52:25 that's not right. I think we need to get this guy

52:28 out of here for. Sure.

52:29 You would think like to me, I'd be like, maybe we need to call

52:32 the police. Like this is not OK.

52:34 He's just lit a fire inside. Obviously he wanted something to

52:38 happen because he had fuel there, you know, as in he had

52:41 the cushions there that he was then obviously trying to make

52:43 catch fire to let this go. Yeah, to me, yes, that should

52:47 have happened. But then it was also 12:30 in

52:51 the morning and these blokes were inebriated.

52:54 They'd been at the pub all night.

52:56 That's not to say that none of this is their fault.

53:00 No, no, no, I get what you're saying.

53:01 There were so many points along. The way where?

53:04 It could have happened differently.

53:06 That might have been. I just think like if if the cops

53:08 had been called when like, yeah, there's this this strange guy

53:11 hanging out the front who's saying he wants to get in and

53:13 he's got a key. Yeah, don't if there's anything

53:15 in it and the cops go, OK, all right, well, thanks for letting

53:17 us know. Hang up.

53:18 If they then got a second phone call saying saying, hey, there's

53:20 a guy here has just lit a fire and, like, done this, they'd

53:23 kind of go, let's go hang out and check out what's going on

53:26 down there tonight. Like there's something, you

53:27 know? Yeah.

53:29 So unfortunately, I think there was one point of entry where

53:32 this could have potentially been avoided.

53:35 Yeah. But there's.

53:36 Yeah, lots of things wrong. Yeah.

53:38 So many, so many things. So after, after the fire,

53:41 obviously the police are looking for this guy because all signs

53:45 are pointing to him. You know, they had a lot of

53:47 these eyewitness accounts by the stage.

53:50 So a few days later they're looking for him and they find

53:53 him. So they put out a lot of comms

53:56 out to local area, local police and everyone was kind of looking

54:00 for him. They also brought police in from

54:03 Brisbane. So they brought them up from

54:04 Brisbane to and they were like special tactical type police who

54:09 were, you know, this was sort of their bread and butter.

54:11 This is what they did. And what they did was they found

54:15 him in bushland in Howard, which was about 32 KS from Childers.

54:20 And he was just like hanging out there.

54:22 Apparently he'd spent a couple of nights in a shed in on one of

54:28 these properties. And yeah, anyway, he was found

54:32 found by these police officers. So there were two police

54:35 officers and a police dog. And when they came upon him, he

54:39 had a knife and he was acting completely irrationally.

54:44 And he ended up stabbing, stabbing one of the police

54:47 officers in the jaw so hard that the knife actually snapped off

54:51 in his jaw. Left a piece in his jaw.

54:55 Piece in his jaw, he also. Stabbed the poor dog in the paw

54:58 as well, but he's OK he. Is OK, he survived, but that's

55:03 fuck. So the other police officer drew

55:05 his weapon and shot three shots, one of which hit long in the

55:11 shoulder. Yeah, right.

55:12 So he's drama queen. He is thinking that he's going

55:18 to die from a gunshot shoulder. No, apparently.

55:22 So his claim at that point, this is what he says, yeah, Is that

55:25 he said him him saying I'm going to die anyway is actually

55:30 because he he had cancer that he didn't have.

55:34 Yeah, OK. So he's actually what, like.

55:37 So in his mind, he's like, no, I'm dying of cancer anyway, even

55:41 though he doesn't have cancer. I thought it was 'cause he got

55:45 shot and he's like, Oh my God, I've got a shot in the shoulder.

55:47 I'm gonna. Die, which actually makes more

55:49 sense to be honest. Then I'm gonna die from my fake

55:52 cancer. Oh what the fuck?

55:55 Anyway, so he's confessed. He's like, yeah, lit those

55:57 fires, but the police officers didn't actually have any paper

56:01 on them. They had a pen, no paper, but

56:04 one of them had a $10 note and they because they put off.

56:06 Duty cops one. No, no, no.

56:08 They were on a break. That's right.

56:09 So, yeah. So they had been searching for

56:11 him all morning. It was time for them to take a

56:13 lunch break. And then this farmer saw him in

56:16 the field or whatever in the bushland.

56:18 And so they had to. They didn't have their stuff

56:20 with them because they were at the cafe or whatever they want.

56:24 And so that's why they had none of their gear with them.

56:26 Thankfully, they were still armed.

56:27 Yes. And yeah.

56:29 But they didn't have all their other stuff.

56:31 Yeah. And so he had a $10 note in his

56:33 pocket and he got, he wrote out the confession on this $10 note,

56:37 which was then intended in evidence at the trial.

56:39 Yeah. But cost that boy 10 bucks.

56:41 Yeah, I hope he was reimbursed. Sure that if you put that on

56:44 your little expense docket, wouldn't you pay for 10 bucks?

56:48 Yeah, you can get a couple of coffees for that.

56:51 In 2000 you could probably get 3.

56:52 Three at least. So, yeah, so that, like, that's

56:57 a little interesting tidbit of the story there.

56:59 Yeah. But he was obviously arrested,

57:01 taken to hospital to have that dealt with.

57:03 And apparently he also then while he was in hospital, made a

57:06 confession to a nurse who was looking after him.

57:09 And so, you know, again, did he make that confession because he

57:13 thought he was dying of cancer? Oh my God, what a fuck.

57:15 He's just, he's a real weird bloke.

57:17 He like he had a a girlfriend at one stage I believe not he maybe

57:21 he had he was I don't think he was the father of the child.

57:24 But he threatened he had any biology.

57:26 No, I don't believe he was the father's child, but he

57:27 threatened to to set them both alight.

57:30 Like he was a real, not great guy at all.

57:34 Like real, not Job. Yeah.

57:37 Yeah. And obviously, no, it hadn't

57:39 been dealt with in any way. It's not like.

57:41 He had. Any treatment for whatever was

57:44 going on for him. Not at all, no.

57:47 So I guess we're getting to the point now of actually I did just

57:52 want to add 1 little bit in here.

57:53 So this was all happening in the lead up to the Sydney Olympics.

57:58 And so this was during the time that the Sydney Olympic torch

58:02 relay was going around the country.

58:04 Do you remember where did you see the Olympic torch?

58:08 Yes, yeah. So I remember it came past my

58:12 house. Oh yeah, right.

58:13 So. We had like family and friends

58:15 over and we made a day of it. The torch actually came past our

58:18 house. It was a big deal.

58:19 I remember it very vividly. And anyway, so Princess Anne was

58:23 actually out here for that reason, because she was here to,

58:27 I don't know, 'cause. She was, yeah, out here for the

58:30 the relay. The relay, yeah.

58:32 And so she actually diverted. She was in Queensland at the

58:36 time. She diverted her to whatever

58:39 itinerary itinerary to go to Childers in the aftermath of

58:43 this and thank the first responders and to everybody, and

58:47 to have a chat with the survivors who were still in town

58:50 at the time. I think she arrived maybe five

58:52 days after the fire. And it was such a big deal.

58:57 And, you know, for something like that to happen to a town

59:00 like Childers with such a massive thing.

59:03 And it really, I mean, they had a really beautiful sense of

59:06 community as it was. But having a royal visit just

59:09 really sort of it really helped the town start to get the ball

59:15 moving in terms of how they were going to rebuild and how they

59:18 were going to sort this out. Because this had such a negative

59:21 impact on the town, not only for the fact of the fire and the

59:24 loss of life and you know, all of the trauma that came upon the

59:28 town because of that, but it certainly still to tourism.

59:32 It certainly meant that there weren't people, you know,

59:36 jumping at the chance to go and stay at backpackers or do fruit

59:40 picking in that. Area and they need those

59:42 workers, absolutely. That's it.

59:44 So tourism to the area, tourism to Australia as a whole took a

59:47 really big hit because of this. And I think it's, you know, in

59:52 situations like this, the actions of one man, 1 deranged

59:59 lunatic of a bloke had really the far reaching consequences of

1:00:05 this. People didn't want to come to

1:00:06 Australia and stay in a backpackers for the actions of 1

1:00:11 lone fuck wit. Yeah, although I mean it

1:00:15 highlighted another issue. Yep.

1:00:17 It being the fact that, and there were regulations in place

1:00:20 in 2000 for sure in terms of, Oh yeah, fire prevention and alarms

1:00:26 and things like that in buildings, especially those

1:00:28 where people were, you know, staying at, at volume like that

1:00:31 in a hotel, etcetera. However, it highlighted that

1:00:35 there's, there were glitches in their system in checking these

1:00:38 things and making sure that they were in working order, yeah, at

1:00:41 all times. And that to not be complacent

1:00:44 and sort of go, oh, that had never happened to us because

1:00:47 that's pretty much what happened here.

1:00:49 There were, there were checks done on this building, but they

1:00:52 weren't, wasn't follow through on ensuring that, for example,

1:00:56 the exit lights that didn't light up, those batteries should

1:00:58 have been replaced on a regular basis.

1:01:00 There had been people out checking the building who had

1:01:03 caught had said they need to be replaced, but then no follow up

1:01:06 on that being done. So there was an alarm system, a

1:01:11 fire alarm system in the building.

1:01:13 However, it had been malfunctioning.

1:01:15 They'd had multiple electricians out to work on it, and it would

1:01:19 they'd they'd fix something, play around with something, and

1:01:21 then the next thing it would malfunction again.

1:01:23 So by malfunction, what actually happened was it would go off.

1:01:26 Yeah, it would like that the whole would go off.

1:01:27 Yeah, false. You know, alarms going off and

1:01:31 so it got to the point where the owners of it of the

1:01:34 establishment at the time will let fuck it, turn it off.

1:01:36 Because. We can't get this working.

1:01:38 They needed to send two parts off to some specialist place to

1:01:43 have it reviewed. Although they had also had a

1:01:46 quote done to replace the entire system, which would would have

1:01:49 cost them $12,000. Yeah, and they had actually I

1:01:53 think signed off on that occurring.

1:01:56 But we're not rushing on getting it done.

1:01:59 OK, I didn't know that. Yeah, I believe that that was

1:02:02 the case. OK.

1:02:03 It was definitely a quote of $12,000 to entirely redo the the

1:02:09 system. OK I I knew there was a quote

1:02:12 for $12,000. I didn't realise they'd actually

1:02:14 taken it. I believe.

1:02:16 To actually get it done. OK, but it hadn't been done all.

1:02:18 Week it hadn't been done of the fire no no.

1:02:20 Oh, wow. So there were a number of issues

1:02:23 then that highlighted that since then there's been inquiries and

1:02:26 things around this. Yeah, that has definitely made

1:02:29 huge impacts on the implications for these things and people

1:02:33 getting fined or whatever and not have for not having these

1:02:35 things in place. So now that fire, smoke alarms

1:02:37 have to be in every every room and all these sorts of things,

1:02:40 so. Have to have battery backup.

1:02:41 The batteries need to be placed on a replaced on a regular

1:02:44 schedule. They need to be checked by a

1:02:46 certified fire authority. Yeah, there's now like you know,

1:02:50 on top of that it's if you get a an inspection and found to be

1:02:54 not meeting these current requirements, there's actually

1:02:56 consequences that are followed through on.

1:02:58 Whereas that's part of this was that they weren't followed

1:03:00 through on afterwards when they were found to be not right.

1:03:03 The other thing that was found was the occupancy level.

1:03:06 Yes, even though 53 people was the recommended amount and

1:03:10 obviously there were 88 people staying there, but again, that

1:03:13 wasn't closely monitored by anyone and they'd been doing it

1:03:16 for the century that had been opened.

1:03:18 They'd been, you know, over. Capacity over capacity that's I

1:03:22 mean that's not even a little bit over capacity.

1:03:23 I mean, that's. Double evil.

1:03:24 It's. Double, but it's by them putting

1:03:26 in those bunk, you know, situations and putting in a

1:03:28 triple bunks and things and going well, you know, instead of

1:03:30 one person sleeping here, we get 3 in.

1:03:32 It seems insane. But I mean, look, in a town like

1:03:35 that. There was clearly need for that

1:03:36 many people, you know, to like be work, be working in these

1:03:39 farms, etcetera. But they just needed to find a

1:03:42 bigger space or a build, have another build, have another

1:03:44 backpackers in the area. I don't know.

1:03:46 Yes, so after this, after it built, after it burnt down, a

1:03:51 memorial was erected in yeah space and another backpackers

1:03:54 was actually built behind it. So there is a new children's

1:03:59 backpackers hostel. Yeah, that's built on a vacant

1:04:02 lot behind there. So yeah, they there was space

1:04:04 that they could have potentially gone.

1:04:06 Into but I mean that costs money, doesn't it?

1:04:08 Like. Everything that's right.

1:04:09 Yeah, that's exactly right. So I guess we'll get to the

1:04:13 charges. Yeah, so.

1:04:16 Long was charged now with only two murders and arson, and it

1:04:23 went to trial based on this. Now, there's a lot of nuance to

1:04:28 this, and I think I can totally understand from the family's

1:04:31 perspectives that this is not fair and not just, but I also do

1:04:38 understand why the prosecutor went down this path.

1:04:41 So they decided to only pursue a murder charge for the twins.

1:04:48 The Australian twins named I believe it was Stacy, Kelly and

1:04:52 Kelly. Slack.

1:04:56 Slack, thank you. Sorry I I do have their names

1:04:59 written down. They the reason being they were

1:05:03 able to obtain DNA from because these girls were from WA I think

1:05:08 and they were able to get DNA and prove that the bodies belong

1:05:13 to them. They also decided to withhold

1:05:16 charges for the other murders because if they went for all of

1:05:22 them in one go and he was found not guilty because we have the

1:05:27 double jeopardy laws in Australia, they wouldn't have

1:05:30 then been able to try again. Exactly.

1:05:32 So that that side of it kind of makes a lot of sense to me.

1:05:35 Same. It was like a backup system.

1:05:37 It was a backup system, so they had obviously another 13 people

1:05:42 they could potentially pursue to for a murder charge if the first

1:05:46 wasn't successful. Yes, it was successful.

1:05:49 He was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the murders of those

1:05:53 two girls. Unfortunately he was also,

1:05:58 fortunately, in one way, I guess, he was also given the

1:06:01 highest ever arson sentence of 15 years.

1:06:06 At the time it was the highest that had ever been given out in

1:06:08 an Australian court for arson, 15 years.

1:06:11 But because of the way our laws, our system works, he was to

1:06:18 serve that concurrently with his murder conviction, which I think

1:06:22 is so fucking fucked. Well, the way they just the way

1:06:26 they sort of clarify this as to why that's the case is that the

1:06:29 court actually treated it, the act of the arson as causing the

1:06:35 death, not that he was attempting to murder 88 people.

1:06:40 Like, yeah. And I completely, I don't, I

1:06:43 don't agree with this. I'm not saying it, but like,

1:06:44 this is that's how it got it was basically it wasn't intentional

1:06:47 murder. It was arson that happened to

1:06:50 just in inadvertently cause death, which so these were the

1:06:55 words from the judge. Death was such an inevitability

1:06:59 in the circumstances that to light those those fires displays

1:07:02 callousness, cruelty that is, that is hard to imagine.

1:07:06 In other words, even without premeditated intent, the

1:07:09 predictable and horrific consequences made the ACT

1:07:12 extraordinarily heinous. Yeah.

1:07:15 So, yeah. And I the thing.

1:07:16 Sorry. They were his words.

1:07:18 However, he has sentenced based on that, that act of arson not

1:07:24 being intentional murder. I just think it's so fucked up.

1:07:27 Absolutely. So how could you have not

1:07:29 assumed in lighting that fire that it wasn't going to cause?

1:07:33 Death. No attempted murder on the other

1:07:35 70, however. Me.

1:07:36 Exactly. That's and I get OK the other

1:07:39 side of the. Murder.

1:07:39 He's. Totally.

1:07:41 And I get, I get it from one perspective of a legal system

1:07:44 that one of the other reasons why they only went for the two

1:07:47 murders was to expedite this in terms I can understand that it

1:07:50 can become very, a very long trial, very drawn out, very

1:07:54 confusing when you start adding more and more people to like

1:07:57 trying to get convictions on. I am.

1:07:59 I do get that. I'm not saying I don't like the

1:08:02 way they went about. It no I understand why they did

1:08:04 that, then the sentencing needs to take it into account.

1:08:08 OK, if you think so. He was essentially sentenced to

1:08:10 20 years in prison, right? For the murder, 15 people.

1:08:14 The attempted murder? Well, he wasn't even charged

1:08:17 with attempted murder, No. Then that's like what, 1.2 years

1:08:22 per person they killed? Like that's so woefully

1:08:26 inadequate. Yes, it's disgusting.

1:08:29 Well, because what I don't understand then is OK, he was

1:08:32 convicted of this and yeah, that's great.

1:08:33 Like he was convicted of it sentence not really equalling

1:08:37 the crime. OK, so let's say why wasn't he

1:08:41 then convicted of those? And we've got we've got him for

1:08:43 20 years minimum. Why was he not then further

1:08:47 charged? Yeah, with attempted murder and

1:08:50 other one and other murders. Yeah.

1:08:52 I don't understand why we haven't piled on like, yeah,

1:08:55 like we're talking at the moment about the mushroom, you know,

1:08:58 Lady and Aaron Madison and the fact that there's potentially

1:09:01 other charges. I love the charges that might

1:09:03 come. Why is this guy not being

1:09:06 further charged? I did see some commentary about

1:09:09 this, right? I don't know.

1:09:11 I don't know. It didn't come from the

1:09:13 prosecution, so I don't know whether this was opinion or not.

1:09:16 I assume it was opinion based on these facts, but I think it was

1:09:20 it had something to do with the fact that it wasn't in the

1:09:22 public interest to spend the money to do that.

1:09:25 But I don't think that's true. I mean, think about the

1:09:27 families, think about the victims families who didn't get

1:09:31 the justice for their family member.

1:09:33 How? Guilty.

1:09:35 Would the twins family feel that they're the only ones who maybe

1:09:39 did get justice? Do you know what I mean?

1:09:41 Like, I would feel either way. I feel like there's no win

1:09:44 there. Dad, Yeah.

1:09:45 Did you see? Did you see?

1:09:46 I think it was on a 60 minutes maybe they did a 20 year special

1:09:52 on this. Did you see?

1:09:53 That I haven't. Didn't watch all of it.

1:09:54 Yeah, watching. It he, Oh my God, he got me.

1:09:57 Oh. I've read I've read quotes from

1:09:59 him but I haven't seen like. He's a beautiful man and the

1:10:02 fact that he he's had to live his life, Many of these families

1:10:06 have had to live their lives without their.

1:10:07 The twins were their youngest children and like the absolute

1:10:11 world, and they've lost both their children.

1:10:13 Like both. Their daughters like 22 at the

1:10:14 time, you know, the world was their oyster.

1:10:16 Absolutely. They were, you know, exploring

1:10:18 Australia together. And I just like, I actually

1:10:21 can't even imagine it. No.

1:10:23 So in July of 2006, an inquest was, was held, yes, in relation

1:10:31 to this. And evidence was given that day

1:10:34 and for the next two days there were 20 witnesses and 440

1:10:38 exhibits tended. So it was, it was interesting

1:10:43 what they found. They basically found that the

1:10:46 room 7, which is the room where most, I think 10 people died. 10

1:10:49 people. Seven.

1:10:50 Yeah. That the fact that there were

1:10:53 security bars on the windows and the fact that, yeah, you're

1:10:56 right, the door had been nailed shut.

1:10:58 There was no. There was only one one exit

1:11:01 point that was really difficult to find because of the layout of

1:11:05 the room. And because they also, one of

1:11:07 they were talking about the fact that when they did get out,

1:11:09 there was like on the wall, like an evacuation plan.

1:11:12 They couldn't even read it and see it.

1:11:14 Like they couldn't see it because it wasn't lit up how it

1:11:16 was supposed to be because all these backup battery ones didn't

1:11:19 light up. So yeah, it was so many things

1:11:22 wrong. Yeah.

1:11:23 Sometime between the 15th and 26th of May in 2000, so like a

1:11:27 month before basically the fire, the alarm system was turned off

1:11:31 due to being faulty. the IT remained off obviously on the on

1:11:37 the day of the fire, the what you're alluding to before with

1:11:43 the inspection. So they had a fire inspection

1:11:46 company who would come and do all of the checks.

1:11:49 They'd noted several on several previous visits, things that

1:11:52 hadn't been, hadn't been kept up to code, but had never then

1:11:57 followed that through. They hadn't even notified the

1:12:00 authorities about it. Where, where that was really

1:12:03 their responsibility. So there's so much so much that

1:12:07 has gone into this and and I think we find this in a lot of

1:12:10 these cases where so many things add up to catastrophic event.

1:12:18 You know, if there had of been working smoke alarms, if there

1:12:21 had of been illuminated exit signs, if there had of been, you

1:12:27 know, the occupancy of the place had of been actually at, you

1:12:31 know, kept to the limit that it was at.

1:12:34 So many things could have either reduced the number of casualties

1:12:37 or possibly even prevented the catastrophic nature of what

1:12:43 ended up happening. Yeah.

1:12:44 So in the investigation into. So this was part of the inquest,

1:12:50 They looked into how they investigated Robert Long.

1:12:53 And the investigator said that they knew he was in the area

1:12:57 after the fire because he'd used his EFTPOS card.

1:13:00 Yeah. The witness, there were

1:13:02 witnesses who'd seen him in the coffee shop across the road the

1:13:04 next morning, like. Just watching what's wrong?

1:13:06 Isn't that crazy as? Fuck.

1:13:09 There's also a guy, the guy that witnessed him in downstairs with

1:13:12 the fire, he actually also smelt the petrol, yeah, smell.

1:13:17 So putting him in that room with the accelerant also, you know,

1:13:23 went towards that, yeah. Yeah, oh, there's, there's so

1:13:26 much, so much here. Also awesome.

1:13:28 You spoke, you've already spoken about him wanting the door left

1:13:31 open, saying that he's got the key anyway and Oh yeah, it's

1:13:36 just, there's just so much to this, to this inquest.

1:13:39 But I just wanted to talk about the FIRE investigation report.

1:13:43 Yep. So the report identified the

1:13:49 following factors. I'm reading this verbatim from

1:13:51 the report that may have continued the smoke smoke alarm

1:13:55 system being disabled. The electrical connection that

1:13:59 was tested has fat was found to have been corroded by water so

1:14:03 and that was never replaced by the electricians.

1:14:05 The illuminated exit signs didn't function.

1:14:09 But as you mentioned the battery, the backup batteries

1:14:12 hadn't been changed since 1993. Yeah, seven years earlier.

1:14:17 Yeah, like it just, it blows. All this shit blows my mind.

1:14:20 Yeah, the the managers of the so there was the owner of Childers

1:14:25 and there was 2 managers and they lived on site, right.

1:14:28 So they lived actually not far from room 7, which was the worst

1:14:31 cop. They both survived and got out.

1:14:33 Yeah, now they. Knew the place like the back of

1:14:35 the. Absolutely.

1:14:36 In the inquest they were asked to give evidence and they

1:14:41 refused to give evidence due to the fact that they would

1:14:44 incriminate themselves. Yeah, and that that was their

1:14:46 right. That was their right, but I

1:14:47 don't feel like it should be their right.

1:14:48 But you know what the you know what the coroner found though at

1:14:52 the inquest. Hold on, let me get that bit up.

1:14:56 In my view it while it would have been far preferable had the

1:15:01 operators had in place an adequate fire warning system and

1:15:05 had removed the obstructions from the escape routes, I do not

1:15:09 consider a jury could reasonably find that the conduct of the

1:15:13 operators was so derelict as to amount to criminal negligence.

1:15:18 So that was the State Coroner, Michael Barnes said that in his

1:15:22 report that was released on the 7th of July in 2000.

1:15:25 And six, I just can't come at that, actually.

1:15:27 Nor can I. I just find that that they they

1:15:31 were negligent. I really do think they were.

1:15:34 I mean, look, at the end of the day, this is on Robert Long.

1:15:36 I you know not not. But we're talking about

1:15:39 potential reduction in loss of life.

1:15:42 Absolutely, they said certainly, yeah.

1:15:45 I mean, more people could have got out, more people could have

1:15:47 been a note they could be notified earlier and therefore

1:15:49 being able to get out. So I really feel like this was

1:15:52 double layered in that in that sense, 100% Robert Long needs to

1:15:56 rot in jail. No question.

1:15:58 He is at the main culprit here. But there is definitely other

1:16:01 people who need to be held accountable for this.

1:16:04 And I go as far as the electricians, yeah.

1:16:07 Like, I do think that they should be held accountable, even

1:16:10 they they should have been more on top of this of like what

1:16:11 needed to be done to fix that system, you know?

1:16:14 I mean, so there was a class action suit put together by

1:16:18 those about 60 survivors after the inquest was done in the

1:16:22 December of that that year. Once it had been presented, they

1:16:26 took out a civil claim. And again, so it wasn't criminal

1:16:29 negligence that they were going for there.

1:16:31 More compensation was what all they could go for because the

1:16:34 coroner had stated that they weren't negligent.

1:16:36 Mm hmm. Which, yeah, I don't agree with,

1:16:38 but there was a a decision on that.

1:16:43 But it was done privately. Yeah.

1:16:45 So we don't know what the outcome of it was, but obviously

1:16:49 enough that those 60 survivors did decide to go ahead and take

1:16:53 what they were offering. But I mean, I dare say it

1:16:56 wasn't. Nothing would have been.

1:16:58 Nothing would compensate. And because they had to go

1:17:00 through, there are other civil claims as well for those who

1:17:03 were who were victims, for the families of those that were

1:17:06 killed in the fire. They're separate again of what

1:17:10 that, but they're basically the the civil, the class action suit

1:17:13 though it was targeted at the owners, the managers of

1:17:18 childers, but also the council and also then there were the

1:17:24 electricians etcetera were included in that.

1:17:26 So they were all in on, they were all put into that category.

1:17:30 So I agree with them moving forward on a civil case for

1:17:33 sure, but they should have been a criminal one as well.

1:17:37 I. I fully agree.

1:17:38 I fully agree. Yeah, the cause of death as

1:17:40 outlined in the inquest was that all deceased died of smoke

1:17:44 inhalation due to fire. Yeah.

1:17:46 Smoke inhalation occurs when you breathe in the products of

1:17:49 combustion during a fire. Carbon monoxide is a chemical

1:17:52 produced as a result of combustion.

1:17:55 Carbon monoxide poisoning is the usual mechanism of death in

1:17:58 fatal smoke inhalation in a house or structural fire.

1:18:02 Carbon monoxide combines with hemoglobin, resulting in

1:18:05 carboxyhemoglobin. Most victims succumb to the

1:18:08 asphyxia effect of carbon monoxide long before the flames

1:18:12 and heat affect the body. Thank fuck yeah.

1:18:15 Blood taken at autopsy is analyzed for carbon monoxide

1:18:18 content and the result expressed as a percentage of the

1:18:21 hemoglobin which is saturated with carbon monoxide.

1:18:24 The lethal concentration of carboxyhemoglobin saturation is

1:18:28 generally considered to be greater than 50%, and all of the

1:18:32 victims had a carboxyhemoglobin aside from All by one.

1:18:35 All by one, Yeah, Had a carboxyhemoglobin level of over

1:18:38 50. They were.

1:18:39 They ranked between like 61% and 85%.

1:18:43 It was insane. Someone, someone noted.

1:18:46 So one of the survivors noted that they took one breath when

1:18:51 they went. Well, so they opened their door,

1:18:52 they went into the corridor. They took one breath.

1:18:55 And he said he knew, Yeah, if he took another breath, he'd be

1:18:58 dead. He had to hold his breath until

1:19:00 he got outside. That's inside.

1:19:02 Yeah. Oh, that's awful.

1:19:04 God. Unbelievable.

1:19:06 Yeah, absolutely unbelievable. So, yeah, there was one that I

1:19:10 believe, and The thing is we don't know for sure.

1:19:12 I, I think I, I maybe miss, I may misunderstand this, but I

1:19:16 believe we don't know his level of carbon monoxide poisoning due

1:19:20 to the fact of how his remains were found.

1:19:23 He was the hardest to identify. Is he the?

1:19:26 One found under the window. He was downstairs.

1:19:29 He was the guy from Morocco. Oh, yes.

1:19:32 OK. Yeah.

1:19:32 So I believe we don't know what his smoke inhalation levels

1:19:36 were, because his body was he. He did.

1:19:41 His body was in the flames. So what that did to his body to

1:19:46 be able to get any reading, I guess maybe, Yeah.

1:19:49 I think that's the only reason we don't know which one, which

1:19:51 way he went. Yeah.

1:19:52 Yeah. Awful.

1:19:55 So. We maybe at this point like name

1:19:58 all the victims. Yeah, I think so.

1:20:00 So we've got twins Stacey Louise and Kelly June Slark, aged 22,

1:20:06 from Australia. Sebastian Westerville, 22, from

1:20:10 the Netherlands. We had Sarah Ann Williams, 23,

1:20:15 from England. And also from England, Michael

1:20:18 Ernest Lewis, who was 25. As well as from England, we've

1:20:22 also got Claire Louise Webb, 24, and Natalie Morris, who was 18.

1:20:27 Oh, sorry, more from England Gary John Sutton, who was 24.

1:20:32 Melissa Jane Smith, who was 26. And Adam John Rowland was also

1:20:36 from. He was two, sorry, down first

1:20:38 down my list. We then had Jolly van der

1:20:41 Velden, 23, from the Netherlands, at Suski Toyona,

1:20:46 31, from Japan. Julie O'Keefe, who is 24, from

1:20:52 Ireland. Hui Kyong Li from Korea, O23,

1:20:57 aged. 23 The last victim was Mulay Lahin Lalawi Kamal.

1:21:04 He was 48 and he was from Morocco and he was the one that

1:21:07 was, yeah, he was really hard to identify.

1:21:10 Yeah, really, really tragic. The, the fact that, I mean,

1:21:14 these people from all over the world have been impacted from

1:21:16 this. I mean, there's, it's hard to

1:21:18 get some information about these victims because I'm culturally

1:21:22 they, they, you know, they, they, they don't, they wanted to

1:21:24 be very private and all those sorts of things.

1:21:27 So there's different perspectives from, you know,

1:21:29 where they come from as well. So many layers to all of that.

1:21:33 Yeah. But these families were they

1:21:34 were not here with them. They were so far away when all

1:21:37 this happened. So it's just absolutely tragic.

1:21:39 You know, these these young people and you know, that we're

1:21:42 all doing what they wanted to do and experiencing life and

1:21:45 getting out in the world, doing something that was fun and also

1:21:49 true adventurous, all those great things that, you know,

1:21:51 people should do at these this point in their life.

1:21:54 You know, there's so many varying reasons as to why they

1:21:56 were doing what they were doing. Yeah.

1:21:58 And to have this be what ended their life, it's just absolutely

1:22:03 so tragic. There were some countries who

1:22:05 sent consular officials to help their foreign, to help their

1:22:09 nationals. And so, for example, Japan, they

1:22:13 really embraced, embraced their people who were there.

1:22:19 But then there were other, you know, other victims who didn't

1:22:21 necessarily have that same support, had to wait for family

1:22:24 to arrive. They had to, you know, they had

1:22:27 to reapply for passports. They couldn't even get out of

1:22:29 the country. They couldn't go home quickly.

1:22:31 It was just. Yeah.

1:22:32 So, you know, even just in that very immediate aftermath, it was

1:22:37 so much going on. It's in the years that followed

1:22:41 that a lot of them started to process their trauma and what

1:22:46 happened to them, how they escaped.

1:22:48 There was a lot of survivor guilt.

1:22:50 I've listened to a podcast. It's actually fantastic.

1:22:53 If you want a long form podcast on this, it's called Childers.

1:22:56 The full story. Yeah.

1:22:58 And it was. Anyway, it's it's definitely

1:23:03 worth a listener. Yeah, he was.

1:23:04 He was a journalist who was on this.

1:23:05 It was actually one of his very early days of like he.

1:23:07 Was reporting 5th day of his fifth week as a.

1:23:11 Journal. Yeah.

1:23:13 He, yeah, got into this and was like, and at the time reporting

1:23:16 on it and reflected back later going actually, you know what?

1:23:19 There's more about this children's story I need to tell.

1:23:21 And that's why he's done this podcast, which is fascinating.

1:23:24 It's really good. Yeah.

1:23:25 I I love to though. Like we think Karl Stefanovic,

1:23:28 this was his first gig too. Like for the Today, was it for

1:23:30 the Today show? It was his first Channel 9,

1:23:33 Channel 9. Gig Yeah, yeah.

1:23:35 So like he, he. Was literally a week.

1:23:37 Very young faced Pastefanovic there, like, yeah, So I I like,

1:23:42 yeah, a lot of young journalists ran this, you know, with this

1:23:44 story. But he was more the other guy,

1:23:45 the guy that did the podcast. He was much more of a local from

1:23:48 sort of that area. And he said, like, typically he

1:23:51 would do like a couple of stories a day.

1:23:53 Yeah, or five. I think he talked about even

1:23:55 potentially would go and travel around and sort of pick up these

1:23:57 little stories. And he said he'd been to

1:23:59 Childers a few times to do the feel good stories, you know, of

1:24:01 like, you know, something going on, like someone had, you know,

1:24:03 knitted the longest, like, you know, scarf or something.

1:24:07 Whereas this was a completely different style of even

1:24:10 journalism that he was used to. Yeah.

1:24:11 Because this was so full on. And he said this was the only

1:24:14 story they were running and it was the only story he was

1:24:16 telling because it needed all of all of that to be told all the

1:24:20 time. Yeah, So his name is Paul

1:24:21 Cochran. Yeah, he he's, yeah, he's the

1:24:24 series. He's the podcast that he's made

1:24:26 is really. Really.

1:24:27 Yeah. I haven't listened to the whole

1:24:28 thing either, but like, I was really into it.

1:24:30 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, good.

1:24:32 So that's probably. Do you have anything else that

1:24:35 you wanted to add in? There's, there's a lot of extra

1:24:39 details and stuff that if you listen to that podcast, you can

1:24:41 absolutely get a lot more of the like nitty gritty detail of it

1:24:45 all. And to hear accounts from

1:24:47 survivors and, and it's, it's interesting hearing from people

1:24:52 in the first person, they, they lived experience and what they

1:24:54 remember and what they don't remember.

1:24:56 That's what I found really fascinating.

1:24:58 He was asked, he would ask them questions like, oh, So what did

1:25:01 you do? How did that happen?

1:25:02 The mechanism by which they got out and that kind of thing, and

1:25:06 a lot of them don't. Remember, no, they just.

1:25:08 I got out but I don't know how. I'm like, I don't.

1:25:10 Know I don't know where I was. I don't even remember.

1:25:12 What I guess that's a bit of that smoke inhalation effect

1:25:14 like kind of thing too that that was starting to take effect.

1:25:17 I guess it does mess with you, yeah.

1:25:18 But yeah, just. Actually, another thing I did

1:25:20 want to raise in this, I think this just is more to how this

1:25:25 town changed in an instant because of this fire.

1:25:28 One of the survivors remembered a refrigerated room coming in

1:25:34 and that was the makeshift morphs.

1:25:36 And he remembers seeing bodies being craned out of the wreck

1:25:41 because they they couldn't send people in to get the bodies

1:25:47 because structurally there was, it was, the place was.

1:25:51 Far well I believe that on the like the day after the fire

1:25:54 there was I feel it was the mayor maybe had gone in

1:25:58 definitely the police chief sort of thing they'd gone in to sort

1:26:02 of start kind of trying to look for things and the roof

1:26:04 collapsed in on top of them literally like went right in

1:26:07 front of them like and collapsed so it was very very dangerous to

1:26:11 be in there the. Roof.

1:26:12 So even though there were these three buildings, they were all

1:26:16 under one tin roof. Yeah, and because it was so hot,

1:26:20 there's photos of the tin roof and it looks like molten metal.

1:26:24 Like it. It looks like drippy molten

1:26:26 metal, like it's it's insane. Yeah, that shows the heat of it,

1:26:31 too. So, yeah, they had to crane the

1:26:33 bodies out because it wasn't safe to send people in.

1:26:37 Oh my God, I can't even imagine. And to have, you know, to have

1:26:39 to bring in a makeshift more because, yeah, they had 15

1:26:41 bodies they needed to contend with to.

1:26:45 Just. Just.

1:26:46 Can't even absolutely awful. There's obviously the, the

1:26:51 building has been rebuilt, but is now, well, it's an

1:26:55 Information Centre on the bottom ground and the top level is now

1:26:59 a memorial. There's this glass piece that

1:27:01 was shipped in from, I believe Japan and, and has been put in

1:27:06 there. And they've got actually a glass

1:27:07 cabinet that contains like things that the survivor's

1:27:11 family, I'm sorry, the victims families have sent to them to be

1:27:15 used in the, in this memorial to represent them and things like

1:27:19 that. So little personal belongings

1:27:20 and stuff that are contained in these glass cabinets and a

1:27:23 beautiful more mural painted of all of the the victims.

1:27:30 And so the family sent in photos of them to be able to be

1:27:34 depicted in this, in this and this mural.

1:27:36 And it's, I've seen pictures of it, I've seen it live, but it is

1:27:40 really stunning. And really under the artist

1:27:42 commented, it was the most definitely the most, you know,

1:27:45 impactful emotionally to to paint and be feel, be, to be a

1:27:49 part of that, to represent those families.

1:27:52 Yeah. So it's really, really, I think

1:27:54 apparently it's had over 1,000,000 visitors there in the

1:27:57 last few in the last 20 years. And it is quite moving to see.

1:28:00 So if you are passing through the area, it is worth stopping

1:28:04 by and having a moment. Yeah, to visit that, I've heard

1:28:07 that. So in order to maintain that the

1:28:10 IT really needs the the council's support to maintain

1:28:14 the memorial because obviously there's costs associated with

1:28:17 it. And and so they say if you go

1:28:20 there, make sure you sign the visitors book because the more

1:28:23 people that come and bring, you know, it brings people to the

1:28:25 area. Yeah, which absolutely needed in

1:28:27 the aftermath, Yes of all of this and yeah, let let people.

1:28:32 Know that you've been there the community rallied and supported

1:28:35 these people at the time and as a you know, we should rally and

1:28:38 community and support these the the community now they need it,

1:28:41 as you know. Yeah, in general, I think too.

1:28:42 And to thank them for doing that.

1:28:44 I mean, I know that all the survivors that the one of the

1:28:46 first things that they all do comment around is that how

1:28:49 amazing using the town got behind them and supported them

1:28:52 that I mean, that doesn't happen everywhere to that extent.

1:28:55 Like they they literally became family and, you know, in that

1:28:58 town and they made sure they need had everything they needed.

1:29:01 So yeah, I think that that's that's absolutely beautiful.

1:29:04 And that to encourage more of that if when there's things that

1:29:07 go on that we all get behind people is really, really special

1:29:10 and really important. I know that for the big dates,

1:29:14 so the big anniversary dates, not only survivors attend, but

1:29:18 victims families often attend as well.

1:29:21 And it's a really sort of, I guess it's a way for them to

1:29:26 come together and a reason for them to come together and and

1:29:28 support one another still to these dates.

1:29:31 You know, 25 years. It might be worth mentioning too

1:29:33 that I believe it was around about the 20 year mark

1:29:35 anniversary pretty much to the day the building that they sent

1:29:39 the the survivors to where it was a new community centre that

1:29:43 had been built and they'd open that up to them burnt down.

1:29:46 I know. I mean I.

1:29:47 Know how do they change it? That just is insane to me to

1:29:51 think that that and then and no no arson involved in this they

1:29:54 complete freak thing yeah but that just is crazy yeah Oh yeah

1:30:01 crazy so the town's been through enough like Oh yeah yeah I.

1:30:04 Think that's enough? Totally.

1:30:05 I think that's enough for sure. Oh, gosh, for sure.

1:30:09 All right. I'm trying to find what we're

1:30:10 doing. Next week we are going to be

1:30:13 talking about Cherie Beasley. This one is too close to home

1:30:21 for me. Yeah.

1:30:22 It is this. Oh, because.

1:30:24 Oh my God. Oh, yeah.

1:30:26 OK. All right.

1:30:26 Yeah, for that one. Everybody.

1:30:29 Again, thank you very much for joining us.

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1:30:52 Thank you very much. Stay curious.

1:30:54 Crime besties. Bye.