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The Bowraville Murders

Readers be advised this blog entry contains the names of Aboriginal people who have died.

This feature documentary from director/journo Allan Clarke aims to bring awareness to the Bowraville murders, still unsolved after 30 years. I have to admit, being a teenager at the time and not living in NSW, I don't remember the case, but the film does a great job of putting you right back there. And it's fucking harrowing. A brief summary - between September 1990 and February 1991 three Aboriginal children, Colleen Walker-Craig, Clinton Speedy-Duroux (both 16) and Evelyn Greenup (4), disappeared from the same street in Bowraville, a small town in northern New South Wales. Not long later, the bodies of Evelyn and Clinton were found in bushland along the same road. Colleen's body has never been recovered.

As the film explains, it was police incompetence, actually racist carelessness, that prevented any thorough investigation, and it wasn't until a high ranking Sydney homicide detective, Gary Jubelin, took the case that a suspect was arrested. And let's be frank here, the fucker is almost certainly guilty. But due to the police neglecting to undertake any sort of forensic evidence gathering, this bloke was acquitted of the crimes. The following years have seen the families of the kids banging their heads against the Australian justice system, with only occasional success. The strength of the film is that it is so current, there's still a lot at stake for these families.

The structure of the film is familiar, with archival footage and slipping chronology graphics, taking us forward here and back there to investigate certain points in the story. A key moment in the retelling was the uncovering of the 'fresh and compelling evidence' from a truckie who encountered an unconscious young man lying in the street, very early in the morning of Clinton's disappearance. I won't elaborate, only to say this was chilling stuff. Where The Bowraville Murders differs from other true crime docos is in the raw emotional scenes, especially of the stoic old dads trying to hold back the tears as they explain events. Aussie fellas don't like to cry but watching a younger guy encouraging one of the fathers to "Keep talking, tell them" was a fair old kick in the windpipe.

At scattered points throughout the film Stan Grant pops in and reiterates Australia's racist past, from colonial days to the very near present. This commentary is cleverly done by having Stan seated in the Bowraville Theatre, where Aboriginal people used to have a separate entrance and seating area. Clarke's film is obviously not a fun watch but it's a pretty bloody important one.

The Bowraville Murders opens at the Luna on Sep 2nd and is also screening on SBS sometime in September.

See (and hear) also:

The procedural aspect (or lack of it) reminded me of season 2 of Mindhunter (2019), created by Joe Penhall and, as this film started life as a podcast, have a listen to S-Town (2017) by Brian Reed of This American Life.

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