For the hot, dusty outback town of Darwin, it is an invasion unlike anything it has experienced before. Hotels are booked out, the bars are bustling and the talk is mostly about a murder mystery and a missing body.
British travel agent Joanne Lees will this week face the man accused of killing her boyfriend four years ago — the biggest murder trial in Australia since Lindy Chamberlain was accused of killing her baby a quarter of a century ago. And the international media are in Darwin in force to soak up the proceedings.
Lees will be the star witness at the trial starting on Monday of Bradley John Murdoch, a 45-year-old mechanic charged with the murder of 28-year-old Huddersfield backpacker Peter Falconio on July 14 2001.
Lees, now 32, and Falconio were on a working holiday when a gunman ambushed the pair by pretending to have car trouble on the Stuart Highway, 297km north of Alice Springs.
Her evidence will be crucial to the prosecution’s attempt to resolve one of Australia’s biggest crime mysteries, as Falconio’s body has never been found, despite extensive searches involving police, Aboriginal trackers and helicopters. Murdoch has pleaded not guilty to both the murder charge and the abduction and assault of Lees.
The outback’s most-talked-about trial in decades will involve 100 witnesses, 200 exhibits and four prosecution lawyers. It will be covered by local and foreign media fascinated by the tale of a holiday turned nightmare in the wilds of Australia.
For many Australians, the Falconio case evokes memories of the Darwin trial of Chamberlain, accused of killing her nine-week-old baby, Azaria, at a camp site at Uluru, formerly Ayers Rock, in 1980. Chamberlain spent more than three years in jail for murder, before she was pardoned and her conviction was quashed. She has always maintained that a dingo — a wild dog — took her baby.
In both cases, the women were the only witnesses to the disappearance of a loved one, and in both cases a body has never been recovered.
Once again the eyes of the world have turned to Australia’s vast, bewitching interior. And, once again, for all the wrong reasons.
The local Northern Territory government earns more than Aus$1,9-billion a year from tourism, hosting about 500 000 international visitors, mainly from Britain, Ireland, Germany and the US.
While it likes to promote the attractions of one of Australia’s last frontier territories, it is not eager to publicise dangers such as crocodile attacks or unpredictable perils along its lonely roads.
Chief Justice Brian Martin even moved to delay the local release of a horror film, Wolf Creek, about an outback killer who preys on backpackers, because he thought it too closely based on the Falconio story. Many local people are worried that the ghoulish tale of three backpackers, two of them British, at the hands of an outback killer, will damage tourism.
Lees’s arrival in Darwin was in stark contrast to her arrival at Murdoch’s committal hearing in May, when she was spirited into and out of court covered by a blanket in the back of a government car.
In a stage-managed performance designed to save the prosecution’s key witness the indignity of being hunted by the media, the Northern Territory’s justice department brokered a deal. Lees agreed to walk through the arrivals lounge at Darwin airport last week on the proviso that only a select few reporters were there to film it. Even then, she made it clear she would not answer questions.
There was less control, but just as much hustle, when Falconio’s younger brother, Nick, and his parents, Joan and Luciano, arrived a day earlier. Nick spoke briefly to waiting journalists but was clearly uncomfortable in the media scrum.
This weekend, reporters, cameramen, photographers and production crew from Britain, Asia and around Australia have converged on Darwin for the trial, expected to take six to eight weeks. Australia’s four main television networks, and the BBC, will broadcast live from vans outside the courts every day.
The media’s interest has been so intense Darwin’s Supreme Court has appointed a professional consultant to ”manage” 50 reporters and crews covering the trial. A special briefing was held on Saturday to set down the ground rules for covering the trial to the foreign media contingent.
Chief Justice Martin has said he will allow two TV cameras and two news photographers into the court before the jury is sworn in on Monday to get file footage of the courtroom. But from then on, cameras will be banned.
Three seats have been reserved for the British press, who will have to rotate between the main Court Six and the overflow Court Two, where large monitors will be set up. — Guardian Unlimited Â