Bowraville by Dan Box

Author:Dan Box
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781760143510
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia

Wednesday, 4 May 2016

The coach on which I’m riding pulls off the Pacific Highway, throwing up a cloud of dust. It’s now eighteen months since the parliamentary inquiry reported and twenty-five years – a lifetime – since Colleen, Evelyn and Clinton disappeared.

Tomorrow, their families will protest again in Sydney. They’ve agreed to march down the middle of the road to the state parliament building, holding up traffic through the city centre. Gary has also been working to prepare another application to the current state attorney general, Gabrielle Upton, asking her to overturn the decision of her predecessors and send the case to the appeal court. At The Australian, the first four episodes of our podcast are written, edited and ready to go, the fifth still being put together. I want to launch the series on the morning of the protest. As the coach slows and stops inside in the barren lay-by, I watch a small group of adults and children pick up their bags and run towards us through the slanting bars of sunlight. This is no longer just about reporting the murders, I admit to myself. The three of us, police, families and the newspaper, want to make as loud a noise as possible. We all want to be heard.

Which is why I am sitting on the coach. The new arrivals climb on board and find a place to stow their bags and sit. Like almost all of those on board, they are members of Clinton’s family, for some of whom this journey to take part in tomorrow’s protest in Sydney began at six-thirty this morning, over the state border in Queensland. The other children’s families are travelling separately, on planes, trains and cars from across the country. There’s not room enough on this coach to fit them. Many of those who have found seats on board have brought food and blankets with them, for it will be night before we arrive.

As the coach swings back into the flow of traffic, I post a series of short updates and photographs of the journey on Twitter. Most of the few followers I have on the social media platform are other journalists and will, I think, either be unaware of tomorrow’s demonstration or unconvinced it’s worth covering. If I can show them The Australian is covering the story, maybe they will convince their own newsrooms to take an interest, too.

Amid the rush to get the podcast finished, this stretch of time as the coach barrels down the highway is the first moment of calm in weeks, and in it I ask myself what I am doing.

Have I been coopted? Have I done nothing more than Gary wanted me to do when we met that first time outside the police force headquarters?

Not yet, because I do not believe that James is guilty. Nor do I believe that James is innocent. His voice is missing from the podcast. The little I know about him has been picked up instead from speaking to different people, or from the transcripts, witness statements and police running sheets I’ve read.

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