MELLISH ENDS SIEGE

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31727, 10 July 1968, Page 13

MELLISH ENDS SIEGE

T alk On T elephone With Psychiatrist (N.Z. Freis Annotation—Copyright) SYDNEY, July 9. The eight-day siege of Glenfield ended in an anticlimax today when the gunman, Wallace Mellish, aged 23, surrendered, unarmed, to the police, because, he said, he wanted to enlist in the Australian Army and fight in Vietnam.

Mellish walked quietly from the cottage at Glenfield, 25 miles west of the centre of Sydney, accompanied by his blonde wife, Beryl, aged 18. In his arms he carried her 12-week-old baby. This afternoon’s surrender came after an undertaking bythe New South Wales Police Commissioner (Mr Norman Allan) that Mellish would be taken to a military camp later today for a medical examination.

Commissioner Allan, who has been at the scene of the siege every day since it began last Tuesday, told reporters that he would do all in his power to see that Mellish was accepted for military service. The commissioner said that Mellish would spend tonight in whichever Army establishment the Army advised. He had promised that Mellish would not be taken to a police station. As Mellish surrendered, police emerged from the foxholes and hiding places they had occupied around the house during their week-long dav-and-night vigil. Inside the house they found Mellish’s private arsenal of small arms, including the high-powered Armalite semiautomatic rifle given to him by the police last week. Clean And Neat Mellish and his young wife looked clean and neat as they walked from the house to be met at the gate by Detective Superintendent Donald Fergusson, who took off his jacket to show that he was unarmed.

There to meet the couple, too, was the Rev. Clyde Paton, chaplain of Sydney’s Long Bay Prison, who had married them last week. He stretched out his arms and embraced them both. With Commissioner Allan, the group then went to a nearby caravan which had been "used as mobile police headquarters during the siege. The commissioner told reporters after the surrender that Mellish had been concerned that people were saying he was a psychopath. “Today he was the most rational I have seen him, except during the wedding,” Mr Allan said.

“He made his decision to surrender after many, many telephone conversations with Mr Paton. “We never at any stage knew what the result would be. We knew that we had to do everything possible to get that baby and its mother out of that house. ‘I Feel Good’ “Thank God he decided to come out.” After surrendering, Mellish

said: “I feel good. I’m glad I did the right thing.” Most of the negotiations for the surrender took place by telephone. After conversations with Mr Paton, Commissioner Allan and Detective Superintendent Fergusson this morning, Mellish telephoned a psychiatrist, Dr Eric Barclay, as to what he thought about his mental condition. Dr Barclay told Mellish he required treatment but, he said, he did not regard him as “a mental case.” Vietnam Hope Mellish telephoned a Sydney radio station and spoke to an announcer conducting a

“two-way telephone” programme, telling him he wanted a medical check-up at an Army camp. “I hope to go to Vietnam,” he said. “I want to go to Vietnam to pay for what I’ve done.” Mellish added that he would come out of the house when it was announced “over the air” that he wanted to join the Army. Commissioner Allan told reporters that as far as he knew there were no outstanding police charges against Mrs Mellish. Asked if there were any fines outstanding against her on vice convictions, the commissioner said: “The fines have been paid.”