6 found dead in Aust. outback

Press, 19 February 1986, Page 10

6 found dead in Aust. outback

NZPA-AAP Darwin The Northern Territory police are trying to piece together the sequence of events that led to the death of six people, including three children, on a lonely bore road on a Northern Territory pastoral station.

The police said the group, which included an experienced bushman, apparently died of thirst and exposure after their Dodge panel van became heavily bogged on the Newcastle Waters station, 260 km north of Tennant Creek. The bodies were found scattered around the van on Sunday and Monday. One body was found less than three kilometres from a flowing bore. The six, an Aboriginal woman, aged 34, two European men, 38 and 65, and three part-Aboriginal children, aged between six months and four, were last seen on February 2. The body of the woman was discovered on Sunday, about 30 km north of Elliott, on a dirt track between Lewis Ridge bore

to the north and Spell Paddock bore to the south. Owned by the media magnate Kerry Packer, the 3414 sq km Newcastle Waters station extends across the Stuart Highway with its southern border to the north of Elliott. An old green Dodge van was found 100 metres away deeply bogged in "black plains dirt”, a thick clay-like soil. The police put a guard on the area and detectives from Tennant Creek and Alice Springs, including a pathologist, searched the area the next day. The bodies of the children were found in a group about one kilometre from the car.

They were a six-month-old baby boy and two girls, aged three and four. About a half-kilometre to the north-east the police located the body of the younger man, believed to be the woman’s de facto husband. He was found just 2 l / 2 km from Lewis Ridge bore.

The older man was found 3km from the car

in the other direction, about skm from Spell Paddock bore. A dog was found alive sheltering under the car, police said. Chief Inspector Roger Brabin said the area was not terribly rugged but fairly barren. Both bores contained water and the older man was known to be an experienced bushman.

Arthur Hansberry, proprietor of the Elliott Hotel, said temperatures had been in the 40s during the last week. The police said the six, who lived in the Elliott area, were last seen at Tenfold bore on the station, about 15km from where the car was found.

They had been identified but their names would be withheld until relatives had been notified.

The last recorded bush deaths in the Northern Territory were in September, 1983, when a mother and two children became lost near the Northern Territory - Queensland border.