This article contains descriptions of violence.
There was one sentence in the Queensland state coroner’s opening remarks to the Wieambilla shooting inquest that jarred.
Terry Ryan, wearing black-rimmed glassed, a blue shirt under a black suit, with short-clipped grey hair, told the packed courtroom that the probe won’t decide whether someone broke the law or if they’re civilly liable for their actions that day. It’s not about assigning blame, he said, with a flat affect, his words quickly swallowed by the carpeted rooms.
Declining to play the blame game is a legal requirement, allowing a frank dissection of what happened in Wieambilla unencumbered by fear of legal repercussions. It also represents an attempt to create an environment that’s less adversarial and more cooperative. The point of the coronial inquest, as established by law, is to understand how six people died at a remote property in regional Queensland and find out if there is any way to prevent similar deaths in the future. The focus is on the systems that set in train those tragic events and how they can be improved, and less about the people involved. Insofar as people are discussed, it’s about their role within these systems: how were they prepared? And what made them act in the way they did?
The reason Ryan’s words jarred is because what he describes is impossible. People blame people. It’s people who appear in front of the inquest, observed by other people, questioned by people with various motives, all to be captured in a report written by a person. Even though everything is set up to remove every drop of emotion from proceedings — the inquest’s neutral introduction, the soft but generic courtroom setting, the unnatural procedures that govern the way the story unfolds to those watching, how it’s relayed to audiences outside through journalists — the humanness seeps through.
On the second day of the inquest, Constable Randall Kirk gave testimony about how he survived an ambush from shooters Gareth and Nathaniel Train. Sat in the witness box wearing his police jacket, with hands tightly clasped in front of him, Kirk’s testimony was careful and measured. He professed not to recall many of the small details about the lead-up to the event, a cautious response that’s typical in court cases but rubs against our natural urge to try to helpfully answer questions.
Body cam footage from one of the four junior police officers shown to the inquest the day before captured the two minutes between the officers jumping over the gate on what they thought was a routine missing persons check and the moment they were shot at with high-powered rifles by concealed, camouflaged men. As they walked down the road, framed by sparse vegetation that would provide little cover, they made idle chitchat about how one of them, the now deceased Constable Rachel McCrow, had just finished the mentoring stage of her first year of being a police officer. It was a mundane bit of banter, familiar to anyone who’s had colleagues, moments before a tragedy.
Over a few hours, counsel assisting Ruth O’Gorman KC methodically took Kirk through the afternoon of the attack. He explained coordinating with police from Tara to attend the Wieambilla property, meeting up before they arrived at the property, and what followed. Kirk described the first shots, his scramble for cover, the moment he saw the gunmen, watching them walk over to a fallen police officer and shoot her in the head, and his dash for the car to escape. He remains remarkably composed and reserved throughout his retelling of an incredibly traumatic event. He did his job.
There were moments when the mechanics of the inquest really ground against the weight of what was being described. Kirk was pushed to answer questions that would seem obvious, even tone-deaf, if it weren’t for the purpose of an investigation. For example, in the middle of a heart-stopping moment when Kirk was describing firing his weapon as he peered out from around a tree at a man who had just executed his colleague, O’Gorman asked “Was your gunshot loud?”. It was a reminder that the inquiry isn’t there to hear a story, but to provide the building blocks for a case.
At other times, there was no stopping the emotion. The rawness of police phone operator Katherine Beilby was evident from the moment she started to describe the excruciating two hours she spent on the phone with rookie cop Keely Brough who lay hiding from the Trains. Early on in her testimony, Beilby was asked why she raised the alarm early on in her phone call.
“I knew it was …” she said. Then a long pause, before she sucked in her lip to compose herself, then an almost silent sob. “I knew police were in trouble,” she finished quietly.
There were glimpses of this from the other parties involved in the inquest. Aidan Train, son of Nathaniel and Stacey, is self-representing at the inquest as he watches remotely. An engineer by trade, his questioning came across as earnest and a little bit unfamiliar with the legally setting, understandably. He asked a police investigator witness whether police would have seen a “flag” on the missing person’s job in their systems if he had reported that Gareth had threatened him days before, and that Gareth possessed illegal firearms — a flag that would have likely made police more cautious of approaching the Trains.
“If you were successful in obtaining an AVO [apprehended violence order] and you had knowledge that he had illegal firearms — yes it would have,” Detective Inspector Suzanne Newton replied. In the beat that followed, that alternate reality hung in the air, and then disappeared as the coroner continued proceedings.
Aidan Train has largely declined to speak to the media, but told Crikey that he hopes the inquest will help him get his message out.
We’re just a few days into the scheduled five week inquest, but there are already hazy outlines of big issues that can be reverse-engineered from the counsels’ lines of inquiry. Questions about the use and capabilities of police systems will continue to be scrutinised after the inquest heard that reports of gunshots around the Trains’ property in the days and weeks leading up to the attack weren’t flagged to the four police before their job. Why wasn’t Nathaniel flagged as a risk despite police knowing he crossed the state border with weapons during the COVID closures — an indication of his extreme anti-vaccine beliefs? And why did it take so long to tell the families of the slain police officers that their loved ones had been killed despite police clearly knowing the officers were deceased?
These are the tough, blunt questions about the systems that may have contributed to the deaths of six people and the pain of everyone around them. The inquiry needs to be bloodless so that it can prevent further bloodshed.
But try as one might, there’s no stopping the force of people. Kerry Dare, whose husband Alan was also killed by the Trains, appeared before the inquiry on Wednesday morning. Her fury towards police, her deep grief at the loss of her soulmate, and her resolve to live out the dream they shared, including staying at their Wieambilla block, couldn’t be confined in the careful, directed questioning of counsel. The court system can’t deny the people who exist within it.
