Blockies

[willedoo]

Not related to this area, but several years ago I asked a real estate agent about available land in a particular area. He told me don't even think about it. Then he went on to tell me about a bloke he knew who lived on a forty acre block there. The bloke lived in a liveable colourbond shed on a concrete slab; it was lined inside and all fitted out for modern living - kitchen, laundry, living and bedrooms etc.. He went away for a month and came back to find he'd been robbed. They took everything and all that was left on the block was a concrete slab with some tie down bolts sticking out of it. Water tanks, outbuildings - all gone. They'd demolished his home and carted it away. The agent said it was the sort of area where it was most likely a local or close-by neighbour who did the job. The block areas around Tara have a similar reputation, and have had so for decades.

[Jerry_Atrick]

I was watching some clip from the ABC and the local Tara residents seemed to think it was a tight knit community that looked out for each other - bar 1, who coudn't effin wait to get out of there. Maybe what the others meant to say is that they are as thick as thieves?

 

OK.. that was a bad joke, but I had a look on realestate.com.au, and I can't say it has captured my retirement imagination..

[Bruce Tuncks]

Onetrack, there is an Australian example I know of. Murdoch, the Falconio murderer, lived some of the time on a 50 acre poor soil bush block in SA, not far from Sedan but on the east side of the murray. People who cannot abide neighbours live there.

His housmate told of him practicing making handcuffs from cable-ties and electrical tape. ( that poor woman was tied with these and some tiny flakes of his skin were in the tape.)

I dunno if he was a conspiracy theorist, I thought he just got bored on the long drives and did the odd murders for entertainment. He may well have been the "Wolf Creek" real guy.... but the actor in the movie was a much better-looking bloke, I can imagine being taken in by the actor.

If I had my way, he would be given circumstances where it was in his best interests to say where the body of the murdered guy was, but he might have been one of many...  how unlucky Murdoch was if that woman was his first yet she was flexible enough to get her hands in front?

[Yenn]

It appears that Tara is a bad area and when the police went to find out about a missing person, they had done a risk assesment and decided they had everything covered.  They say there was nothing to alert them to danger from the brothers. I wonder why they sent in four police, when they would usually send two at most for such a mundane task.

I reckon they knew something was going on and just let it get out of hand. Now they want to make out that it was all unexpected so they are not held accountable for the deaths.

Those locals were not all bad, which is shown by Alan Dare going to see if his neighbours needed help.

[old man emu]

I was going to make a snappy retort about Mr Alan Dare based on Yenn's last sentence above, but sometimes making a snappy retort without full knowledge of what brought him out of his home, would be offensive to his memory and hurtful to his family. Best give him the respect in death that one should.

[willedoo]

When you look at the property on Google maps satellite view, you can see another thing that would have added to their paranoia. Their property is surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of coal seam gas wells. They wouldn't be too keen on the idea of energy companies having the right to tramp all over properties. There's no wells on their property but they are on neighbouring properties. A lot of recluses would have bought into the area before the coal seam gas started up.

 

In this screen grab, the red marker is on the road at their property. All the small white squares are coal seam gas wells.

 

[facthunter]

Good  research and thinking 99. Nev

[willedoo]

This triangular section near Tara is one of the earlier block developments in the area. Subdivision is probably a better description as no development work was done; I don't think they even put in property entrances. I remember driving past this one in the 1980's and it was a rough show then. People were living in the melon holes in makeshift sheds, buses or caravans. These days, there are a few half decent houses there. It's not good country. Some country can be like this, melon holes with Brigalow timber, and have good fertile grey soil, but this subdivision has poor, hungry soil.

 

Melon hole country has it's good and bad points. If the soil is good, it can be laser leveled and grow good crops, but the melon holes will always reappear over time. I remember working on the Moonie to Jackson pipeline, and they had bulldozers digging the soft wet clay out of the holes so it could be backfilled with solid fill. One dozer in a big hole went down twenty feet before it hit solid ground. They had nineteen dozers working on a one kilometre stretch of pipeline easement, all just digging out the melon holes. They can't put a pipeline down in melon hole country unless they are dug out and refilled. If that wasn't done, the natural ground movement would stress the pipeline and crack welds.

 

Melon hole country is also useful for grazing to a degree. The holes retain water after rain, and are like a million small dams causing grasses to grow and stay longer. On the down side, it's not easy country to muster or drive around in. To live in that country like those blockies wouldn't be much fun. Wet holes would breed mosquitos and bugs, concrete slabs would crack, and it's rare to be able to have a straight driveway. Any tracks on the blocks have to duck and weave among the holes. It was sad to see those interstate people buying those blocks sight unseen. They thought they were buying a bargain; acerage in Queensland, not too far from the coast and all facilities. The reality was living in a shed among the melon holes at Tara. I've been familiar enough with the area over the years to know it would be the last place I'd want to live, among the block subdivisions. I was born about 40k from where the shootings took place.