THE LOOTER
“ … I’m not mucking around, fella. If you don’t leave right now, I’ll shoot you …”
In a moment of confidence, old Phil, the ex-saddler, pulled me into a doorway along Todd Street, in Alice Springs, to share a memory of Cyclone Tracy that devastated Darwin back in 1974.
“I was on the spot, you know.” he half whispered. “I saw it all at first hand. All the papers and the radio and TV covered it, as you know, but they didn’t tell all the truth because they weren’t told all the truth, and that’s the truth.”
“Well, what was the truth they weren’t told,” I enquired. “Do you mean about the number of deaths?”
He nodded, saying: “Yair, that’s one part of it. Lots of Aborigines were killed that never got counted, of course. Some got flattened out in the bush and no one found them till a long time after. They got cleaned up by the ants and the dingoes …”
“What else was over-looked?” I interrupted him, feeling vaguely squeamish over his graphic descriptions.
“I had a house up there, as you know, at Nightcliff,” he continued. “I went back to have a look at it. It was buggered. A mess. Roof gone. Everything smashed to pieces. One room was standing, more or less. At least, the walls were.
“When I looked in through one of the broken windows, I spotted a bloke inside. He was rummaging around through the rubbish, pulling out things – you know, the TV. a record player, and he was piling up things into a big cardboard box. When he saw me, he yelled out, ‘Buzz off, mate. This lot’s mine.’”
“A looter,” I said.
“Yair, a bloody looter. I did my block when I saw this bludger pinching my personal stuff. I went inside and faced the bugger. I told him to piss off. This was my house, I said, and he was knocking off my private things.
“He wasn’t a bit ashamed. He said, ‘Look, mate, go away. You can claim all of this on your insurance, so you’re not going to lose out.’ Can you imagine the cheek of the thievin’ prick?”
“What did you say?”
The old man’s eyes narrowed dangerously as he continued: “I stood my ground with the bastard. I told him again to get the hell out of my house and leave my stuff alone. Do you know what he did? He said, ‘Fuck off, mate,’ and he started putting more of my gear into his cardboard box.That did it for me. I did my block. I went up to the bastard and I said, ‘Look, if you don’t piss off, I’ll get my gun and shoot you.’
He said, ‘Really?’ and kept on doing what he was doing.
I went outside then. I was fightin’ mad. I got my shotgun from the truck, put a shell up the spout, and I went back inside the house and fronted the bloke again. This time I was pointing the loaded shotgun straight at his chest. I said to him, ‘I’m not mucking around, fella. If you don’t leave right now, I’ll shoot you.’
He just laughed in my face.
“I pulled the trigger and shot him. He went down like a bag of spuds with a bloody great hole in him and bleedin’ like a stuffed pig.
“God, I couldn’t believe I had really done it. I’d shot a bloke in cold blood. Just like that. I went into a panic at first and I thought I’d just disappear and hope no one had heard the shot. Then I thought no, I’d better do the right thing and take what was coming to me. I drove to the police station and I told a couple of coppers what I’d done. They didn’t seem very worried, which surprised me. They asked me was I sure the looter was dead. I said yes, very sure. They asked me if anyone had witnessed the incident and where was the body. I told them that.
“I was about to fly over to Perth, to stay with my brother for a while, so I gave them the address and phone number and they reckoned they might have to get in touch with me. They warned me not to mention the killing to anyone. Well, when I’d been away for a while – about two months or so – I was starting to feel a bit worried because the cops in Darwin hadn’t contacted me at all.
“So one day I called them and I asked one of the coppers I’d spoken to what was happening about the bloke I’d shot. The copper said, ‘Oh, yair. Don’t worry about it, old fella. We picked up the body and buried it with some blackfellas and others who couldn’t be identified …’
“Is that all he said?”
“No … He asked me what was the weather like over in Perth.”
