Scales of injustice: ‘What these families have gone through is extraordinary’

Steve Meacham speaks to Dan Goldberg, producer of The Bowraville Murders, a new documentary that forensically dissects one of worst miscarriages of justice in Australian history 

SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD Clinton Speedy-Duroux had perfected some of Michael Jackson’s signature moves in 1991 and was out to impress his very attractive teenage girlfriend on the local dance floor.

He had recently moved to live with his father in Bowraville, in the NSW hinterland behind the surfing mecca of Nambucca Heads, though an “Aunty” had warned him not to go to. 

There was a maniac on the loose, she told him. Someone had abducted - and presumably killed - two girls in the previous couple of months: Colleen Walker-Craig, also 16, and a  mop-haired four-year-old, Evelyn Greenup.

With the insouciance of youth, “Bubby’’ (as he was known to his family) told his Aunty he could take care of himself. 

Fatal last words. 

When Clinton’s body was discovered in dense bushland three weeks later, devoured by animals, it was so decomposed the police described his corpse as “probably male”.

Had three white Australian children who lived just a few doors away from each other disappeared within three months of each other in 1990-91, the NSW Homicide squad would have been immediately on the case.

But Evelyn, Colleen and Clinton weren’t white. 

They were Aboriginal, living on an “out of sight, out of mind” settlement - “the Bowra Mission” - on the outskirts of a town that then still required “blacks” to enter the Bowraville cinema by a separate side entrance and sit on the dirt to watch Star Wars.

This Sunday, August 29 - Covid-permitting - the families of Colleen, Evelyn and Clinton will watch the world premiere of an intense, gripping and revelatory documentary. The Bowraville Murders forensically dissects one of worst miscarriages of justice in Australian history.