Leviathan Read online

  Cook was writing at a time when two strains of thought were contending for the issue; the older, noble view of primitivism; and what Glyndwr Williams calls the chillier assumptions of the four-stages theorists who arranged societies in an order dependent on their form of subsistence, with the Aborigines at the bottom. The unstoppable advance of European colonialism seemed to confirm the prejudices of the latter school who saw indigenous societies around the globe destroyed by white civilization. In the new rational sciences which sought to explain everything in terms of the interplay of natural, identifiable forces – and especially in terms of Darwin’s theories of natural selection – nineteenth century Europeans had an armoury of reasons, excuses and justifications for the demise of those civilizations which seemed to shrivel up and die at first contact with their own. This frame of mind certainly informed Mukhanov’s journal when he wrote of Australia’s black race being displaced by a virile English yeomanry as a natural event. Even Cook’s journal, which was not to be published in full for nearly 100 years, was infected by the new thinking. His observations of the Aborigines, previously excised, were first read in 1893 when the editor, a cretinous oaf named Captain Wharton, thought it necessary to remedy Cook’s woolly headed liberalism with the following:

  The native Australians may be happy in their condition, but they are without doubt among the lowest of mankind. Confirmed cannibals they lose no opportunity of gratifying their love of human flesh. Mothers will kill and eat their own children … Internecine war exists between the different tribes [and]… Their treachery, which is unsurpassed, is simply an outcome of their savage ideas.

  Henry Reynolds has identified two approaches to the Aborigines, growing like stunted trees from these intellectual roots: (i) the Aborigines were not human and so could be treated as beasts, and (ii) they were innocent but ignorant and thus the colonists had a humanitarian duty towards them. The latter viewpoint was only slightly more generous. It still encompassed the inevitability of their disappearance, killed off or bred out of existence. It did, however, have one practical consequence: as a comforting theory, denied to whites in America and Africa, it helped defuse, to a certain degree, white antagonism. At no stage, after the first few desperate months were survived, did the transplanted British state think itself mortally or even seriously threatened by the natives. So secure was their hold on the new colony, in fact, that they could indulge themselves in a contented hypocrisy. Governor King wrote about the natives to his successor, the Bounty’s William Bligh, in 1806:

  Much has been said about the propriety of their being compelled to work as Slaves, but as I have ever considered them the real Proprietors of the Soil, I have never suffered any restraint whatever on these lines, or suffered any injury to be done to their persons or property.

  Of course, King’s charitable admission that the Aborigines were the real owners of the land did not survive as official policy.

  When Tench and his marines had marched off to Botany Bay, seeking the killers of Phillip’s gamekeeper, the young captain had thought them a wonderful sight. In reality of course they were woefully ill-equipped for their search and destroy mission. While their muzzle-loading, Brown Bess muskets were elegant examples of nineteenth century weapons design, the long heavy flintlock rifles were best deployed at very short range by massed ranks of British foot soldiers against massed ranks of hapless Frenchmen on the fields of Europe. They were no good at picking out individual targets over great distances and the soldiers who used them were untrained and poorly outfitted for campaigns of rapid movement through rugged terrain against fleet-footed opponents who melted into the countryside. Even the tight, bright uniforms of which Tench was so inordinately proud acted against the marines, restricting their movements, sapping their energy in the harsh, hot weather and giving early warning of their approach through the drab scenery of the Australian scrub.

  Over time, of course, the tactics of the white warriors improved, as did their technology, but the undeclared war against the natives continued long after their dispersal from the Sydney Plain. For many it continues today, the same patterns of conflict repeating and renewing themselves with each generation. Two hundred years after Tench’s dawn patrol had left Sydney Cove with hatchets and hessian sacks to bring back the heads of some recalcitrant tribesmen, another group of raiders set out in the bleak hours before sunrise in search of another black man who’d killed one of their own. On Monday 24 April 1989 a young police constable named Alan McQueen had been shot and fatally wounded by an Aboriginal man, John Porter. Recently released on parole from Long Bay Prison where he’d pulled an eight year stretch for armed robbery, Porter was the natural consequence of two centuries of grim work by the white power structure; mad, bad and, as it transpired, genuinely dangerous to know. Porter had fired on the police who’d originally taken him down for armed robbery. When they subdued and searched him they found another gun in his underpants, a knife strapped to his leg, another knife hidden in his car and a shotgun buried in his garden. He was a violent man who drew down on McQueen and blew him away without warning, putting a few holes in his partner Jason Donnelly, a probationary constable trying to get through his first day on the job, for good measure.

  Three days later six SWOS teams gathered in the canteen at Redfern Police Station a few minutes shy of four a.m. A list of some sixteen possible boltholes for Porter had been pared back to six addresses, which were all to be raided by the force’s elite paramilitary units on the stroke of six that morning. Each team leader received an envelope with a search warrant, photos of Porter, a map and operational orders. Teams One through Three also had rough sketches of the floor plans for the premises they were to hit. Detective Sergeant Charles Brazel of the Special Weapons and Operations section addressed the assembled officers, telling them not to let their emotions get the better of them and stressing that although they had been assigned to numbered teams each of the targets was equally important. Porter was as likely to be found at any of the half dozen flats and houses and the risks were as great for Team Six as for Team One.

  While that may have been the party line, the eight members of Team One, which included Brazel himself, thought differently. They were all permanently attached to SWOS, unlike some of the part-timers in the other squads. They spent all of their time either training for or actually carrying out extremely dangerous missions. Some ‘relaxed’ off duty in the Army Reserve. The Royal Commission into Black Deaths in Custody described them as the crème de la crème of the Special Ops section. They were assigned to raid an old shop which had been converted into a house at 193 Sydenham Road in Marrickville. It was Brazel’s personal understanding that Porter had been hidden by friends at this property after shooting McQueen and Donnelly.

  Brazel had formed this opinion after talking to either Graham Watson or Terry Dawson, two other members of Team One. Watson, who would be first through the door later that morning, had joined the force in 1975 and SWOS ten years later. A qualified instructor in the use of weapons and building entry techniques, he had been involved in armed raids at least three times a month during his attachment to SWOS. He thought of Sydenham Road as ‘the priority address’. Dawson, a detective sergeant and the third man through the door, had joined the force in 1966. He had also qualified as a SWOS field commander, a marksman and a weapons instructor and he too thought it most likely the fugitive would be found at Sydenham Road.

  The other members of Team One agreed. Senior Constable John Rhodes – an expert marksman and anti-hijacking specialist who had effected more than 600 entries over the years and who would go in second after Watson – thought it more likely his unit would encounter the cop killer than any of the others. Senior Constable Graham Bateman, a member and instructor of the Police Assault Group, who charged in behind Sergeant Brazel, did so expecting to confront Porter and possibly any number of armed associates. Behind Bateman came Constable Bruce Marshall, number six through the door and the least experienced police officer. He had joined the force onl
y two years previously, but gave nothing away in ability, having racked up six years of active army service with the SAS and 1 Commando Company. Bringing up the rear were Constables Martin and Whittaker who would be responsible for handcuffing any offenders found inside.

  When the Redfern briefing had wrapped up, each team received their tactical kit. Everybody in Team One was fitted out with a bullet-resistant vest, and all, except for the sweepers Martin and Whittaker, also picked up a Remington pump action shotgun with a torch attached to the barrel. Everybody carried handguns, either .357 magnums or 9 mm pistols. Eye goggles, digital radios, a sledgehammer, crowbar, cans of mace and flexicuffs were issued. With twenty minutes to kill before kick-off, Team One drove to the nearby Newtown Police Station. They transferred to a van and moved to the form-up point, a street corner about 200 metres from the house. Just after five a.m. the Central District Ambulance Service was placed on alert. An ambulance officer who asked what sort of injuries they might have to deal with was told ‘gunshot wounds’.

  Two hundred years had taught the white authorities not to telegraph their punches. Tench’s black quarry had probably known his men were on their way days before they arrived. John Porter too would have known he’d gone to the top of the SWOS hit list the second he pulled a pistol on Alan McQueen. He had been at Sydenham Road a number of times in the previous weeks. But he was not there when Detective Sergeant Brazel’s men came calling. The only people resident were an Aboriginal family – David Gundy and his son Bradley Eatts – and two friends, Richard McDonald and Marc Valentine. They slept as Team One left the form-up point and moved down Sydenham Road, an empty school playground sliding past the van on the right, a row of small workers’ cottages renovated in postwar migrant kitsch on the left. As highly trained, as well equipped, as finely honed a strike force as Team One were, especially compared with Watkin Tench’s sorry crew, the outcome of their mission was to be just as disastrous. With one major difference. Whereas Tench’s assignment had taken nearly two weeks to break down, the SWOS raid on 193 Sydenham Road unravelled in less than two minutes. The end result was the same however. One dead Aboriginal man and a further poisoning of the already treacherous relationship between black and white.

  As all six teams formed up around the city, in Marrickville, at Bondi and Petersham, in Summer Hill and Newtown, they radioed in to the command post at the Sydney Police Centre that they were ready. Warrants for the raids had been issued with an entry time of six a.m. However, by ten to six all the teams were in place and three minutes later the CP advised them to move at their own discretion. Team One’s van moved off from the street corner by Marrickville High School. It travelled 200 metres, pulled up in front of the old converted shop and disgorged eight armed men into the quiet dawn. Whittaker stood by the door with his sledgehammer at the ready. The other men, guns cocked, safeties released, formed up around him. Brazel signalled Whittaker who smashed the door open with one blow and Team One poured through the breach yelling, ‘Police! Police!’ After that there was no set plan. The men’s training came to the fore as they adjusted to the layout of the building and the discovery of its various inhabitants. It was dark. The team moved quickly, illumination provided by the crisscrossing shafts of light coming from the torches attached to their shotguns. In the front room, which ran the length of the building, they found McDonald lying on three armchairs which had been pushed together. Watson, first through the door, covered the dazed man with his shotgun, shouting, ‘Police! Stay down! Get your hands up!’

  Rhodes passed him, charging across the lounge room to a set of two improvised steps in the far corner. He entered a corridor which ran down the left-hand side of the house, and spun into a bedroom where he found another man, Valentine, lying in bed and a small boy, Bradley Eatts, standing alone. Terry Dawson passed him on his way up the hall. Behind him, Brazel made for the kitchen at the rear of the building. The rest of Team One were in the lounge room by now, already handing over their captives to the sweepers. Watson, who had covered McDonald, left him to Martin. He then made for the rear of the house where Terry Dawson had just kicked open David Gundy’s door and moved into the gloomy bedroom.

  Gundy had been taken from his family in the early 1960s, shuffling between various institutions and foster parents. He was, unsurprisingly, a troubled child, although his clashes with the law did not extend beyond a few stealing charges. He found work in 1975 and a devoted girlfriend, Dolly Eatts, a year later. Gundy had worked hard. He studied to advance himself and he took care of his young family. For the past eight years of his life he had had no trouble with the police. When he next encountered them, however, he had only a few moments to live.

  There was a bed behind the door which Dawson had kicked in, some other pieces of furniture scattered around, and a man clad only in underpants, yelling, ‘You cunts! You cunts!’, coming at Dawson through the gloom. David Gundy grabbed at the barrel of the shotgun, either to push it away or perhaps to try to wrestle it free. Dawson, who had been trained to retain control of his weapon above all else, was yelling, ‘Police! Don’t!’ It mingled with Gundy’s shouts and with the other incoherent yelling and screaming throughout the house. Then the shotgun discharged.

  The Remington 870 is a big, heavy-hitting piece of artillery. Adapted for the US Marine Corps at the height of the Vietnam War it was just about perfect for the requirements of the Special Ops section. When fired it unleashes a super-hot wad of eighteen lead pellets at a muzzle velocity of over 1200 feet per second. These pellets spread out from the mouth of the gun at a rate of about one inch for every yard travelled. It is an excellent firearm for clearing constricted spaces in close urban combat. Its utility for subduing confused angry young men in their underpants is more problematic. Gundy was immediately subdued, but only because the fiery blast atomised a twenty-three centimetre long chunk of his wrist and left arm. It also disintegrated his watch band, embedding small pieces in the wall behind him. But the fatal wounds were elsewhere. Two of the pellets which emerged last from the barrel had bumped into the spray of bone, tissue and metal and deflected into Gundy’s abdomen where they passed through his lungs, pulmonary artery and heart. He staggered backwards, one arm hanging uselessly by his side, the other still raised as he shook his fist at the intruders. Bateman had entered the room behind Dawson by now. He placed his shotgun on the ground and moved around behind the wounded man to grab him. They fell to the bed in a tangle. Whittaker entered and ‘cleared’ the room, assuring himself there were no other occupants. He flicked on the overhead light and moved to the bed to give first aid while Watson called for the ambulance. From street corner to deathbed had taken 110 seconds.

  Instantaneous rage convulsed the city’s black population, mirrored in the wider community by a deep sense of disquiet. It didn’t help the police that none of the places they raided that morning were occupied by cop killers. The team which hit a boarding house in Darley Street at Newtown charged down a seventy-four-year-old pensioner, Bob Salisbury, who thought hooligans were trying to break in when his door crashed open. Salisbury told reporters he might have had a go at protecting himself if he’d been a bit younger. Luckily for him his fighting days were over and all he could manage was to stumble blearily to his door, which flew open, smacking him in the face and knocking his glass eyeball clear out of his head. He scrambled around on the floor looking for it while black-clad SWOS men danced around him yelling, ‘Stand back! Stand back!’ Three doors down, Beryl Walsh, a tea lady at Grace Brothers Broadway department store, was having a quiet cuppa before heading off to work when her door exploded inwards and over half a dozen heavily armed men burst into her hallway. Beryl, who was recovering from a heart attack she’d suffered three weeks earlier, went into shock. Detectives attached to the SWOS team made her a cup of coffee and told her to fix up her front door and send them the bill. Amidst this lowbrow farce Gundy’s wife Dolly Eatts returned from a trip to Queensland, took one look at their gore-soaked mattress and demanded to know why there was bl
ood all over their bed. The police had said David stood up and struggled. But all she knew was that there was blood on the bed, not the walls.

  She did not trust the police to investigate themselves and she was not alone. As inaccurate and premature details of the shooting appeared in the press, the force began to face insinuations of a payback execution. Gundy’s relatives made a late submission to the Black Deaths Royal Commission which all but accused the force of a premeditated killing. The two fatal shotgun pellets, they argued, had not been deflected on their path. Their track through David Gundy’s body had been ‘true trajectories’. The victim had not been standing and struggling when shot, but sitting on the bed,

  his body half turned towards the light from the shotgun at his left, his arm thrown up to a raised position with his arm slightly bent from the wrist to shield his eyes from the light from the gun. Half awake, his arm was near to or touching the end of the weapon, and the shot blasted his lower forearm, sending body tissue and blood onto his face over the left eye area.