On September 21 , l968,
Aboriginal Larry Boy , tribal
name Janba, found his wife , Marjorie, in bed with a
white stockman, David Jackson, 21, at
Elsey Station, 350 kilometres from
Darwin . He took to them with a tomahawk , killing his wife and hacking through the ribs
of her lover . There was evidence that
he carried his tribal wife
outside , put her on the ground
and lay beside her. Some claimed he had intercourse with his dead
or dying wife . Others claimed
this was a false
story put about to create maximum
feeling against the man who had
not accepted the sexual use of his wife by a white stockman.
After the attack
he fled into the surrounding
country which consisted of
bush, swamp and sandstone
outcrops. A massive manhunt which included black trackers, dogs, police ,
many civilians and helicopters was mounted with Constable “ Bluey” Harvey in charge. The officer had been stationed at Wave Hill at the time of the Gurindji walk off and
Bowditch knew him well.
Bowditch visited the
surviving stockman in hospital .
The man told him he could not
understand why he had been attacked
as sleeping with Aboriginal women was going on all the time.
The case brought
to light the common practice of
white stockmen taking
granted the sexual favours of Aboriginal women . Boy had
objected to his wife being
used by white stockmen and had taken
drastic action to stop what was
going on.
BOWDITCH ABUSED
Bowditch and a photographer went to the search area to
report on the manhunt ; a white man
shouted, “ Here’s that boong
lover - I’ll show you how we deal
with black bastards when we catch him ! ” Bowditch spent five days in the area. The
hunt went on for 40 days. On the last day ,Constable Harvey, was
walking by a limestone cliff when he
noticed a small cave with cobwebs
across the entrance. Because of
this, he at first felt that
the fugitive could not be
inside as he would have brushed the webs
aside. However, he
noticed the cobwebs were strung
like a gate on thin sticks. The fugitive had draped the
webs across the entrance so as to
give the impression that nobody could be inside. It was
a great piece of detective work
for Harvey to notice the deception.
SUNG TO DEATH CLAIM
The tenacious constable then crawled into
the small recess filled with foul air
and found the wanted man , flat on his back, his
mouth against a small hole
through which he breathed. Harvey,
exhausted and suffering from
influenza , dragged the man out... At the trial , Boy was represented by Dick Ward ; there were some
peculiar aspects of the case , one being the claim that it led to Ward being “sung to death ” for somehow, inadvertently committing a breech of
Aboriginal law. There was, said Spillettt, trouble over the fact that a person of the “
wrong skin ” had been used as an
interpreter.Ward subsequently developed a kidney disease and received dialysis treatment. Boy was found guilty of the
manslaughter of his wife and sentenced to eight years’
gaol; for his attack on Jackson ,
he got five years, to be
served concurrently.
Foreman of the jury was Anglican church official , historian Peter Spillett. In the year 2001 , Spillett, researching the history of
pre-colonial Timor , said he
should write an account of the Larry Boy trial. It had lasted
for about eight days and the
jury , during breaks, had gone on a harbour trip to Mandorah with an esky to slake
their thirst; on another occasion they had been taken to The Star Theatre , and
at interval some had slipped into the
Vic Hotel for a drink.
CYCLONE TRACY KILLS FILM
Larry Boy died
in hospital shortly before he
was due to be released from
prison. It was suggested he
had picked up a lung disease while on the run after the murder of his wife . Friends of the dead man told Bowditch that
Janba had willed himself to
die because he had killed his wife.
The case so inspired Cec Holmes that he proposed making a movie about the
episode . He and author Frank Hardy worked on the screenplay. On several occasions Holmes went overseas to try and raise
funds for the film ,
entitled Call Me By My Proper Name. At one stage it was suggested Peter
Finch might play
the role of Constable Harvey. Holmes
objected to Hollywood wanting
to turn
the plot into a kind of Down Under
cowboy flick. A decision was made to make an all Australian film and pre-production work was carried out in
the Roper River area of the NT in
late l974 . Holmes then went to Darwin to spend
Christmas with his family , intending to
begin shooting the film in May .
Cyclone Tracy shattered these
plans and the film was never made.
His plans for the
future blown away , Holmes
observed the cyclone wrecked city
and got a job as a
gangway attendant on the Greek liner
Patris which was brought to Darwin to provide emergency
accommodation. He spoke to many southern journalists who came to the
city to report on the disaster and observed that many of
them were soft, complaining about
the heat and conditions. Reporters, he said, used to have a
reputation for roughing it, but the new breed seemed soft. One journalist had contacted
his office down south
on Boxing Day and asked for
water and food to be sent .
Five days later,three one gallon
containers of water
and two tins of steak and kidney
had arrived by air.
Another Holmes project
which never came to fruition was a film
about Morrison of Peking,
despite representations to the Chinese authorities . When Cec Holmes
died from cancer in l994 , he had a
script with an agent for a film about
Pat Mackie , the man at the centre of the Mount Isa Mine strike in which Bowditch had been
involved. He had also nearly completed a
book about the social and political problems of the
Philippines. NEXT: The Athletic Bowditch family.
