The Search
By Bruce Grundy (2 November 2001)
It had just been a hunch – pretty much a stab in the dark – and it had turned up trumps. The odyssey had been worth it. Against goodness knows what odds I had found what I had been searching for - no golden fleece, just a large flat rock, in not quite the middle of nowhere, but almost.
This was no ordinary slab of sandstone or whatever; this rock had witnessed a wretched crime and I was taking the young woman next to me, step by step, through what had happened to her here.
At first she had been excited.
"This is it. This is the place. I know it. I know it. No doubt," she had said.
At the start her words had flowed freely as we talked it through.
Where were you? Who else was here? Where were they standing? What were their names? Where were those who were supposed to be in charge?
But as the questions continued and the crunch they were leading to approached, her words began to slow. Slight pauses followed questions. Answers were harder now. Her voice began to tremble. Just that little bit. And much softer. Then tears filled her eyes and streaked her cheeks. Her answers now were sobs. But she kept going. Until the questions stopped.
"I have to go now," she had said through her tears and crying she set off back down the path we had come to reach this place.
Twenty paces maybe and she sank to the grass beside the track and vomited until there was nothing left to lose.
She stood up and set off down the track again back towards the car park. Another ten paces and again she slumped to the grass and retched and retched – but there was nothing to bring up.
"I'm coming," I called out. "And I'm behind you."
She had asked me when we had first begun our search for this place not to walk behind her. Please. Please stay in front of me, she had said. I said I understood and wouldn't walk behind her. But now I was behind her.
I kept talking as I reached her so she would know where I was and not be startled. I put a hand, just a touch, on her shoulder (she had made it clear she did not like men touching her) and gave her my handkerchief to wipe her lips. I said I was sorry for what they had done to her here, and I said I was sorry that those who were supposed to look after her that day had not done their jobs. I said I hoped there would be justice for her in the end and that she might get the rest of her life back now.
But it was clear she wanted to be alone. I said I was going back to get some pictures – which is the sort of thing journalists do that puts other people off them. She stood up and set off down the track once more. No more vomiting this time. There was nothing left to vomit.
I took the pictures of where we just been and walked back to the car park. She was sitting at one of the rough bush tables there with her mother, somewhere in her thoughts, head bowed, hair covering her face. Crumpled. Almost doubled up as if she had been winded. Again I said something inadequate about being sorry. But I knew my words were little comfort.
Then, as journalists do, I asked the rotten question. Would she go back with me where we had just been and go through it all again – so I could record it – absolutely accurately? I said some day I feared some bastard would say she had made it all up, that she had never been to that place, that it didn't even exist and nor did she probably. Someone would try to confuse her and get her to say she had never been pack raped on the rock we had been looking for, and had just found – never been pack raped there or anywhere else for that matter.
It took lots of courage but she said she thought that was a good idea and she did as I asked. We went through it all again.
The place was just as she had described it to me the second time we had met. On day one she had said nothing. Even on day two she been very cautious and hesitant – telling some strange guy, in this case a strange white guy, what had been done to you was not something a woman would enjoy. She was really searching in her memory to call up the detail of what had happened. I did not give her any hints. I wanted to know from her if her story, and what I had been told by others, matched. Indeed they did match - and more. She remembered where the sun had been – shining through the treetops on her face; the geography and the topography and the vegetation of the place; and who was there. And then she even agreed to go with this strange white guy to try to find the spot again. A crazy idea really - a rock - one rock somewhere in the whole of South East Queensland! A rock in a few million hectares of bush and farms, and national parks, and mountains, valleys, ranges, etc. Crazy. But she agreed.
She had described the place again when I had taken her to where I thought it might have been but where it wasn't. No, Bwuce, she had said, (her "r" sounds always lost out to the "w" when she spoke). No. It's much further away. And the rocks aren't right. And the trees aren't right. And this isn't right and that isn't right either. I'm sorry but it is further out in the country somewhere.
Somewhere.
Perhaps there is a journalist's god because we finally found the place - the place where she had been raped all those years ago - as a 14-year-old in the care of the State. And it was just as she said it would be. The trees, the sun, the rock. The lot.
Then another bombshell. She said it had happened more than once.
More than once! Christ! Surely not! You were gang raped twice? Yes, she said. The sun had been high in the sky the first time and then much lower the second. But by now the memories were more than enough. Please, can we go, she had said.
When next we met I asked if she still wanted to go through with what would follow when the story appeared. There would almost certainly be cops, I said, and questions and God knows what else. She said she did. Absolutely. And now she had had her quiet breaks she wanted me to get on with it and get it over and done with. That was when I asked her, quite casually, when her little girl was born. And just as casually she answered. I scribbled the date in my notebook but was conscious of a sudden stillness that had come over her, one of those frozen moments when time stands still, when something seems to click in a person's head that had never occurred to them before. Almost to herself, but loud enough to hear, she said something about what if DNA tests were done.
We agreed to get on with it as soon as her Grandmother's birthday was over. I went home to check one of my notebooks. And indeed, as I had suspected, if one of my contacts was right, there might well be a case for some DNA tests to be done.
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