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Bye Donna – Bye Jordan – Goodbye Faith in the Queensland Police Service – And Farewell Human Decency


Cars Stuck in Floodwaters With People on Their Roofs. Persons Believed Deceased – Routine Call. No Job – Right? No, Rice. And Very F*cking Wrong – A Picture Tells a Thousand Words, But Can’t Raise the Dead – How Queensland Police Force Inaction Killed Donna and Jordan Rice

It’s Been 99 Years Since We Never Met You Great-Grandpa – But We Will Never Forget

What Passing Bells For These Who Die As Cattle? – Only the Monstrous Anger of the Guns – The Shrill Demented Choirs of Wailing Shells – Lest We Ever Forget

A Flood of Lies or a Terrible Torrent of Truth? – The Assistant Commissioner of Police and the Deaths of Donna and Jordan Rice – An Exclusive Investigation by Archie Butterfly – Part Two – The Senate Submission of John Tyson

A Flood of Lies or a Terrible Torrent of Truth? – The Assistant Commissioner of Police and the Deaths of Donna and Jordan Rice – An Exclusive Investigation by Archie Butterfly – Part One – Did the Police Put the Fix In? – Or Did a Grieving Man Get it Dead Wrong?

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A young man named Edward Robert William Spark found himself caught in a torrent behind a tree on the 10th of January 2011, the day of the terrible floods that swept Donna and Jordan Rice away from the arms of their loving family, and into a watery grave.

The tree saved Spark from a similar tragic fate. He clung to it for an hour as the water raged around him, before being saved by the brave men and women of the Queensland Emergency services.

Spark says that he became stranded in the floodwaters while attempting to rescue the stricken driver of a car that had been washed away. There is considerable doubt about whether his claim is true, and not only because there was no driver in the car he claimed to be saving one from, and that it was empty.

His story would be just a small another in the myriad of personal tales about the events of that awful day in Toowoomba that claimed the lives of Donna and Jordan Rice, but for one thing.

The tree that he clung to was directly outside the Grand Central Shopping Centre.

And a man named Steve Gollschewski was inside.

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Only a month before, on the 13th of December 2010, Gollschewski had been promoted to the role of Assistant Commissioner of the Queensland Police Service.

In a strange twist of fate that would have tragic consequences, Gollschewski’s promotion to the senior role had been announced on the the same day that a Senior Constable named John Wheeler landed a kick to the ribs of a defenceless Aboriginal teenager who while in police custody had been restrained in handcuffs and ordered to the ground, thus setting in train a series of events that led to Wheeler answering and then disregarding Donna Rice’s triple O call for help to the Toowoomba Police Communications Centre on the day that the new Assistant Commissioner visited the Grand Central Shopping Centre; the day that she and her son Jordan died.

Although no-one could have known it at the time, the two men’s futures would from that day become entwined.

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Upon his appointment as Assistant Commissioner Gollschewski, a career police officer of 30 years experience who had assiduously worked his way through the senior management ranks of the force, had been placed in command of policing the Southern Region of Queensland, an area that ran from Beaudesert in the east, all the way north to Winton, where the Banjo wrote Waltzing Matilda, and south to the NSW border where it ran west across to the junction where Queensland and the top end of South Australia met.

In his new role the now Toowoomba-based Gollschewski also assumed overall responsibility for the six District Disaster Committees that were formed and operating in the Southern region led by senior officers under his command, meaning that when the heavy rains moved across South-East Queensland in the days after his elevation to the job Gollcheswski was the man in charge.

For three weeks prior to the 10th of January he had been attending daily disaster meetings with the upper echelons of the police force that were chaired by then Deputy Commissioner (now Commissioner) Ian Stewart, a during this Gollscheswki had been  criss-crossing the region coordinating disaster preparation and operations as his uniformed men and women planned for dealing the worst of all manner of calamities that Mother Nature might wreak.

This was a man who knew better than anyone in South-East Queensland that disasters could strike in an instant, and understood that in periods of extreme weather events like the protracted rainfall being experienced across his region at the time – events that had triggered the declaration of disaster zones in a number of areas in the preceding weeks – vigilance and a readiness to act immediately were essential if disaster operations were to be performed effectively.

Yet here he was in the food court of a Toowoomba shopping mall during a freak storm, less than half an hour before Donna and Jordan Rice lost their lives.

And until now no-one has questioned why.

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Gollschewski has stated in sworn police statements and in evidence given to the Flood Commission of Inquiry that at 1.00 pm on 10 January 2011 he left the command desk of the Regional Police Headquarters at 52 Neil Street Toowoomba, entered his police issue vehicle and drove directly to the Grand Central Shopping Centre for the dual purpose of collecting a mobile phone and to buy his lunch.

The shopping complex is located on the corner of Margaret and Dent Streets in the city, 750 meters from police headquarters The journey usually takes 5-10 minutes depending on the driver’s luck with the traffic lights.

The Assistant Police Commissioner’s sworn evidence is that he had checked the BOM weather radar regularly on the day of 10 January 2011, and that the cloud formation that the radar was showing ‘apparently moving towards the Toowoomba area’  indicated that only moderate rainfall was expected.

This is demonstrably untrue.

At 12.12 pm on 10 January 2011 – 48 minutes prior to the time Gollscheswki states that he left his Command post to travel to pick up a mobile phone and buy his lunch –  it is clear that the Bureau of Meteorology radar was showing that a heavy rain storm was about to descend on the city of Toowoomba.

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In the police statement that he made on the 10th of March 2011 – which oddly the Assistant Commissioner both gave and took himself; usually a police officer takes a statement from a witness – Gollschewski swears that as he was driving to the shopping centre it was raining steadily, but that the rainfall was unremarkable.

When he arrived at the Grand Central Shopping Centre the Assistant Commissioner says that he drove his police vehicle into the car park entrance and parked on one of the upper levels. There are only three levels. It is not known whether he parked on the 2nd or 3rd, but when he stepped out of his police car Gollschewski was approached by a woman who was concerned about the safety of three ‘kids’ that she had observed swimming in West Creek, which runs along the Dent Street side of the shopping centre.

After listening to the concerns of the woman – who has never been identified and has not made a police statement – Gollschewski says that he walked to the edge of the car park and observed the trio in the creek, which he noticed was at that stage well within its banks. Nevertheless, due to concerns he held that the creek level would rise in the continuing (by his reckoning only steady) rainfall, he telephoned the Acting Superintendent, a man named Andrew Morrow, and asked him to send a crew to attend to the scene and remove the three young people before they ‘got into trouble’.

The three ‘kids’ were Edward Spark and a pair of his unidentified friends, the latter two of whom have never made a police statement.

Although neither Spark nor Gollschewski could have known it at that moment, the man in the creek’s evidence regarding these events – particularly his recollection of the timing of his movements on the day – would soon become of intense interest and critical importance to the Assistant Commissioner.

The reason that Spark’s movements and the time that he made them would suddenly matter was because a man named John Tyson, who was the husband of Donna Rice and the father of Jordan, would come forward and claim that that Steve Gollschewski was not in fact in the place that he swore that he had been between the hours of 1,00 and 2.00 pm on the day that his family died in the floodwaters.

Tyson would contend that between 1.00 and 2,00 pm on the day of the 10th of January 2011 the Assistant Commissioner was in fact nowhere near the the Grand Central at all, but rather that he was a passenger in an unmarked police vehicle in which his deputy, Detective Inspector David Isherwood, and another very senior police officer were also travelling.

He would claim that this unmarked police vehicle carrying the three highly ranked officers had at 1.40 pm come to a halt 20 meters from at an intersection of 2 main roads quite some kilometers away for the shopping centre where the Assistant Commissioner claimed to be.

The intersection 20 meters from where the unmarked police car stopped was flooded and the water was rising quickly, Tyson would say in a submission he was to make to a parliamentary Senate Committee..

And there in the middle of the flooded intersection, alone and palely loitering, stood a white Mercedes Benz sedan with his wife and children inside.

A clear inference could be drawn from Tyson’s claim that the three police officers saw his family members – only 1 of whom would live another hour – stranded in the rising waters

Then, according to Tyson, the unmarked police car turned and drove away.

If what John Tyson was saying was true the Assistant Commissioner’s career would be over in a heartbeat.

Losing his job though would be the least of Gollscheski’s problems, for if Tyson’s claims were correct then one of the most senior police officers in the State had committed perjury to a Commission of Inquiry, and had conspired to pervert the course of justice.

If Tyson’s version of events was right, Steve Gollschewski was going to jail.

Edward Spark’s recall of the events of the day was suddenly important. Very, very important.

And look what happened next ………

To be continued

 


The False Report Tendered to the Queensland Coroner About the Deaths of Donna and Jordan Rice – Revealed For the First Time – An Archie Butterfly Exclusive

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A police officer named Andrew Lowe has come to national prominence in recent days after a series of stories written by gun journalist Pamela Williams and published in The Australian revealed that Lowe had manipulated the police interviews of a child aged eleven named Blake Rice in order to present a false narrative that his mother Donna had deliberately driven into a flooded intersection at which she and her son Jordan died.

Williams investigation shows that Lowe had insisted on interviewing the 11-year-old without his father or any other adult present, and had proceeded to skew the statement of the exhausted child, whose mother and brother had died just days before, so that the police record of interview would create a clear inference that his mother was responsible for she and his brother’s deaths.

They were not, as has now been comprehensively proven, begging one simple question: why?

Why did Lowe take advantage of a grieving and shattered 11-year-old boy to create a story that he must have known or suspected was demonstrably untrue?

Why did the police have any interest other than the truth in investigating the question of whether or not the intersection was flooded when Donna Rice stopped at the traffic lights at the corner of Kitchener and James Streets, Toowoomba in the afternoon of 10 January 2011?

Why did it matter to the police whether it was flooded at the time or not?

Why were they even describing Donna as having entered an intersection when the evidence before them clearly showed that she had not?

Why did Acting Detective Sergeant Andrew Lowe present the following report about Jordan and Donna’s deaths to the Coroner when he knew it to be completely untrue?

Why did Lowe claim that Donna entered rising flood waters at 2.10pm when he knew from police records that she had made her first emergency call to the Police Communications centre almost half an hour earlier? And knew that the waters were not deep and rising when she pulled up at the entrance to the intersection that she at no time ever entered?

Why did he structure a report that effectively blamed an innocent woman for causing the death of her much-loved child?

What did the police have to hide?

Who were they covering up for?

For the first time we are able to reveal the false depiction of events that Acting Detective Sergeant presented in his report to the Coroner.

Why did he do it?

Why, why, why?

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And Then There Were Three – The Missing Part of the Last Triple O Call Made by Donna Rice Revealed – An Archie Butterfly Exclusive

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It has long been reported that Donna Rice – the woman who died a hero in the Toowoomba Floods in 2011 while attempting to save Jordan, her hero son – made  two emergency Triple O calls from her vehicle whilst trapped in flood waters at the corner of James and Kitchener Streets, Toowoomba in the half hour prior to she and her child being swept from their car by the raging waters to their death.

These reports of just two emergency calls made by Donna have been repeated in the brilliant series of stories written by Pamela Williams and published in The Australian over the past week.

The reports are only partially true.

 

The first section of the second emergency call made from the mobile phone have been for some reason suppressed by police.

Now for the first time we are able to reveal the details of that call, and show the actual time that is was made, which was 74 seconds prior to the time claimed by police.

74 seconds that just might have saved Jordan and Donna’s lives.

As you read it ask yourself this question about the police suppression of this vital information: why?

Why, why, why?

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A Conspiracy to Pervert the Course of Justice – A Concerted High-Level Attempt Hide the Truth About the Death of Donna and Jordan Rice – The Truth Unveiled – An Archie Butterfly Exclusive – Part 1

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“I, A.B., swear by almighty God that I will well and truly serve our Sovereign Lady Queen Elizabeth the Second and Her Heirs and Successors according to law in the office of constable or in such other capacity as I may be hereafter appointed, promoted, or may be reduced, without favour or affection, malice or ill-will, from this date and until I am legally discharged; that I will cause Her Majesty’s peace to be kept and preserved; that I will prevent to the best of my power all offences against the same; and that while I shall continue to be a member of the Queensland Police Service I will to the best of my skill and knowledge discharge all the duties legally imposed upon me faithfully and according to law. So help me God.”.

Queensland Police Service Officer’s Oath

This is the oath or affirmation made by Queensland Police officers as a prerequisite to their being sworn into the force.

This is a photograph taken by a bystander of a car in a flooded intersection at the corner of Kitchener and James Street, Toowoomba at 1.46 pm on 10 January 2011. It was introduced into evidence at the Floods Inquiry by the Commissioner herself, and was admitted unchallenged; therefore the time on the photo is accepted by all as fact.

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Donna Rice is the driver of the vehicle.

Her two young sons are inside.

Blake, aged 11, is in the front passenger seat.

Jordan, 13, is in the back.

These kids are my mates, so are their Mum and Dad, but I only get to see two of them these days.

It’s wrong, so so wrong.

This below is the spreadsheet of a forensic analysis conducted by Taskforce Galaxy of the telephone calls made from Donna Rice’s mobile phone prior to her death.

Note that emergency calls were made from Donna’s phone at 13.47:53 pm and 13.55:49 pm.

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The document below is the person profile of Donna Rice submitted to the State Coroner by Taskforce Galaxy – an arm of the State Intelligence Group of the Queensland Police Service formed specifically to investigate the deaths in the Toowoomba floods – and later accepted into evidence by the Floods Commission of Inquiry.

Stop and ask yourself this simple question:

If two emergency calls were made from Donna Rice’s phone prior to 2.00 pm, but she did not drive into the flood waters until 2.10 pm, then what was it that she calling triple O about?

Ask yourself another question:

If you are

  • a police officer; or
  • a Coroner; or
  • the Senior Counsel representing the State of Queensland at the Floods Commission; or
  • the Commissioner of the Queensland Police Service; or indeed
  • the Floods Commissioner herself

and you receive an ‘Intelligence Report’ from a special task force  – staffed by 11 officers – that states that an emergency call was made from Donna Rice’s phone at 13.48:32 hrs, but that she did not drive into the intersection at which she died until 2.10 pm, then why would you ask no questions about the the glaring anomaly in the report that is staring you directly in the face?

Why would you not begin to ask yourself whether perhaps the totality of the evidence presented to you by the QPS Taskforce Galaxy report may be not entirely true?

And then ask yourself one final question:

Why did they all do it?

Why, why, why, why, why?

I know the answer to that question.

Do you?

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The Police Car That Drove Straight on By a Woman and Two Kids Stranded in a Flood – And Left Them to Die – The QPS Records of Police Car Movements on the Day That Donna and Jordan Rice Died – An Archie Butterfly Exclusive

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The photograph above was taken by a member of the public on 10 January 2011, and entered unchallenged into evidence at the first Floods Commission of Inquiry.

The image is one of Donna Rice’s car stuck in flood waters.

It is accepted fact that Donna reached the intersection at 1.40 pm at the latest.

Her children Jordan and Blake are with her inside the vehicle. They are my mate John Tyson’s sons. Only one of them will live to tell their tale of what happened on that terrible day, and the 11 year old survivor Blake’s tale will subsequently be skewed and manipulated in ways almost beyond belief.

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The map above shows the location of the intersection at which Donna Rice’s car was stalled at 1.40 pm on 10 January 2011, and the place that it soon after became engulfed by a raging torrent that appeared seemingly out of nowhere, and was swept away.

The images below are screenshots of a PowerPoint presentation tendered to the State Coroner’s Inquest into the deaths of Jordan and Donna Rice by Task Force Galaxy, a crack squad of 11 experienced Queensland Police Service officers specially formed to investigate the events during the January 2011 floods.

The images show the movements of police vehicles on the day that Donna and Jordan Rice died, and have been time-marked by Task Force Galaxy.

‘Available Units’ (blue) means ready for, or traveling to, a job.

‘Unit off job’ means arrived at and conducting a job, on a break or finished work, unit disabled due to breakdown, or otherwise not available to take a job from police control.

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Look at unit 269 and keep your eyes on it.

Donna Rice and her kids are stalled in rising water.

Unit 269 is available for jobs, and coming up the Warrego Highway and over the range.

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In less than 3 minutes Donna Rice will make an emergency Triple 0 call for assistance.

Unit 269 is is about to turn right from the Warrego Highway and into James Street.

The highway and the street are one and the same stretch of road. The name simply changes as the highway enters the city, much the same as the Bruce Highway becomes Gympie Road as it enters Brisbane.

Keep your eyes on unit 269.

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Donna Rice has called Triple 0 and her call has been rebuffed by the uncaring Senior-Constable John Wheeler.

Wheeler records on his log that people are believed deceased, but assesses the matter as the lowest police priority.

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Unit 269 has driven directly through the intersection while Donna Rice was on the phone to Wheeler.

The unit could not have failed to see that her vehicle was trapped, and that the water was rapidly rising.

Despite having no current job to attend to Unit 269 did not stop to assist Donna and her 2 young children.

Instead it just drove on by.

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A Flood of Lies or a Terrible Torrent of Truth? – The Former My Dear Watson – Alan Jones Twigs That It’s a Cover Up

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This is a podcast of the Alan Jones show yesterday, during which the broadcaster highlights the growing doubts about the police investigation into the deaths of Donna and Jordan Rice in the 2011 floods.

Alan Jones is 100% correct about what he says.

Of course he is. Alan reads itsnotnormalisit.com

His thoughts are well worth a listen.

http://www.2gb.com/podcast/john-tyson/


Alan MacSporran Presents a Master Class in the Art of Asking a Succession of Leading Questions – What Archie’s Dad Would Have Asked the Floods Commission Witness – What the Eminent Senior Counsel Did – And Why No Investigation Into the Police Cover-Up of the Toowoomba Flood Deaths Should Ever Go Within a Million Miles of the CCC – Part 1

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Alan MacSporran – keen rower, one-time school captain of Brisbane Boys Grammar School, and son of a policeman – acted as the Senior Counsel representing the State of Queensland during the 2011 Floods Commission of Inquiry, although you are forgiven if you thought otherwise.

My old Dad, probably driven crazy by the cancer drugs, reckons MacSporran was covering up for the cops, who were covering up for their own.

Poor old Dad, he won’t be budged from his mad idea that MacSporran went deliberately soft on the folk who might have saved Donna and Jordan Rice’s life, and swears that MacSporran intentionally put leading questions to witnesses at the Commission so that he could make sure that he got the answers his mates wanted to hear, instead of asking open questions that may have lead to the truth.

Alan MacSporran is the head of Queensland’s Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC).

The CCC exist to tell the truth, not to hide it.

So I told Dad he was a mad prostate cancer riddled morphine patch addict who needed to down three glasses of Chardonnay a night so that he didn’t writhe in pain, and asked what would he know.

Plenty was his reply.

And the old bugger handed over a list of Les the LLB questions that he would have asked if he’d been a cox man at Grammar.

Here they are.

The questions that the real cox man now in charge of the CCC asked are printed below.

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Where did the tragic events occur Sergeant Coleman?

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Tell us about the intersection Sergeant. 

Explain to those of us not from Toowoomba the main use of the roads.

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Has the intersection ever flooded Sergeant?

If so, to what extent?

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Is it the opinion of some locals who are ignorant of history that the flood waters at the intersection are not dangerous?

Are you aware Sergeant of the history of that particular site?

Have you read the research conducted and retold by leading Queensland historian and author Matthew Condon?

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While the weather’s good, would you like a quick opportunity to take a truth unencumbered free and unchallenged cheap shot at Donna Rice?

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Do people ever mistake the rising flood waters as a danger to their lives?

If so, how often? Can you produce statistical evidence to support your answer?

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So as a matter of course you do send police to attend to incidents that are the subject of emergency calls made from or about flooding at the intersection? 

Do each of the incident reports that you have located, studied and are about to tender as evidence reveal that each incident called in was an emergency?

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Given the history of the site as recounted by Matthew Condon that I have just shown you, would you agree that flooding of the magnitude that occurred on 10 January 2011 had happened at exactly the same spot previously?

Would it be wrong to say that it was a one off event?

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Now to Donna Rice’s Triple O call.

Is it the case that Police Communications Center officers are more likely to disregard an emergency phone call if the person who has made the call has 2 children in the car at the time they fear flood waters may sweep them away, and thus does their best to remain calm during the call?

When assessing the urgency of emergency calls, do police give a higher priority to strung out meth addicts who present as clearly distressed?

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Forgive me for asking this question Sergeant Coleman, but I’m old and dying and if it upsets you well I couldn’t really give a flying f*ck.

Am I simply an abject liar?

Are you?

What’s more important Sergeant? Our careers, or telling the truth about the lives and deaths of an innocent mother and child?

Which side are we really on?


A Flood of Lies or a Terrible Torrent of Truth? – Four Heroes and a Whole Lot of Losers – How the Queensland Police Service Let Donna and Jordan Rice Drown

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Donna Rice can see the flood water rapidly rising around her car, and knows that she and her sons are in real trouble. Ten minutes before she has called Triple O and sought help from a police officer, but he had rudely rebuffed her.

She would have liked to punch the prick in the face, and later on she just might, but right now Donna has more pressing issues to attend to because 20 minutes ago her car had stalled in a couple of inches of water as she and her sons had neared the intersection of a main street and a major highway, and all of a sudden the water is six feet deep and rising around them.

Donna knows that they are in a spot of bother, and that she has to keep the kids calm if they are to get out of it in one piece, so after her emergency call she told them that the police were coming to rescue them, and would be here soon.

Of course Donna is lying through her teeth, but she is a mother and these boys are her life, and her husband’s too, and anyway despite what the fella who answered the phone a few minutes ago said she believes in the blue. After all her husband John’s uncle was a high ranking copper, and he was a champion bloke who’d do anything for anyone.

Donna imagines that the copper who took her call was just stressed and busy, and that soon he would realise his mistake and send someone to pull her and the boys out of the ever-encroaching mire.

She hopes so anyway.

But ten minutes have passed since she called Triple 0, and no-one has come. The water was getting higher by the second. Donna couldn’t wait any longer. She had to do something, and do it quick.

So she pushed redial and handed the phone to Jordan, telling him that she needed to get Blake up on the roof to keep him safe, and instructing him to tell the police they needed to hurry up because they were all about to drown.

Jordan didn’t need his Mum to tell him about the danger they suddenly faced; he could see it, and the young boy who that day became a man tried his best to explain it to the emergency services officer at the end of the phone.

He did a good job too, and was promised that a crew would be sent straight away to save him and his brother and his mum.

The time was 1.57 pm.

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Jordan took the person at the other end of the phone at their word.

The thirteen year old boy turned man told his Mum and his little brother that the police were on their way and coming to save them.

There was no way he could know that he had been told a lie.

 

 

No crew was sent.

The swift water rose.

Blake was on the roof, and his Mum had summoned super human strength to haul open the back door and was about to hoist him up there too.

The time was 2.02 pm.

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A good woman standing 50 meters away sees the catastrophe unfolding.

She would like to jump in and try to save the woman and her kids, but by this time the intersection has become far too dangerous. If she tried she’d drown; she is too old and too light to win a battle against the strength of the sudden raging torrent,

So the woman, whose name is Nikita Sutcliffe, seeking a saviour for the stranded strangers calls Triple O.

Senior Constable Jason Wheeler takes her call.

And that was all she wrote.

 

 

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Seven minutes passes.

A brave man named Warren McErlean  grabs a rope, ties it to a light pole and dives into the raging water to try to rescue the family. He get within 2 meters of the car but is toppled by the torrent and loses his footing. Some men standing at the light pole pull him back to prevent him from drowning.

One of them is Chris Skehan, who has just joined the group. He grabs the rope and McErlean holds it tight as he plunges into the stormy water that is about to engulf Donna and her kids. He makes it to the car and reaches out to take Jordan to safety, but the young boy turned man says ‘no, take my brother first!’, and in doing so saves his little brother Blake’s life.

Working in tandem with Warren McErlean, Chris Skehan returns to the water and crosses to Donna and Jordan, who are up on the stricken car. Just as he reaches them suddenly the rope breaks.

Jordan is flung into the water.

Donna dives in to save him.

Skehan is being flung downstream by the current, but reaches out and grabs hold of a light pole. He looks up and sees that Donna has pulled Jordan to a light pole too, and the pair are holding it from either side.

A bystander named Anthony Kleidon witnesses the events. He calls Triple O from his mobile phone and tells the operator that a girl and a boy are stuck on a light pole. The girl is in fact Donna, and the boy Jordan.

While he is on the phone the torrent sweeps Jordan off the pole and onto the branch of a tree. Donna dives back into the water and somehow summons the strength to steer herself to the tree that her son is clasping on to, but the branch Jordan is holding breaks and he is washed downstream.

Donna lets go of the branch she is holding and dives after her son.

She is the mother every child wishes they had.

Thrown around by the swirling tempest Donna is unable to reach Jordan, no matter how hard she tries, and just as he emerged into this life bathing in his mother’s waters so shall Jordan pass into the next.

Together they drown.

Seconds later, an emergency services vehicle is sent to save them.

Soon after the cover-up begins.

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Handbrake Harry Butler’s Best Bets For the Weekend – Ignore Them If You Dare!

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Since out tipster-in-chief Edgar Britt took his last and galloped off to the grand old racetrack in the sky we’ve been bereft of late mail for the weekend mug punters, but the long drought is finally over, because Handbrake Harry Butler has come to the rescue.

Handbrake’s been following the ponies since he was pint-sized, and grew up on the punt at the dirt track in Gympie where his old man was a bookie and the young handbrake used to pick up and cash in bottles to build a bank for the punt.

As a teen he moved on to Eagle Farm – back in the days when it still had a racetrack – and for a few glorious years Handbrake terrorised the bookmaker’s ring until one day the the rotten bag-wielding sods, bitter at being savaged every Saturday by a fourteen year old Butler, sicked the racecourse detectives on him for under-age investing and the traps ran him off the course.

Undeterred, Harry bought a set of stick on sideburns and a false mustache and relocated his money spinning pastime to the Rocklea Trots. He killed them there too, so much so that over a decade the bookies one by one jumped ship until one day there were none left at all and they had to shut the joint down.

Handbrake had become a victim of his own success, and deciding what the crook makers didn’t know couldn’t hurt them he ducked his head down out of sight and launched an online assault on the corporate bookmakers. He took them to town too, making a killing over the last ten years until he decided that twenty million in the bank was more than enough for any single man and retired from the serious punt to kick back and enjoy his giant sized bag of punt-won booty.

His retirement lasted about a week until he became bored – well, six days to be exact – and the temptation to return to minting money by fleecing satchel-swinging sheep was strong, but post-retirement Handbrake had promised his Mum that he wouldn’t put more than ten thousand through his various turf investment accounts on a Saturday, and betting in such small amounts bored him too.

So Handbrake hit on the idea of sharing his talents with the world, and thought what better avenue was there you share his astute punting brilliance with the mugs than to hook up with Australia’s greatest unsung journalistic hero, your truly Mr Archibald Jeebung Butterfly esquire.

So he offered us his services to replace old Edgar, and we said yes, and here he is above, and underneath are his tips for the weekend.

Good luck and have a winning day.

Melbourne

Race 1 – Number 4 – Judelly

Race 2 –  Number 6 – Overberg

Race 3  – SCRATCHED

Race 4 – Number 2 – Moonlight Choice

Race 6  – Number 16 – Katsuro

Race 9 – Number 9 – Curragh

Adelaide

Race 3 – Number 4 – Time to Test

HANDBRAKE HARRY BUTLER’S BEST BET OF THE DAY

Curragh – Melbourne Race 9 – Number 9


The JA Berry Lecture Series – Part 11 – I Have to Tell You Know – I Am An Acquired Taste – And Archie Has Acquired the Taste


The JA Berry Lecture Series – Part 12 – Out of the Box – The Meaning of Life Explained in Block Diagram Form

The JA Berry Lecture Series – Part 13 – Magic Mountains, VHS Tapes and Mushrooms Growing in the Back yard – The Greatest Novel That I Have Never Read – For Goodness Sake Man It’s Great!

The JA Berry Lecture Series – Part 14 – The Importance of Knowing Your Horse Head Markings – Or How You Just Never Know When You Might Strike a Blazing Indian and Need to Snip Him

The JA Berry Lecture Series – Part 15 – Out of the Box and Beefing It Up – The Master Dazzles Us With His Zen and Chow

A Flood of Lies or a Terrible Torrent of Truth? – The Second (Revised) Police Statement of Edward Robert William Spark – the Man Who Got Trapped in a Tree in a Torrent and By Accident Almost Caught the Assistant Commissioner Out – An Archie Butterfly Exclusive

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