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TRUE CRIME
The Winter Road
Kate Holden
Black Inc., $32.99
On July 29, 2014, in a narrow lane between Moree and Croppa Creek, less than an hour from the border between NSW and Queensland, a compliance officer from the Office of Environment and Heritage was shot multiple times by an 80-year old farmer. The officer, Glen Turner, 51, died.
His killer was Ian Turnbull, patriarch of a farming family stretching back generations – a dynasty invested in the ownership of land. He had a strong attachment to place. He wanted to create a bountiful paradise on his 9000 acres, and he saw this goal as noble labour. He and his family had felled, raked, sprayed, ploughed land and killed pristine vegetation.
Ian Turnbull at his trial in April 2016; victim Glen Turner; the scene of the crime.Credit:James Alcock; Tracy Fulford Photography; Peter Rae
In Australia, farmers have ambition to push the land as a demonstration of progress, “to elevate humankind upon the mountain of industrial farming”, as Kate Holden writes in The Winter Road, her phenomenal and sweeping study of genocide, environmental destruction and the heritage of our national agricultural enterprise.
“Battling the land was a proxy for the traditional masculine challenges of hunting and warfare,” she explains. “An actual war, which was waged for 150 years was barely acknowledged.”
In Australia, property ownership means both agency and liberty, and Turnbull was a man who felt the freight of legacy and the responsibility of handing the land on to his children. For decades, his family had been clearing land and committing wilful breaches of regulations – unfortunate for a man like Turnbull who was resistant to authority but “enjoyed finding ways around” it. But when there is property, there is bureaucracy, protocol, judiciary.
Turner was the president of the primary school parents and citizens’ association. He volunteered at the school canteen and started up a scheme with native gardens. He coached kids in touch rugby. He was also Turnbull’s victim, and on that day was discharging a public duty. He was murdered while fulfilling his department’s statutory obligations to investigate Turnbull’s land.
He had applied for stop work orders after inspecting illegal clearing on Turnbull’s property for years, but Turnbull ignored them. Turnbull saw Turner’s presence as a threat to his small empire and thought Turner had a personal vendetta against him.
Two years before the murder, at the gates of his property, Turnbull said to Turner: “I’m an old man, I don’t care. I can do anything I want.”