‘Wedderburn: A True Tale of Blood and Dust’ by Maryrose Cuskelly

Non-fiction – paperback; Allen & Unwin; 304 pages; 2018.

Wedderburn: A True Tale of Blood and Dust by Maryrose Cuskelly is a deeply contemplative and gripping analysis of a small-town murder in Australia written very much in the vein of Helen Garner’s true-crime style (think Joe Cinque’s Consolation and This House of Grief).

It focuses on the brutal killing of Peter Lockhart, 78, his second wife Mary, 75, and her son Greg Holmes, 48, at the hands of their neighbour, 64-year-old Ian Jamieson, in rural Wedderburn, in Central Victoria, 215km north-west of Melbourne in October 2014.

Holmes was stabbed more than 25 times on his rural property, which bordered Jamieson’s, while the Lockharts, who lived across the road, were shot multiple times, at close range.

When Jamieson called the emergency services to report his deeds, he told the operator that it was too late for an ambulance because all three were dead. He then phoned a friend, Wally Meddings, and asked him to look after his wife, Janice, “because the police are coming to take me in and I’ll never see the light of day again”. He then phoned his friend Anna McMerrin, telling her:

I’m just ringing to let you know [that I’ve killed my neighbours] and I want you to look after Janice for me. Five years I’ve been putting up with shit from those bastards and I just snapped.

What does it take to provoke a murder?

Cuskelly considers what might have driven Jamieson to carry out such an act. She interviews friends, from both sides of the story, nearby residents and other locals to get a feel, not only for what Jamieson was like as a person, but to find out the impact of the murders on such a small and close-knit community.

What could be behind the rumours I heard that at least some of those living in the community viewed the killings, in particular the murder of Peter Lockhart, as an understandable reaction to extreme provocation? How could anyone, apart from the most callous individual, describe the killing of another person as a favour?

One theory posited that there was a feud involving the use of a track between the properties. Jamieson claimed whenever Lockhart or Holmes drove along the track it kicked up dust that settled in his rainwater tanks and soiled his clean washing on the line. He asked them not to do it, but they ignored him. He suggested that they did it deliberately to get a rise out of  him.

But over the two-and-a-half years that it took Cuskelly to research this book she learned that it wasn’t quite as cut and dried as that.

As she charts the court proceedings in which Jamieson kept changing his mind as to whether to plead guilty or not, sacking his legal representatives in the process and acting petulantly in front of the judge, Cuskelly befriends the victim’s families and discovers there’s always two sides to every story.

The story behind the headlines

This is a book that looks behind the headlines to discover how violence and masculinity and small town rivalries can collide with horrendous and long-term consequences. It takes what appears on the surface to be a simple story about a man “snapping” and shows how it is far more complex than that.

Written in elegant prose, free from sensation and sentiment, Wedderburn: A True Tale of Blood and Dust takes the reader on an astonishing, often emotional, journey that shows the full sweep of human qualities, both good and bad, and highlights how we all have the potential inside of us to carry out brutal acts for which there is no going back.

It’s also an illuminating examination of the convoluted judicial process and how brave and determined the victims of crime (or, in this case, the families of the murder victims) must be to seek justice.

This is a fascinating book, one that has left an impact as I suspect it does on anyone who chooses to read it.

You can read more detail about the actual crime in this piece published in WHO magazine last year.

This is my 1st book for #AWW2019 — I plan to read a minimum of ten books by Australian women this year as part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge (note, you don’t need to be Australian to take part; everyone is welcome to participate). Please note ‘Wedderburn’ doesn’t seem to be published outside of Australia (I bought mine in Melbourne during my recent trip), though the audio book is available on Audible and you can order the paperback direct from Australia via Book Depository if you can stomach the expense.