analysis
Worst mass shootings: Australia’s history of gun violence and chilling massacres

Australia may not have the same scale of gun violence as in the US, but the Lucky Country still has a bloody history of shootings and chilling massacres. The latest entry to the grim list of killings happened as early as December last year when two police officers and an innocent neighbour were gunned down at a regional Queensland property. And the list doesn’t even touch on the horrific mass killings of Indigenous Australians that occurred years before some of these massacres. The horrific event in Wieambilla has prompted talks of another sweeping reform of gun ownership across the country, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese suggesting a national firearms register could be on the table. Mr Albanese, who attended the funerals of the two slain police officers last year, said the country needed better co-operation between jurisdictions when it came to firearms. “That was part of the issue that has been identified in Queensland, and we agreed we’d report back by the middle of the year through the Attorneys-General ministerial council on the options to implement a national firearms register,” he said. “It’s agreed that that would be a necessary measure.” Mr Albanese said the murders of the police officers and neighbour in Wieambilla on the basis of a “warped ideology” had reinforced the need to keep citizens safe. Sweeping gun reforms were passed in Australia in the 1990s following the Port Arthur Massacre in which Martin Bryant killed 35 people. With talk of another potential reform on the table, here are some of the worst mass shootings in Australia’s history: Hope Forest massacre, 1971 Killer: Clifford Bartholomew Death toll: 10 Outcome: Bartholomew sentenced to death but later jailed for life. Released in 1979 on parole. Died in Queensland in 2002. No one could have suspected Clifford Bartholomew – known as “Poppy Cliff” to his adoptive family – would slaughter all seven of his children and his wife in one of the country’s worst mass killings. Claiming he endured months of mental torture on the belief his estranged wife Heather was having an affair with a young Vietnam veteran, Bartholomew hatched a plan to kill her. The previous evening, Heather told Bartholomew, then 41, she would be moving to Adelaide’s northwest where the pair had initially lived 10 years earlier. On Father’s Day in 1971, he killed her along with his children Neville, 19, Christine, 17, Sharon, 15, Helen, 13, Gregory, 10, Roger, 7 and Sandra, 4, his sister-in-law Winnis, 26, and her 19-month-old-son Daniel. Bartholomew claimed he had to kill his wife to stop her from seeing the young man but he “couldn’t control his actions”. He was sentenced to death by hanging by Justice Roma Mitchell in November 1971. This was then commuted to life imprisonment after the death penalty was abolished by the Dunstan Labor government in 1976. Bartholomew was then paroled in 1979, assuming a new identity and moving to Victoria and then Queensland. He died in 2002, aged 72. Hoddle Street massacre, 1987 Killer: Julian Knight Death toll: 7 Outcome: Sentenced to seven concurrent life sentences. Julian Knight was only 19 when he embarked on a murderous spree at Clifton Hill, in Melbourne’s northeast, during what became known as one of Australia’s bloodiest massacres at the time. Knight – a failed military graduate from Duntroon Military College – “indiscriminately” fired more than 100 rounds of ammunition from three weapons at passing motorists and police on August 9, 1987. Tracey Skinner, 23, Johnny Muscat, 26, Vesna Markovska, 24, Robert Mitchell, 27, Georgina Papaioannu, 21, Dusan Flajnik, 53, and Kenneth Stanton, 21 died from gunshot wounds sustained during the attack. Nineteen others were injured. After a 30-minute police chase, Knight was arrested in the nearby suburb of Fitzroy. He received seven concurrent life sentences in 1989 and his release has consistently been blocked by parole authorities. During his sentencing, a judge said Knight had performed “poorly” at the military college and was kicked out after stabbing a sergeant he quarrelled with a year before the massacre. He had been obsessed with military life and war since a young age, even building a fantasy life around “heroic killings in battle situations” that ended in victory or his own death in a “last-man” stance. Strathfield massacre, 1991 Killer: Wade Frankum Death toll: 8, including the perpetrator Outcome: Took his own life on the rooftop garage of the plaza. Little to no reason was given for Wade Frankum’s horrifying killing spree in a mall in Sydney’s inner west some 20 years ago. During the attack at Strathfield Shopping Plaza on August 17, 1991, an ordinary day was turned upside down when Frankum, 33, hacked 15-year-old Roberta Armstrong to death with a large hunting knife. He then opened fire on innocent shoppers with an automatic rifle, killing six others. They included Robertson Kan Hock Voon, 51, Patricia Rowe, 37, Carole Dickinson, 47, Joyce Nixon, 61, Rachelle Milburn, 17 and George Mavris, 51. Frankum then went up to the roof of the plaza and took his own life. Police at the time said the motive for the attack was unknown and Frankum did not know any of his victims. During a coronial inquest, a psychiatrist said Frankum did not have a severe mental disorder or any previous evidence of severe aggression, but “anger, guilt, conflict” and financial strain may have been the motivation for his attack. The inquest was told of his difficult upbringing, exposure to violent material throughout his life and buying the rifle out of fears for his own protection. Hillcrest massacre, 1996 Killer: Peter May Death toll: 7, including the perpetrator Outcome: Took his own life following the murders. Peter May’s brutal act took the lives of his own children, his estranged wife Helen and her parents on the morning of Australia Day in 1996. Lisa, 11, Andrew, 9, and Natalie, 7, were all shot dead at an Ellen Grove address in Brisbane’s southwest. May, 32, then drove to Hillcrest where his wife was staying with her parents Jim and Rita Potter. He then killed the Potters, dragging Helen back inside as she tried to escape and shooting her dead, before taking his own life with the same gun. May had subjected his wife to a “living hell”, according to a special investigation by The Courier Mail in 1996, throughout their dysfunctional 12-year marriage. He was known as a problematic gambler who forced his family into debts, ending up in trouble with the law due to his “never-ending series of small-time scams, rip-offs and deceptions”. A month before the shooting, May had visited the Men’s Rights Agency and was told he had little hope of seeing his children after his wife left him. The organisation denied their advice to him led to the massacre. Port Arthur massacre, 1996 Killer: Martin Bryant Death toll: 35 Outcome: Sentenced to 35 life sentences without parole. Massive overhaul of Australia’s gun laws instituted. Martin Bryant will live in infamy as the man behind Australia’s worst gun massacre in modern history – an event that killed 35 and led to Australia’s defining overhaul of gun ownership. In the sleepy town of Port Arthur in Tasmania’s southeast, Bryant, then 28, shot and killed David and Sally Martin at a bed and breakfast known as the Seascape on April 28, 1996. His spree continued at the Port Arthur Historic Site and Broad Arrow Cafe before being arrested the next day. Bryant is serving 35 life sentences without the possibility of parole. Little explanation has been given for the massacre – some suggest he was motivated by money after the Martins refused to sell the Seascape to Bryant’s father. His psychiatrist opined Bryant was of limited intellectual ability and was an “oversensitive individual” who “attributed malevolence and aggression” to many around him, but he was not mentally ill at the time of the attack. The Port Arthur massacre resulted in major legislative changes to gun ownership in Australia, including a buyback and amnesty program for people to surrender newly banned weapons. More than 700,000 legal and illegal firearms – an estimated third of the guns in Australia – were surrendered and destroyed. Hunt family murders, 2014 Killer: Geoff Hunt Death toll: 5, including perpetrator Outcome: Took his own life after the murders. Geoff Hunt was motivated by an “egocentric delusion” that his wife and children would be better off dead than living without him when he murdered them in cold blood on September 9, 2014. The grain farmer, 44, killed his wife Kim, 41 and their children Fletcher, 10, Mia, 8, and Phoebe, 6, at the family’s Lockhart farm in the NSW Riverina. He then took his own life. The bodies of Kim and the children were found on the farm, but Hunt’s body was located a day later in a nearby dam. In 2015, a coroner found Hunt had “distorted logic” behind his beliefs, and marital and family stress, combined with the spinal and brain injuries his wife sustained in a crash two years earlier, may have played a role in the murders. But coroner Michael Barnes said he could not definitively say what had prompted the act. Wagga Wagga Courthouse was told Hunt was likely depressed and had expressed suicidal ideation in the years before. Osmington farm murders, 2018 Killer: Peter Miles Death toll: 7, including the perpetrator Outcome: Took his own life after phoning police following the murders. The small town of Osmington – nestled in an alcove of Western Australia’s Augusta-Margaret River shire – was turned upside down in May 2018 after multiple bodies were discovered on a farming property. Peter Miles, 61, shot his wife Cynda, 58 and their daughter Katrina, 35, dead on May 11 at the rural farm, known as Forever Dreaming Farm. He then killed Katrina’s four children – Taye, 13, Rylan, 11, Arye, 10 and Kadyn, 8, – before phoning police and turning the gun on himself. The killings are considered the worst mass shooting in Australia since Port Arthur. No coronial inquest into the deaths has been held due to WA Attorney-General John Quigley not having the legal power to order one. The West Australian reports Miles struggled with “mental demons” and was taking prescribed medication at the time of the deaths. Darwin shooting, 2019 Killer: Benjamin Glenn Hoffmann Death toll: 4 Outcome: Hoffman jailed for life for three of the murders. High on drugs and armed with a deadly pump-action shotgun, Benjamin Glenn Hoffmann’s murderous spree came to an end during a dramatic arrest on the Daly St bridge in Darwin. He left three people – Hassan Baydoun, 33, Michael Sisois, 57, Rob Courtney, 52, and Nigel Hellings, 75, – dead and one other injured. The 43-year-old pleaded guilty mid-trial to the murders of Mr Baydoun, Mr Siosis and Mr Courtney and the manslaughter of Mr Hellings on June 4, 2019 during a methylamphetamine-fuelled bender across the city. At the time, he was pursuing a man he wrongly believed had been involved in kidnapping his ex-girlfriend, Kelly Collins. Mr Baydoun was killed in his unit at the Palms Motel after which Hoffmann shot Mr Hellings, his mate, dead at a home in Gardens Hill Crescent. He then drove to the Buff Club in Stuart Park, killing Mr Siosis before driving to a recycling yard where Mr Courtney lived and murdering him. During his trial, Hoffmann fired both his legal teams in a spectacular display before choosing to plead guilty – accusing his lawyers of ignoring him and saying “everyone is lying, covering up, not telling the truth”. Wieambilla shootings, 2022 Killer(s): Gareth, Nathaniel and Stacey Train Death toll: 6, including the Trains Outcome: Gareth, Nathaniel and Stacey gunned down after an hours-long standoff with police. Two young police officers and an innocent neighbour were gunned down at a property in regional Queensland during what was supposed to be a routine missing person’s check. Police constables Rachel McCrow, 29 and Matthew Arnold, 26, attended the property in Wieambilla – in Queensland’s Western Downs region – on December 12, 2022. The pair were gunned down by the Trains before being shot dead “execution-style”. Another constable, Randall Kirk, was wounded while Constable Keely Brough fled into bushland radioing for help. The Trains lit fires on the property and fired more shots into the bushland in a bid to flush her out. Neighbour Alan Dare, 58, had come over to investigate the fire and smoke coming from the Wieambilla property before he was shot dead. The police were responding to a missing person’s case involving Nathaniel, a former schoolteacher who had been reported missing in 2021. During a six-hour siege that followed, Nathaniel, Gareth and Stacey were all killed by police. Gareth was known as an avid follower of conspiracy theories – believing the Port Arthur massacre was a “false flag and government psy-op massacre”, that Princess Diana was killed in a “blood sacrifice” and regularly posting about his mistrust of the government, police and the Covid-19 pandemic. In a chilling twist, it was revealed Gareth and Stacey had posted a video on YouTube where they bragged about killing the officers just after the shooting.

analysisWorst mass shootings: Australia’s history of gun violence and chilling massacres

analysis
Worst mass shootings: Australia’s history of gun violence and chilling massacres