The Deadly Flinders Highway

**Meshel Laurie** (0:03)
This is Australian True Crime with Meshel Laurie.
The Flinders Highway is an 800-kilometre stretch of road running through Queensland from Townsville to Mount Isa.
And over the decades, it's been linked to a disturbing number of disappearances and murders. In this episode, we're talking about some of the most haunting cases along the highway, the possibility that there are connections between them, and what new forensic technology might reveal about crimes that have remained unsolved for decades. Our guest is investigative journalist Amelia Oberhardt. She's the presenter of a new Channel Nine series, Outback Murder Highway. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. And a warning, this episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.

**Amelia Oberhardt** (0:57)
Well, I had a really weird interest in highways. I mean, it had come from, I have a couple of friends from rural New South Wales that owned farms, that would often talk about things that occurred on the New England Highway, just like weird tidbits that sometimes truckies drill a hole, so they don't have to stop to wee, found that fascinating. Oh, yeah.
And then I got kind of very interested into the sort of bikey routes and things that were taking place in those roadside motels. I was like, how interesting would it be to go into these random small towns and talk to the motelier or the truck stops and imagine the stories. And then I got introduced to someone called Jo Townsend. She was the producer for Outback Murder Highway. And she was like, we're doing this show called Outback Murder Highway about the Flinders Highway. I was like, oh my god, that had also sparked my interest, weirdly.
I'd been at a school function. I was talking to a very wonderful ophthalmologist from Allocator Creek. And he was telling me this story that when he was a child and they traveled on the Flinders Highway, his mom had this memory of pulling over to these two girls running down the street. And they pulled down the highway and they pulled over to help. And then some scary men came and they got in the car and sped off. And I was like, did you ever tell anyone this story before now? He's like, look, to be honest, no one's really, I hadn't thought about it in 50 years. And I'm like, could your mom talk to me? He's like, she's passed away, but I don't know if she ever did anything with that information. And I'm like, what year would this have occurred? He's like, oh, early 1970s. And I was like, wow. So I kind of went back to Joe and I was like, I really think that there's something in this highway, a stretch of desolate road.

**Meshel Laurie** (2:45)
I feel like we've had a national epiphany about our wilderness, if you will, over the last couple of decades with Ivan Mallat, Bradley Murdoch and the Peter Falcone case, and then the movie Wolf Creek. All of those three things really opened my eyes to something I'd never thought about before. These lawless, huge area that feels lawless in the middle of Australia, because most of us cling to the coastline.
Because there are a couple of stretches of highway around Australia that have similar terrible statistics related to them. But I'm a Queenslander and I did not know about this patch between Townsville and Mount Isa.

**Amelia Oberhardt** (3:21)
So funny how many people don't know it exists.

**Meshel Laurie** (3:24)
No.

**Amelia Oberhardt** (3:25)
Because it is like the fastest way obviously to travel inland. And a lot of people use it to cut up through New South Wales to get to the Northern Territory. It's kind of the Alice Springs, it lead to Adelaide. It kind of is this junction where it sort of meets the Stratus Towers that is way more populated than you think, but it is so isolated to not have had CCTV and it still doesn't have phone reception or CCTV in so many spots.
You take it back to the 70s and it is a serial killer's paradise. It offers everything you could possibly want if you're on the hunt.

**Meshel Laurie** (4:00)
All right. Well, we'll get into whether or not you do believe there is a serial killer or several serial killers involved in these cases. But let's start. I'm assuming it was probably a hard one to decide where to start. If you've started in 1970, I'm sure there were issues before that as well. But for whatever reason, why did you start with 1970?

**Amelia Oberhardt** (4:18)