CHLOE Hooper hadn’t heard of Palm Island in Australia before she got buried in a court case that was meant to go for two weeks, but is still continuing six years later.
The writer admits she was naïve about Aborigine issues before she embarked on covering one of the most prominent indigenous court cases in Australian history.
By chance, Hooper met lawyer Andrew Boe, who was set on discovering the controversial truth behind the death of Aboriginal man Cameron Doomadgee, found dead in his cell after Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley arrested him for disorderly contact in 2004.
Doomadgee’s internal injuries were so bad, the coroner stated they were the result of the sort of force that would be seen in a high-speed car crash.
Policeman Hurley denied any wrongdoing, and claims to have fallen on top of Doomadgee, which resulted in his knee impacting the man’s abdomen.
“Andrew Boe wanted someone to come and document the proceedings. He said it would take two weeks – little did I know it would still be going now. But it got under my skin, and I couldn’t let it go,” says Hooper. “I was trying to write the difficult second novel, and it was a bit stalled, so I decided to flex a different muscle.”
The result is The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island. The book, her second after highly praised fiction novel A Child’s Book of Crime, has won multiple awards in Australia, including a Walkley Award.
Hooper says to understand the story, one must understand Palm Island – a community where alcoholism is rampant, inhabitants are plagued by diabetes and deafness from untreated ear infections, and the average age of death is 50.
She says the Queensland police that patrol the area are notorious for racism, and frontier justice.
“The coppers sort things out in ways that just wouldn’t happen in big cities,” Hooper says, adding Hurley was in fact one of the few policemen who had good relations with the Aborigine community.
“[In the book] I do try and see things through the eyes of Chris Hurley as well – working under the conditions he worked,” says Hooper. “The paradox is that he was a police officer with a lot of Aborigine friends. He was almost a poster boy for reconciliation between the white man and the Aborigine.”
Hooper spent two years investigating the death. She attended all three inquests, the trial, and talked to everyone possible – the lawyers, the mayor of Palm Island, and Doomadgee’s family and friends.
“In the book, I describe meeting Cameron’s sister for dinner with the lawyers. She prayed for the lawyers’ mouths so they may be brave at the inquest, and for my ears so I wouldn’t miss any important details. At that moment, I thought ‘my god, I better not miss anything’,” she says. “When I met the family of Cameron I couldn’t help but ask ‘what if it was my brother?’ It was two months after his death, and they felt it was going to be a whitewash.”
In the first ever trial of an Australian police officer for a death in custody, Hurley was acquitted of manslaughter by an all-white jury in 2007, against the coroner’s recommendations.
Hurley’s lawyers are now fighting to strike off the coroner’s findings – that Hurley was responsible for Doomadgee’s death.
Hooper prefers not to voice opinion of where the blame lies, but says she was privy to information that the jurors were not.
“There were accusations of past assaults in arrest-type situation. There’s one story where a woman claims Hurley ran over her foot and left her lying on the ground. That woman was Cameron’s niece.”
Hooper is now “finally finishing off” the difficult second fiction book that was sidelined for years during the Doomadgee case.
Chloe Hooper will appear at the New Zealand Post Writers and Readers Week, at both the gala opening, Embassy Theatre, 7.30pm, March 9, and in conversation with Paul Diamond, Embassy Theatre, 2.15pm, March 10.