The Parched Dry Desert of Tragedy

GRISLY SUICIDE PACT OF THE OUTBACK
Parched, Sun-Scorched and Mocked By The Cruel Phantom Of Water

TRAGIC END OF KANGAROO SHOOTERS

Henry Dyer, 55, of New Zealand and Laurie Raunio/Raunis, 31, native of Orimattila, Finland, died on November 3, 1930 about 100 miles north-west of Wiluna from gunshot wounds, self-inflicted, while suffering the pangs of thirst. With this verdict last week, a Coroner dropped the curtain on the strangest and saddest suicide pact yet known in the West.

Dyer and Raunio, kangaroo shooters/prospectors, hopelessly lost in the dry and parched wilderness of the North, fought and struggled against a relentless thirst for three days, and then at the end of the third day, summing up every ounce of remaining strength they managed to reach—the last 300 yards on their hands and knees—a creek that from a distance promised so much but which yielded to them only a dry, cracked sunbaked bed.

“The Mocking Sun”

Words cannot describe their disappointment. Words cannot paint the tragedy of the scene when these two men, lips cracked and black, tongues swollen, bloodshot eyes rolling with the frenzy of approaching death, tumbled down the banks of this creek to find only the hard, burning bottom sucked dry by the pitiless mocking sun above. They sprawled beneath a tree that was growing— God knows how—from the impoverished bed. They knew the end had come. Above, a blue and rainless sky north, south, east and, west the same shimmering heat-crazed horizon.

“Trapped”

And so Dyer and Raunio decided to cheat the desert of its last triumphant torture, its last grisly taunt, just before their fevered minds would snap into insanity. They decided to die. They decided on suicide.The grim decision was mutual. Raunio raised his rifle and shot himself through the throat and died. Four yards away Dyer blew his dry, burning throat to pieces with a shotgun. Another grisly triumph for the mocking, rainless waste of the outback.

This time thirst—the Grand Inquisitor of the desert—would fail.

The two men were members of a kangaroo shooting party near Nabberoo, 100 miles northwest of Wiluna, and had left the camp at 7 a.m. on November 1st, taking with them only a one-gallon water bag. They expected to be back before mid-day, but fresh spoors of the animals they were hunting lured them on and on until, with the camp direction lost, they made a panicky effort to get back to the others and plunged in the wrong direction. Blind hope all that day, all that night, all the next day they fought on and on, blindly hoping they would reach a pool, a creek, a soak in the arid wilderness about them.

There were plenty of creeks with seared and yellow rushes lining their impostoring banks, but no water. Just cruel and taunting mimics of their own scorched and parched lips. During the last day of their onward struggle their tracks, when picked up by the police search party, showed them to be in a bad way. They showed where, after stumbling a few yards, they would have to flop to the ground and rest. In this way, they travelled three miles—three miles of the cruellest agony mind can conjecture. Then the last few hundred yards to the false creek, the tracks indicated, were made on their hand’s knees.

Across the dry and sunbaked desert, the search party tracked the thirst stricken men for two days, each footprint leading on to the ultimate discovery of the strangest and most tragic of death pacts.

They had been gone from the camp nearly three days when P.C. Allan, of Wiluna, got the first report of it. Early on Tuesday, November 4 he secured trackers and commenced the search. They picked up the men’s tracks west of Three Springs Station and from there, the tracks led onto Nabberu Creek in the direction of the Nabberu sand hills. The search party followed the tracks all day, travelling a distance of about 20 miles. The next morning they continued the search. They discovered that at one point Dyer and Raunio and been within 3 miles of the main camp. Two days later they found the bodies seven miles northeast of the camp where they found the two men had been burning fires in the hope of attracting attention. They also found nearby a dead kangaroo from which the blood had been drained. Harry Dyer had lived in Western Australia for 20 years and was considered a good bushman.

Officer Allan judged, by the extent of decomposition they had been dead for three days. They had to be left unburied, just near the waterless creek they lay. The search party, full of hope of finding them alive, took no grave-digging tools with them, and the ground roundabout was so hard and dry it was impossible to scoop even a shallow resting place without at least a pick and a shovel. So the bodies were dragged to a little clump of bushes nearby, other bushes were heaped over them, and there they lay, their bones to be bleached by the merciless sun they cheated with a despairing suicide.

Later they were decently buried by Police Officer David John Allen and present at the burial were J Strauss, Frank Knowen and Sid Willoughby, members of the shooting party, wooden crosses suitably inscribed were made by their friends. Limestone slabs were carted six miles to cover the graves to protect the bodies from dingos and bungarras (lizards). Two upright slabs were placed at the head of each grave. Over the years floods knocked over the slabs and took away both crosses.

In 2005 Stan and Joy Gratte and Viv and Margaret Criddle were determined to find the graves when Stan’s friend Frank Konwen showed him the gun that his old mate Raunio had used to end his misery. They found the graves about 1 km south of Bulla Gum Well on the west side of the creek between two big gum trees. They placed a plaque on a small concert block that said:

Believed Buried Here
Harry Dyer 51
Laurie Raunio 31 Finn
Perished 7 miles northeast 3 Nov 1930
Geraldton Historical Soc
S Gratte and V Criddle 2005