The outback court reporter

with your favorite pony. How does a girl from Coba Pony Club, I imagine, end up reporting on courts all around the nation? Tell us about that journey.

them almost by correspondents. And then I left school and went to work as a journalist in commercial media, and I read and worked in radio and commercial radio newsrooms for quite a while, and then eventually down my way to the ABC and one of the court reporters left, one of the Sydney court reporters moved into State and one of my bosses said, oh, do you want to

do the court round? And I had covered an ICAC inquiry before that, which was a lot of fun, and I thought, oh, yeah, courts can't be too different from ICQ inquiries, and then if very different, And then I was petrified because I thought, oh, no, what have I done. The thing about court reporting is, as you would know, no one can actually teach you how to do it.

They can suggest things and tell you about some of the protocols, but it's very much a job where you have to learn on the job, and you have to follow other people around and learn as you go, and no day in court is the same, and there are hundreds of different courts, you know, there are local court, district court, Supreme courts, federal court, high cords. And it was trial by error, and I was certainly thrown into

this whole new world of legal jargon. And I think what appealed to me most was the theater of court rooms and the fact that every damut of human emotions comes out in a court room and it can be really sad and disturbing, but highly entertaining as well. So I did the court and I still do. You do some court reporting that I did do the court round for about a decade for the ABC, so it's a long time.

late millionaires private assistant and chauffeur. Interesting job description and so on and so forth. It was an interesting case because it sort of picked up on a lot of people in Sydney cafe society for one of a better phrase. You of course will remember the facts of the matter, but just run a bit of it past us.

somehow pushed her over the gap. Now, his defense was that she had had suicidal thoughts, she had mental health issues, and that she had committed suicide. After a very long running trial, he was convicted, found guilty of murder and jailed, and then he won an appeal and that he was acquitted and then walked free and then started to sue the State of New South Wales for malicious prosecution.

Sydney giving evidence. And of course Gordon would was very very tall, blonde, detractive man, had a whole lot of glamorous people he hung out with, but he had always

maintained his innocence. There was an inquest into her death and it didn't conclude that anyone should be charged, and Carolyn Burn's father believed all along that she had been murdered, so he pushed very very hard, and her former employer, Jean Dally Watkins did that too, And before this matter actually got to trial, they went around a lot of businesses around the gap around Watson's Bay where this well known suicide cliff was, and they handed out grocers and

photos of Caroline and set as anyone seen her, and they gathered witness statements, and they really pushed hard. The police had a bit of a setback in the case. One of the detectives who was at first investigating it actually got hit by a bus halfway through the investigations. So the police said all along that they were very

under resourced. They mixed up some of the evidence. For example, we found out at the trial that they had posted a place where her body had been found, but it was actually the wrong place, and they'd got some of the evidence mixed up and changed around. So there are

all sorts of setbacks and complications. And I remember at the start of the trial, I think that the jury had to be discharged because one of the jurors had decided to go out to the gap themselves and their own investigation, which jurors are told by judges not to do. So there are all sorts of twists in turn on the way. And the day he was found guilty, it was early on a weekday morning and the jury had been out for some time and the jury foreman called

the court staff, whom they came in. It was about nine point thirty in the morning, and it was a very very quick quick decision, and it was quite shocking when the guilty verdict was read out and Gordon, who'd been free on bail and walking in and out of the courtroom, was suddenly taken into custody.

fantastic defense barrister. So there were two very very compelling cases, and there were a lot of witnesses and everybody, well, I mean, as reporters, we do this all the time. We all say, oh, I think I know what happened, or I think it's going this way. But the truth is, I've found that you never really know which way jury's going to go. You can be quite surprised by the chamblin.

I think Winston spoke at the time.

high profile trial. There hadn't been any Some of the trials that have really stayed with me over the years have been murder trials involving children, for example, or whole families who've been murdered by someone in their own time.

But the crown case was that she somehow murdered the child and disposed of the child's body. But Tiggan's body has never been found. That that is really important, and Kelly Lane was asked repeatedly to identify this man. A few people were presented as the possible father of the child, but she argued that she wanted to maintain his secrecy and you know, she didn't have to reveal it or reveal his identity. So it's interesting though she was jailed

for murder after being found guilt. But the trial judge who presided over that case, he's now retired just as.

in jail. You know that she has had issues of being assaulted by other inmates and whatnot, but she has maintained her innocence all along.

at it. That is the trial of Jeffrey Gillham, who was accused tell me if I'm wrong of killing not only his brother Christopher, who which I think he admits, but killing his parents, which he strongly denies. He appeals and on appeal he was acquitted. This is one of those peculiar family murders where you know one person is accused of wiping out the rest of the family. Tell us a bit about that.

case was that he was motivated by greed. He wanted money, as is the motivation of many people have worked out people, and we hear this a lot in murder trials, and we hear money as been the center of much conflict in courtrooms, not only in the city but also in the country. If I might talk about a story very close to me, in my little home town of Cooba, there was a very well known family, the Setries, Margaret and In Setri, and they were good community people. They

did a lot of volunteer work. They were loved in the town. And their son, Scott Setri, who we can name now stood trial for murdering them, and he had a lot of mental health issues. And at his trial, it was a judge alone trial, the court heard that he had an argument with them over a bottle of wine.

So he took a gun from the cupboard and shot them both get at point black range in their Coba home and then covered in blood, he walked into the local pub and there are retired police officer recognized him and said, mate, it covered in blood. What's wrong And he said, I think I've done something bad. So this ex cock phoned police and that all unfolded. Now, why this turned out to be a really significant trial for my hometown was that he was actually found not guilty

by reason of mental illness. And so you know that means that the judge says, okay, you had to go to a prison hospital until you are deemed well enough to be let out in the community, and there's no conviction record. Now, his sister, Wendy Robinson lobbied the new South Wales Attorney General for years to try to change that because it really upset her that people could murder their parents or murder a family member and then be found not guilty by reason of mental illness. So she's

still lobbying away at that. But it ended up in court over money because he stood to inherit despite murdering his parents. He stood to inherit something like a million dollars from their estate having killed them. So Wendy applied to the court to have something called a forfeiture rule forced by the judge and the judge you heard that case,

said look, I'm going to enforce that rule. I'm not going to give you you a million dollars, but I am going to give you one hundred thousand dollars because at some stage you're going to get out of jail and you're going to be a burden on society. You know, someone's going to have to pay for your upkeeps. So I'm going to give you some money for your care. From what I understand, he has been I think he's due for paroles soon or some sort of day release.

So I know this because Wendy's been contacting the media and saying that A she's concerned about that, and B she still wants these laws changed where people can just be found not guilty by reason of mental illness. She wants it varied somehow so that there is some sort of conviction recorded even though there's a mental illness finding.

into a GP. So that's another big issue in the country and I see a lot of that in the time I've spent in country courtrooms, not just in my hometown but all over Australia. The law and the health system are really closely linked because a lot of the judges and magistrates in the country say, Okay, I want to send this person to a drug rehead program. I want a few different bail options for them, but they

can't because there's no rehab. You know, A lot of magistrates say, look, you know, I want you to go and get go and see a GP and get a mental health care plan and get some counseling and you know, get your life back on track. And I've actually seen young people in the court go your honor. You know, I can't get into a GP for three months. And they're not exaggerating that the health is so bad in some regional areas, the health care, I should say, it's

just nonexistent. So the magistrates are limited in the sentences they hand down and in the way they release people on mail and run their courtroom a lot of the time.

they do. And especially in a lot of domestic violence cases, there are a lot of you know, men who have access to guns and use them to threaten women. Women who access have access to guns use them to threaten men. A lot of kids get come before the courts because they shot animals on someone's property or just gone and shot up the tires of someone's car out of boredom, because they have happen to do so. Guns and weapons feature a lot in country courtrooms.

city weren't secure enough. So this trial courtroom was built. It was high security, and these young men stood trial and the judge who jailed them, I think most of them are on parole now. The judge who actually jailed them, he said, you've shown no remorse, and they were doing things like standing up and yelling at the judge in court, and their supporters in the public gallery were quite aggressive

towards members of the public. And the judge said, if I could jail you some longer, I would, but the legislation as such as I can only give you this genial term. And they all got various jail sentences, but

they were essentially jailed for plotting terrorist attacks. And what we heard at that trial were allegations that they'd been out in the country around places like Burking Country, New South Wales, learning how to fly planes and training out in the bush, learning how to use gardens and things like that. So it was quite scary. It was quite that very confronting.

there was one running in Melbourne. I think. Concurrently there was run all the year before the year after Benbrika begin so there was just a whole string of trials together, but there were all sorts of suppression orders and it was only some time after the trials we could talk about them. But this one went for over a year. It was a long time to sit through a trial and I felt for the jury it was a big chunk out of them.

cars by people. Oh yeah, yeah, So what they had to do was then bust them in. Every day as extra safety precaution, a bus would pick up the jurors to make a secret point and bring them to court.

that a problem? You know, at two o'clock in the afternoon and there you are in and they're droning on and the sun's coming through the windows, and you think, my head's going to nod and I'm going to go to sleep here. Is that not a terrible thing to happen in court?

But a lot of what you see in city courtrooms, in long running trials and things is is really boring. I mean, there's the dramatic and really interesting stuff, but there are whole lots of statistics and re enactments to things on video and experts you know, analyzing dark and all important stuff. But yeah, ted is for people who

aren't experts in it themselves. So I really admire judges and magistrates for keeping their composure and sitting through it and understanding it, yeah, and trying to make and directing jurists to consider it properly. That's really important because if the judge doesn't give the right sort of directions to the jury, you know about how to interpret this stuff, and you know that that can have really awful consequences.

inquiry or something. It doesn't often involve a jury. And what I saw was that country magistrates do a whole lot more than these city counterparts. They're like bush doctors. You know, they do a bit of everything. So they they might do a bit of children's court working in their local court, they might do an inquest for a day, or you know, they're doing a little bit of everything. They might use some family violence matters, whereas in a city court room, magistrates have a lot more leeway to

bat things around to each other. You know, they'll go on my list is full for the day, I want to move this over to court five or something, or I want to find another another person to A country magistrate just doesn't have that liberty. And what I saw was that they do work. I would argue a lot harder, a lot longer hours, and there seems to be a

very high mental burnout rate. Like one district court judge I spoke to you, who'd spend a lot of time in the country, said she just used to go home and lie on the couch at the end of the day. And like coll Up, she said, I was just so overwhelmed by the caseload. Another magistrate, for example, this is

how hard their job can be. She was in the sixties and she drove to Burke to preside over Burke Court in out New South Wales, and this group of children broke into her hotel room and tried to steal her handbag and her car keys. One got in through the window and let the others in and she fought them off, and as she was ringing up for help, they came back again and she fought them off again. That now, luckily she wasn't badly injured. But that's the

sort of stuff that can happen. They're often driving around long distances. One magistrate who actually retired when he was in his fifties because he said that was just so overwhelming, had death threats, had you know, spoor stickers painted on its garage. This was way back in the eighties nineties, and he said, when the drag ice became a big problem in country communities, you know, people started jumping the dock and swearing at him and trying to attack him.

And he said, that's when we started to build glass walls in country courtrooms. We'd actually just needed them to keep people away away from us. And the court staff.

She woke up in the middle of the night. She could hear all this crashing and banging, and they broke into her house with bricks. They smashed windows, smashed the door. They bashed her with bricks and left her for dead. She was just crawling on the ground and they took her handbag, which had just a few hundred dollars in it. She somehow survived that and crawled next door alerted. The neighbors ended up in hospital. I saw the photos of her horrendous injuries, and the really sad thing is Andrew

she couldn't go back to that house. She was too scared. She moved out of town, moved into state with her family, and the two kids were picked up pretty quickly because they left fingerprints everywhere. So they got charged. They came before a district court judge. He said, look, you've got no structure in your lives. You don't go to school, you don't have proper meals, you don't have parents looking

after you properly. So he thought that a custodial sentence was the only way to maybe make a difference to these kids' lives. So he gave them a couple of years in juvenile detention. But then they appealed against it, and a panel of judges in Sydney overturned it and they walked free because they thought it was too severe. Now, there were members of that local Maury community really angry at that decision because they wanted to try and help

these kids see what they'd done was wrong. And there were prison interviews that are part of the judgment, and one of the kids says he's talking to a relative and he says to the relative of oh, I'm not sorry for what I did. She deserved it. There's a twelve year old kid.

human stories. And every week, somewhere in Australia there's a great story unfolding in a courtroom.

quite often. I had a hostile reception. They drawed it to throw me out, and they're just not used to having the media in there and being under that sort of scrutiny, and that's important because our system of justice, you know, we meant to have open justice in Australia, and the truth is, unless it's a closed court, any of us can walk.

and he said, madam, stop writing. You know, the noise is bothering me. And I was really embarrassed. So I was tapping on my iPad, you know, because we're allowed to take iPads. So I just said, I'm sorry, you're on it, and I rested a notebook on my iPad and started writing on the notebook, and he thought that I disobeyed him and I was still taping on the iPad. So he suddenly stopped and he said, get out, get

outside now. So these board country court officers, who had nothing to do, you know, dived on me taking me outside. They were so excited that they had something to do and out in the foyer. I had to argue with them to be let back in. I said, I'm I'm sorry. I didn't mean to disturb the magistrate, but I am allowed to take notes in court and here I'm writing on a notebook. But in the foyer I made a whole lot of new friends, all these people who are

up on dragging and driving churches. But I thought it was really cool. And one of them goes, what did you get chapped out for? And just said, I it's nothing exciting. I just checked out for writing. It's not nothings dramatic as you would think. But they thought it. They were all rallied around, you know, they suddenly had a cause. And one of them is yelling, he'd go on, take your camera in there, take your camera in there. I get and that wasst.

I'm very sorry, madam, there's been a misunderstanding. And then at every lull in the proceedings he would look at me, and then the staff would turn around and look at me. It was was really funny. It was very great.