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Authors: Candace Sutton
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through Bungonia on weekends on their way to the State Recreation Area, drawn to the beautiful but treacherous sprawl of limestone territory to the south which was cleaved by a deep and spectacular chasm. Bungonia Gorge was honeycombed with ancient caves. Lorraine Brooks knew those kinds of visitors passed quickly through the village. They did not park in the main street, or loiter in town. Few people did, apart from the population of around thirty-five who found this rural backwater charming.
Bungonia had been a township in steady decline since the middle of the nineteenth century, and while the Oallen Ford and the Lookdown roads featured grand buildings, they all dated from one brief glory period in the town’s history. A solid future seemed destined for Bungonia in the 1840s, when stonemason Patrick Kelly added what would become the Old Parsonage to the Hotel Victoria. In 1847, Kelly built St Michael’s Catholic Church, now one of the oldest standing Catholic churches in Australia. Settled by convicts and ticket-of-leave men, Bungonia once boasted butchers, shopkeepers, a schoolteacher, two pastors and a publican, as well as bushrangers who waited on the town’s outskirts and held up coach loads of visitors. Unfortunately the colony’s surveyor-general, Major Thomas Mitchell, cut short Bungonia’s prospects of becoming a major centre by relocating the main road west through Goulburn.
These days in Bungonia, there was nowhere even to buy bread and milk; the closest shop was in Marulan, 15 kilometres away. Bungonia’s quiet rhythm included a weekly sew-in of the Patchwork and Quilters Group at the village hall, a biweekly meeting of the Country Women’s Association and the Progress Association’s powwow. The intruders on the streets of Bungonia on Sunday 11 May knew they would stand out, but Detective Sergeant Dennis Bray thought it would be foolish for his officers to pass themselves off as adventure seekers or bushwalkers.
At first, the locals thought the car in Oallen Ford Road had broken down. But Raymond Dole had seen a second vehicle near St Michael’s Church and a sports car parked below the Anglican Church at the other end of Bungonia. He dubbed the three drivers ‘Huey, Dewey and Louie’. Residents noticed four other unmarked cars spread out on the arterial roads north to Marulan and west to Goulburn.
By late Sunday afternoon, Lorraine Brooks had had enough. The plain-clothes officer from the State Technical Intelligence Branch sitting in the car on Oallen Ford Road watched with resignation as she approached him. Lorraine was pleasant enough, though a little exasperated, but she listened as Senior Constable Malcolm Smith delivered a story concocted by Chief Superintendent Rod Harvey.
Smith told Lorraine he was investigating a drug gang trucking supplies through Bungonia and beyond. ‘Please keep this to yourself Madam,’ Smith told her and he knew she wouldn’t. Smith watched now as she went from house to house, her eyes alive with his tale and he smiled—it had gone perfectly to plan. As she retold the yarn, she might have added something about the possibility of Bungonians caught in a shoot-out; with every account, the story grew and by sundown the town was sure Bungonia would erupt, at some point, in a fiery high noon. Smith was relieved. As Bray had warned, the risk of the locals revealing the officers’ true purpose was great and could impact on the safety of Mrs Whelan, who was possibly a prisoner of Bruce Burrell, although in time, the residents ditched the drug gang story as ‘bulldust’.
So far there had been no sign of Burrell in the village, but on the morning of 12 May, a grey Jaguar turned onto Inverary Road, cut through the ghost gums and stringy-barks and neat rows of pine plantation and drove to Bungonia. Just after 10 a.m. the driver came into the view of the officer parked near the Catholic church. When the officer radioed through to Smith, he had already spotted Burrell at
Bungonia had been a township in steady decline since the middle of the nineteenth century, and while the Oallen Ford and the Lookdown roads featured grand buildings, they all dated from one brief glory period in the town’s history. A solid future seemed destined for Bungonia in the 1840s, when stonemason Patrick Kelly added what would become the Old Parsonage to the Hotel Victoria. In 1847, Kelly built St Michael’s Catholic Church, now one of the oldest standing Catholic churches in Australia. Settled by convicts and ticket-of-leave men, Bungonia once boasted butchers, shopkeepers, a schoolteacher, two pastors and a publican, as well as bushrangers who waited on the town’s outskirts and held up coach loads of visitors. Unfortunately the colony’s surveyor-general, Major Thomas Mitchell, cut short Bungonia’s prospects of becoming a major centre by relocating the main road west through Goulburn.
These days in Bungonia, there was nowhere even to buy bread and milk; the closest shop was in Marulan, 15 kilometres away. Bungonia’s quiet rhythm included a weekly sew-in of the Patchwork and Quilters Group at the village hall, a biweekly meeting of the Country Women’s Association and the Progress Association’s powwow. The intruders on the streets of Bungonia on Sunday 11 May knew they would stand out, but Detective Sergeant Dennis Bray thought it would be foolish for his officers to pass themselves off as adventure seekers or bushwalkers.
At first, the locals thought the car in Oallen Ford Road had broken down. But Raymond Dole had seen a second vehicle near St Michael’s Church and a sports car parked below the Anglican Church at the other end of Bungonia. He dubbed the three drivers ‘Huey, Dewey and Louie’. Residents noticed four other unmarked cars spread out on the arterial roads north to Marulan and west to Goulburn.
By late Sunday afternoon, Lorraine Brooks had had enough. The plain-clothes officer from the State Technical Intelligence Branch sitting in the car on Oallen Ford Road watched with resignation as she approached him. Lorraine was pleasant enough, though a little exasperated, but she listened as Senior Constable Malcolm Smith delivered a story concocted by Chief Superintendent Rod Harvey.
Smith told Lorraine he was investigating a drug gang trucking supplies through Bungonia and beyond. ‘Please keep this to yourself Madam,’ Smith told her and he knew she wouldn’t. Smith watched now as she went from house to house, her eyes alive with his tale and he smiled—it had gone perfectly to plan. As she retold the yarn, she might have added something about the possibility of Bungonians caught in a shoot-out; with every account, the story grew and by sundown the town was sure Bungonia would erupt, at some point, in a fiery high noon. Smith was relieved. As Bray had warned, the risk of the locals revealing the officers’ true purpose was great and could impact on the safety of Mrs Whelan, who was possibly a prisoner of Bruce Burrell, although in time, the residents ditched the drug gang story as ‘bulldust’.
So far there had been no sign of Burrell in the village, but on the morning of 12 May, a grey Jaguar turned onto Inverary Road, cut through the ghost gums and stringy-barks and neat rows of pine plantation and drove to Bungonia. Just after 10 a.m. the driver came into the view of the officer parked near the Catholic church. When the officer radioed through to Smith, he had already spotted Burrell at
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