Customer Reviews

The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island

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Chloe Hooper has written a hauntingly beautful, but tragically true drama of brutality and death on Palm Island. It all began On a hot Friday in November 2004. A fit Cameron Doomadgee had been drinking an awful mixture of beer, plonk and methylated spirits. He was walking barefoot with some dogs near where Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley, and an aboriginal Police Liaison Officer were patrolling in a van. According to Sergeant Hurley, Cameron Doomadgee made an offensive remark which resulted in Doomadgee's arrest. Thus began the dramatic events that led to the tragic and unnecessary death of Cameron Doomadgee, so eloquently described by Chloe Hooper, who immersed herself in the lives of everyone involved: the extended family of Cameron Doomadgee, their spirit and strengths despite feelings of injustice and resentment, the wide incidence of rape and sexual abuse, the emptines of the indigenous people's lives on Palm Island, and the terible effects of alcohol and drugs. The police, on the other hand, hated by the locals, lived in isolation behind barricades, and meted out white man's justice.

The conflicting and contradictory accounts of what actually happened between Sergeant Hurley and Cameron Doomadgee outside the concrete police cell, which led to the latter's tragic and unecessary death, are described in horrifyiing but fascinating detail - first the Coroner's Inquest, the riots, the controversial trials of The Tall Man, suspect police evidence, all leading to Hurley's eventual and controversial acquittal.The Learning Process: Some Creative Impressions