Speaker 1: It is amazing how people hit by a car are
Speaker 1: thrown in the air like a crash test dummy. They
Speaker 1: go up in the air in a somersault and they
Speaker 1: come down in a very ugly, untidy heap. The unknown
Speaker 1: driver jumped out of the car and took a look
Speaker 1: at his victim, and it seems, and this is where
Speaker 1: we're getting into speculation, it seems made a terrible decision.
Speaker 1: I'm Andrew Rules, Life and Crimes. A story that's always
Speaker 1: fascinated me, although I have not written about it myself
Speaker 1: until this month, is the story of the killing of
Speaker 1: Huey Wilson just outside Kolak, back in nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 1: Now that effectively is a lifetime ago. It happened at
Speaker 1: the very beginning of when I started work, which is
Speaker 1: a long time ago. Huey Wilson was a World War
Speaker 1: II veteran of fifty seven years old in that year,
Speaker 1: which is interesting in itself because there are no World
Speaker 1: War Two veterans left. Essentially, they're all north of one
Speaker 1: hundred and I don't know that there's any of them alive.
Speaker 1: But he back in the seventies was one of thousands
Speaker 1: of World War Two veterans who were still around, and
Speaker 1: Huey was a local boy from Kolak. He was one
Speaker 1: of a big family. I think he was one of
Speaker 1: ten kids, something like that, big family, and he joined
Speaker 1: up to go to World War Two. I think he
Speaker 1: might have been engaged to a local girl. But anyway,
Speaker 1: when he got back from war service, life had sort
Speaker 1: of gone past him. I think his fionce or his
Speaker 1: girlfriend had married someone else, and he basically just settled
Speaker 1: down into a very quiet life and he was sort
Speaker 1: of sidelined in a way. In a way that happened
Speaker 1: to some veterans, guys that have been the army, They
Speaker 1: were affected by and they never really resumed civilian life
Speaker 1: with any great enthusiasm or success. And here he was
Speaker 1: not particularly eccentric. He wasn't a hermit. Really, he wasn't
Speaker 1: a strange derelict. He was just a local guy that
Speaker 1: people knew and quite liked. Quite a pleasant man, quite
Speaker 1: a kind man. Nobody said a word against him. He
Speaker 1: wasn't dishonest. He didn't light fires or steel washing off
Speaker 1: the line or any of that stuff. But what he
Speaker 1: did do just to the south of Kolak, in the
Speaker 1: foothills of the otways is and was a lot of bush,
Speaker 1: thick bush, and what he did was set up camp
Speaker 1: in that bush, and basically he became a stationary swagman.
Speaker 1: He was a swagman who did not walk the highways
Speaker 1: and byways traveling from Downtotown. What he would do was
Speaker 1: camp at one spot where he had a bit of
Speaker 1: a tent set up with Heshan and all the rest
Speaker 1: of them, a camp stretcher and a little fire to
Speaker 1: cook stuff and make a cup of tea. And he
Speaker 1: would walk into Kolak a few kilometers decent walk might
Speaker 1: have been five K, six K, seven k's whatever, And
Speaker 1: he would carry a sugar bag of sugar bags, a
Speaker 1: light Hessian bag and he'd take that with him and
Speaker 1: he'd buys some supplies, maybe couple of times a week.
Speaker 1: This is the road. Incidentally, he would walk down the
Speaker 1: road to Kolak, the same road where Cliffy Young back
Speaker 1: in the day used to run. He would run to
Speaker 1: Kolak from Beach Forest, which is a hell of a
Speaker 1: long way, and he would run into Kolak and then
Speaker 1: run back out to Beach Forest. And I presume that
Speaker 1: sometimes a young cliff Young would trot past a middle
Speaker 1: aged Huey Wilson, which is just one of those funny
Speaker 1: little quirks of history. So Huey minded his own business.
Speaker 1: He lived along there for decades, basically three decades, I guess.
Speaker 1: If you go from nineteen forty six to nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: that's thirty years, and nearly all of that time he
Speaker 1: was camped up in the bush, well known around the town.
Speaker 1: People didn't mind him, they knew who he was, He
Speaker 1: talked to people. There are photographs of him at Christmas
Speaker 1: time having a drink with his family, his sister or
Speaker 1: his brother in law, of that sort of stuff. Had
Speaker 1: quite a few relatives around the place. As I say,
Speaker 1: he wasn't regarded as particularly strange and certainly never a problem,
Speaker 1: not menacing or anything like that, so no one had
Speaker 1: a reason to hurt him. It's the point we're making now.
Speaker 1: On this night, a Saturday evening, September the eleventh, nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six, it would seem that Hugh he's been down
Speaker 1: to town and he's walking back up to the bush,
Speaker 1: I think the district on that edge of like he's
Speaker 1: called Brungarook, and it's up past the golf club, and
Speaker 1: the racecourse and up into the hills where these days
Speaker 1: there's a few lifestyle blocks and farm lots and that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. But back in the seventies pretty well
Speaker 1: farming country by and large, and the holdings were probably
Speaker 1: bigger then and fewer people. Are much less traffic and
Speaker 1: all that. So about seven o'clock on this evening, and
Speaker 1: that's about an hour after sunset, so if there's any
Speaker 1: sort of residual evening light, it's getting pretty dark by
Speaker 1: the time this happened. It probably happened around seven pm
Speaker 1: or a bit later that evening. He's walking up through
Speaker 1: Burungaruk and he's at a stretch of road just before
Speaker 1: it hits the bush, before the Bitchumin road runs into
Speaker 1: the bush, and his paddocks on one side, on the
Speaker 1: west side and on the east side on his left
Speaker 1: as he walks uphill is the old brickworks, the old
Speaker 1: Coolak brickworks, and I think at that stage it was
Speaker 1: still operating. I think, not that it matters. And he's
Speaker 1: trudging up the road with his sugar bag, with his dusty, old, dirty,
Speaker 1: old coat that used to wear and all the rest
Speaker 1: of it. And suddenly and we're we'reconstructing what happened here,
Speaker 1: but we know pretty well what happened. A car speeds
Speaker 1: up behind him. Now I don't know if it's headlights
Speaker 1: were on or not, but you can guarantee it was
Speaker 1: going pretty fast because they had it been going slower,
Speaker 1: the driver would have had time to react and dodge him.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, it's going fast, it hit Huie Huie.
Speaker 1: And I know this because I've been close to someone
Speaker 1: who was hit by a car once, and it is
Speaker 1: amazing how people hit by a car are thrown in
Speaker 1: the air like a crashed desk dummy. They go up
Speaker 1: in the air and they somersault and they come down
Speaker 1: in a very ugly, untidy heap, and they do not
Speaker 1: fall softly, and they did not fall in a straight line.
Speaker 1: They are smashed up like a rag doll, and their
Speaker 1: arms and legs are everywhere, which is a relevant point
Speaker 1: to this story. It would appear that the unknown driver
Speaker 1: of this white Valiant police car, let's say it, jumped
Speaker 1: out of the car and took a look at his victim.
Speaker 1: And it seems, and this is where we're getting into speculation,
Speaker 1: it seems made a terrible decision. It would appear that
Speaker 1: the driver of this police car probably wasn't supposed to
Speaker 1: be driving it that night. It would appear that the
Speaker 1: driver of this police car might not have wanted anybody
Speaker 1: to know that he was driving in that area at
Speaker 1: that time. He may not have been supposed to be there.
Speaker 1: And the other concern here is he be facing a
Speaker 1: culpable driving charge, probably particularly if it had any drinks
Speaker 1: earlier in that day and in the nineteen seventies on
Speaker 1: Saturdays and Saturday nights. I'm here to say that most
Speaker 1: rural males, particularly police, probably had had a drink or
Speaker 1: three or five on a Saturday afternoon in some setting
Speaker 1: or another, if not at the football, then at a barbecue,
Speaker 1: or at the pub, or watching the races at the pub,
Speaker 1: whatever it might be. So these every chance that this
Speaker 1: driver also had that incentive not to be caught because
Speaker 1: they probably had a drink which would play against them
Speaker 1: if they went to court. So, whatever the reasons were,
Speaker 1: this driver did not call in on the police radio
Speaker 1: to say of struck a pedestrian, did not call for
Speaker 1: an ambulance, did not go for help, did not pick
Speaker 1: up the stricken man and drag him into the car,
Speaker 1: and drive down to the hospital to try and save
Speaker 1: his life. At the very best he left him. But
Speaker 1: the rumors and whispers suggests that this actually got out
Speaker 1: and decided to do something that he and many others
Speaker 1: have done with injured kangaroos or injured wombats over the years.
Speaker 1: In bush country. When you injure a kangaroo, beyond all
Speaker 1: help you dispatch them, you kill them, essentially and usually
Speaker 1: by hitting them in the head with a heavy object
Speaker 1: which people used to carry in their cars. And the
Speaker 1: suspicion is that poor Huey Wilson was struck in the
Speaker 1: head with a heavy tool of some sort, and one
Speaker 1: with a bit of an edge on it, because it
Speaker 1: left a very sharp wound in the head, which people,
Speaker 1: including a coroner, thought was not consistent with being struck
Speaker 1: by a car. The car had hit him at a
Speaker 1: certain level below the torso and thrown him in the
Speaker 1: air and so on, but it looked as if his
Speaker 1: head had been deliberately struck to finish him off. That
Speaker 1: is that the heart of this most terrible story. The
Speaker 1: suspicion is that a driver had got out and killed
Speaker 1: this middle aged man rather than help save him. Because
Speaker 1: the driver in this case, wanted to save their own neck.
Speaker 1: They had other problems and they wanted to avoid it,
Speaker 1: and they made this terrible decision in a matter of seconds. Now,
Speaker 1: how do we know about this, Well, Hughey Wilson is
Speaker 1: found early next morning, I think at dawn, about six o'clock,
Speaker 1: six thirty. I think a lady's driving down from Baron
Speaker 1: Garrook and she sees the body lying beside the road.
Speaker 1: She goes down or calls whatever, She gets to a
Speaker 1: phone or she drives to the police and Colac police
Speaker 1: turn up. Now the policeman on duty, he is a
Speaker 1: fellow called Peter Gonon and Peter Gournon at this stage
Speaker 1: was a twenty three year old constable. From eleven pm
Speaker 1: until seven am. He was the watchhouse keeper who was
Speaker 1: basically the only go on duty apart from another placeman
Speaker 1: called Gary Thayer who was out driving the divvy van
Speaker 1: patrolling in the divvy van. Gunham was on duty. Goonan
Speaker 1: is sent or called or whatever, goes up, jumps in
Speaker 1: the car, drives up to Baron Grook, takes five minutes
Speaker 1: and he inspects the body of Huey Wilson and what
Speaker 1: he found was interesting in view of what was later
Speaker 1: thought about this. He found it a little disconcerting. He thought,
Speaker 1: what's wrong with this scene? What's wrong with what's happened here?
Speaker 1: If this bloke's when hit by a car, why is
Speaker 1: he laying out so straight and neat and true, sort
Speaker 1: of beside the road in a straight line, I think,
Speaker 1: with his arms beside his body and his feet together.
Speaker 1: And he was laid out as if he'd been laid
Speaker 1: out ready to put in a coffin. And even though
Speaker 1: he was only a young copper, he realized that if
Speaker 1: you've been struck by a car and left the way
Speaker 1: you fell, you don't look like that. You don't fall dead,
Speaker 1: straight and neat and rick and mortis had already started
Speaker 1: to set in. And this Huey Wilson, his body had
Speaker 1: stiffened sufficiently straight that he could fit into a coffin.
Speaker 1: And this, I think stuck in Peter Gounon's mind. He thought,
Speaker 1: this isn't right. There's something wrong. He's been arranged. That
Speaker 1: body's been arranged. Now was it arranged here where he fell?
Speaker 1: Or has he been taken away and then brought back?
Speaker 1: Because if he was taken away, maybe somebody thought they
Speaker 1: were going to bury him or get rid of him,
Speaker 1: and then they've thought about it perhaps and brought him
Speaker 1: back and dump him beside the road. Again, these are
Speaker 1: all valid speculations in the case of Peter Godon. Now
Speaker 1: Peter Gournon, as a said, he was only twenty three.
Speaker 1: He is quite concerned about this, the irregularities about this matter,
Speaker 1: and he made his concerns felt. But he's only young.
Speaker 1: He's very junior at the station, and he soon realizes
Speaker 1: that there's a bit of pushback about this. Pettigoon is
Speaker 1: not happy about that, and some other people are not
Speaker 1: happy either, because the rumor goes around Kalak that strange
Speaker 1: things happened on that Saturday night. Later that night, a
Speaker 1: man working at the local cream factory and I think
Speaker 1: it's a cream factory and a nice creamery actually now
Speaker 1: owned by Buller Dairy Foods. I think he was a
Speaker 1: security guard or similar, and he saw a tow truck
Speaker 1: come down the main street which is the Princess Highway
Speaker 1: with what he thought was a white police car on
Speaker 1: the back and disappear into the big roller door entry
Speaker 1: into a local panel shop. The panel shop is called
Speaker 1: lane Way Panels. Was called and it had the unique
Speaker 1: advantage for Colak Police of having a very close relationship
Speaker 1: with them. In fact, the locals, being local and funny guys,
Speaker 1: they called lane Way Panels Coolak West Police Station because
Speaker 1: so many of the coppers at Kolak would go down
Speaker 1: to Laneway Panels where they would nighttime might have a drink.
Speaker 1: They would perhaps or night shift meet there for coffee
Speaker 1: or beer and have something to eat, and many of
Speaker 1: them were very close to the proprietor or proprietors of
Speaker 1: lane Way Panels because of course Kolak is a highway
Speaker 1: town on the Princess Highway and in those days in
Speaker 1: the seventies, it was peak road crash time in Australia.
Speaker 1: It's when people were crashing cars all the time. And
Speaker 1: if you were a copper out on the highways, you know,
Speaker 1: several times in a week probably there'd be some sort
Speaker 1: of car crash and if you were friendly with the
Speaker 1: local panel Better guy or one of them, if they
Speaker 1: were competitive, you would tip off their tow truck and
Speaker 1: that tow truck would come out, get the job, take
Speaker 1: the car back into the panel shop, and of course
Speaker 1: that panel Better would get the big insurance job and
Speaker 1: make money by repairing the car. And this symbiotic relationship
Speaker 1: between coppers and panel betters existed. I'm here to say
Speaker 1: in every major regional town, probably in Australia, anywhere big
Speaker 1: enough to have a dominant Panel Better would have a
Speaker 1: relationship with the local police. They'd either be very friendly
Speaker 1: with them or they'd be not friendly with them because
Speaker 1: another Panel Better was friendly with them. So in Kolak
Speaker 1: there are actually two Panel Better shops and the other
Speaker 1: one were on the outer with the police because they
Speaker 1: weren't slinging the police cash or beer or whatever it
Speaker 1: was that the police were getting. Of course, this symbiotic relationship,
Speaker 1: you know, it's become social. You know. They were friendly,
Speaker 1: literally friendly with each other. They might have been involved
Speaker 1: in footy or cricket teams with each other, the Panel
Speaker 1: Better guys and the police and some of the police
Speaker 1: being handy blugs always out to make an extra dollar,
Speaker 1: as many of them did. They were young blugs buying houses.
Speaker 1: Some of them would actually do work there as casual workers.
Speaker 1: They'd help rub down cars and they would work on
Speaker 1: their own vehicles. If they had a scrape or a scratch,
Speaker 1: they'd work on their own cars and spray paint them whatever,
Speaker 1: and everybody got along very well. But of course the
Speaker 1: dark side of this could be if a policeman runs
Speaker 1: over a citizen in a police car that he wasn't
Speaker 1: supposed to be driving that night, then it might be
Speaker 1: taken to the panel shop and they will work on
Speaker 1: it all night, and they will get it fixed up
Speaker 1: enough to go back to the police station, and he
Speaker 1: put in the police garage or the police car yard,
Speaker 1: and the keys from that valiant sedan would be then
Speaker 1: put back on the key rack or key cabinet inside
Speaker 1: the police station as if nothing had ever happened, Please
Speaker 1: move on. That is the local rumor in a nutshell.
Speaker 1: But Peter Gunnon was a bit different. Peter Gunan was
Speaker 1: a local boy. He wasn't a copper from somewhere else.
Speaker 1: He was from a solid dairy farming family just outside
Speaker 1: the town. His wife was Heather, was also from another
Speaker 1: dairy farming place just outside town. They were really strong
Speaker 1: local family. They were really strong local families, both of them,
Speaker 1: and they had the sort of values that come with that.
Speaker 1: They believed in justice and doing the right thing, and
Speaker 1: they would have grown up there knowing Wilson's, various Wilson
Speaker 1: family members, and young Peter Gurnon thought it's stank that
Speaker 1: this might have been what happened. And of course he
Speaker 1: heard rumors and he would hear whispers both in and
Speaker 1: outside the police station. He might have contributed to some
Speaker 1: of them rumors and whispers. But the feeling was that
Speaker 1: early on that evening of September the eleventh, the Saturday night,
Speaker 1: that a particular policeman who was off duty at the time,
Speaker 1: it is alleged, had come in because he wanted to
Speaker 1: use a car to do something. Maybe he was supposed
Speaker 1: to be walking the dog, or maybe he was supposed
Speaker 1: to be playing golf or whatever. But the reality is
Speaker 1: that he came into the police station and he took
Speaker 1: the keys to the white ves in sedan which wasn't
Speaker 1: being used then, and he jumped in it and went
Speaker 1: off to do whatever it was he wanted to do.
Speaker 1: Now it's open to speculation what that would be, but
Speaker 1: there are those who would suggest, well, he was visiting
Speaker 1: a woman other than his wife or something like that,
Speaker 1: and that would account for a few things. A driving
Speaker 1: fast because he was in a hurry one way or
Speaker 1: the other to go there or to come back be
Speaker 1: it would account for him not wanting to be caught
Speaker 1: at the scene of an accident, at the wrong place,
Speaker 1: at the wrong time, in the wrong car. It would
Speaker 1: give him motive to do what it is alleged happened
Speaker 1: to Huey Wilson, that is that he was not only
Speaker 1: run over but then killed. So this dreadful rumor, it's
Speaker 1: like something out of the Deep South in America, has
Speaker 1: hungover that town of Kolak and that whole district for decades,
Speaker 1: and it's very well known down there, and people to
Speaker 1: this day a very quiet about it. I know this
Speaker 1: because I actually went down there at least a month ago,
Speaker 1: it might be five weeks, and it was a very
Speaker 1: hot day, and I went up to the scene of
Speaker 1: the incident, and I was able to reconstruct exactly where
Speaker 1: the body was because I'd seen the old photos with
Speaker 1: Peter Goo and the policeman in them pointing at the ground,
Speaker 1: and I could line up the road signs. Still to
Speaker 1: this day, you can line up certain road signs and
Speaker 1: fences and work it out where it happened. And I
Speaker 1: went down into the town and I went around to
Speaker 1: visit a woman who it is said had driven past
Speaker 1: that night and seen momentarily seen a white police car
Speaker 1: white police sedan at that spot. Her statement, I'm told
Speaker 1: by a former policeman who has come to me about this.
Speaker 1: He said that her statement was altered. They took out
Speaker 1: the paragraph that referred to her seeing that car at
Speaker 1: the scene. Note for that lady at her most excellent
Speaker 1: and very neat tidy house in the local Housing Commission area.
Speaker 1: She would win an award for a tidy house. I
Speaker 1: think she looked highly organized the person I would think,
Speaker 1: but she wasn't answering her door that day. I think
Speaker 1: she was out somewhere and I went back several times
Speaker 1: and I left a note, but she didn't call me back,
Speaker 1: and obviously doesn't want anything to do with this because
Speaker 1: it has been for her a dark shadow. I found
Speaker 1: other people who didn't want to talk much about it,
Speaker 1: and there were other people who didn't want to be found.
Speaker 1: And it's intriguing that at this distance, after all these years,
Speaker 1: that so many people are still so nervous of saying
Speaker 1: anything about it. This includes the former policeman who's talked
Speaker 1: to me about it, a policeman who went and worked
Speaker 1: there at coolak around this time. He always thought it
Speaker 1: was very smelly, very wrong, and even now what is
Speaker 1: it forty eight years later when I met him to
Speaker 1: talk about it, he was very anxious that we'd not
Speaker 1: be anywhere visible to anybody who might be watching us,
Speaker 1: which I thought was interesting that he still worried about
Speaker 1: what he sees as the police brotherhood causing trouble for
Speaker 1: the likes of him. When I set out to investigate
Speaker 1: this story back early in the new year, I thought
Speaker 1: I must track down Peter goon Peter Goonan, the honest copper,
Speaker 1: Peter Gounon, the copper who over the years at least
Speaker 1: twice has sought out help from the media. He was
Speaker 1: the subject of an Australian story on the ABC. He
Speaker 1: also made a series of allegations which were the basis
Speaker 1: I think of our fresh inquest to Huey Wilson's death
Speaker 1: back in the early two thousands. One way and another,
Speaker 1: there's been at least two sets of inquiries into this. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: the police internal investigations units of more recent years. By
Speaker 1: that I mean in the early two thousands were quite
Speaker 1: concerned about this and had a real red hot go
Speaker 1: at it. Trying to get people to tell them the
Speaker 1: truth about what might have happened. And those internal investigators,
Speaker 1: I think they had a pretty genuine go at it,
Speaker 1: and they've got a real good idea who thereafter. They
Speaker 1: believe that it was a particular officer who was driving
Speaker 1: the car that night. Lame May Panels, of course, are
Speaker 1: sort of innocent bystanders in this business in a sense.
Speaker 1: All they've done is help somebody fix a car up.
Speaker 1: But they didn't actually go looking for people to be
Speaker 1: run over, So they've been dragged into it through their
Speaker 1: association with the police. In this story, the bad guy
Speaker 1: is a particular placement. It would appear that this car,
Speaker 1: the white car, was fixed that night and was taken
Speaker 1: back to the police station, as we know when an
Speaker 1: inquest was finally called or redone a second in quest.
Speaker 1: Perhaps several people gave sworn evidence, and most of them
Speaker 1: said they didn't know anything about it. They really didn't know.
Speaker 1: They can't remember a car being repaired, they can't remember anything.
Speaker 1: It's all rumors and nonsense, etc. But one Panel Better,
Speaker 1: former panel Better, gave evidence that he was called in
Speaker 1: to work on that Saturday night and that he worked
Speaker 1: on a white Valiant police car. I think the coroner
Speaker 1: was able to deduce that Hughey Wilson was run over
Speaker 1: and killed by persons unknown, but that some of the
Speaker 1: injuries suffered by that deceased were not consistent with being
Speaker 1: run over only. It seemed to me, after I'd been
Speaker 1: to Kolak back in the New year, early in the
Speaker 1: new year a few weeks ago, that I should track
Speaker 1: down Peter Goonon and I knew he was in Queensland.
Speaker 1: In fact, I knew he had been last known around
Speaker 1: Harvey Bay, and I looked up a business he had
Speaker 1: up there, a caravan storage business. I rang it and
Speaker 1: they said, oh, he hasn't been at this place for
Speaker 1: twelve years or something like that. He's retired somewhere, and
Speaker 1: he was very hard to track and I thought, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I'll try and find him. I've got relatives at Harvey Bay.
Speaker 1: I'll try and track him down. I rang the relatives
Speaker 1: and they couldn't find him easily at least. And then
Speaker 1: just before I sat down to write this story, and
Speaker 1: before I sat down to make this podcast, I googled
Speaker 1: up his name just to see if there'd been any change,
Speaker 1: and there had been. While i'd been doing this story.
Speaker 1: Peter Goonan had died. He died in Harvey Bay in
Speaker 1: the first week of February, and this week I had
Speaker 1: the pleasure, i guess, or the honor, to talk to
Speaker 1: his widow, Heather, and she spoke to me very warmly
Speaker 1: and openly about her husband. She said that he was
Speaker 1: a good and decent man. They had met when they're
Speaker 1: on the school bus of school kids, when they were teenagers.
Speaker 1: They got married young, they had two daughters. They lived
Speaker 1: a happy life in many ways. And yet the shadow
Speaker 1: of this thing had hung over Peter because he'd taken
Speaker 1: on the bad guys. He tried to tell the truth,
Speaker 1: He tried to expose the truth. He tried to get
Speaker 1: the system to do the right thing and investigate the
Speaker 1: internal affairs people to investigate and find out what really happened.
Speaker 1: And what he got for his troubles, By and large,
Speaker 1: apart from some pretty sympathe that media coverage and good
Speaker 1: on him for that, he got the cold shoulder from
Speaker 1: other police. He got sent to Coventry, He was the
Speaker 1: target of rumors and innuendos. He got shunned, he got ostracized.
Speaker 1: The classic stuff that happens when an outlier in the
Speaker 1: group stands apart from the group. This can happen a
Speaker 1: lot in groups like the police, and that is what
Speaker 1: happened to him. And his wife confirmed to me that
Speaker 1: Peter had left the police force in nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: only three years after the death of Hughie Wilson. So
Speaker 1: he's still a young man. He was only twenty six.
Speaker 1: And I said, what did you do? She said, well,
Speaker 1: we stayed around Kolak, that's where we came from. We
Speaker 1: had deep roots in the community and we started a business.
Speaker 1: We had quite a good business there. But after ten years,
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty nine, we decided to quit Kolak, quit
Speaker 1: Victoria and go to Queensland. And that is when that
Speaker 1: couple and their little girls went to Queensland and they
Speaker 1: started other businesses up there. And Peter Gounon never really
Speaker 1: let it go. He pursued it at least twice. He
Speaker 1: caused media to reinvestigate it, he caused the police at
Speaker 1: some level to reinvestigate it. But the result to date
Speaker 1: has been zilch Huey Wilson an Australian citizen, a brother,
Speaker 1: a son who went to war in the nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: came back, lived a strange and lonely life, but never
Speaker 1: hurt anyone, and he was run down like a dog
Speaker 1: or a kangaroo, and somebody got away with that, and
Speaker 1: it always angered Peter Gournon that that had happened. And
Speaker 1: Peter Gunon died relatively young. He died fairly, suddenly, unexpectedly,
Speaker 1: at the age of seventy one, and his wife didn't
Speaker 1: quite say so, but she implied that the stress and
Speaker 1: strain of the whole Huey Wilson saga had been a
Speaker 1: dark shadow on her husband's life, and in fact, in
Speaker 1: the death notice that she put in her local paper
Speaker 1: in Harvey Bay, she finished her little death notice with
Speaker 1: an epigram which comes from a song, and the line
Speaker 1: is this because it's a bittersweet symphony, that's life, and
Speaker 1: that is from a modern hymn. Some people call it.
Speaker 1: That is the life that Peter Goonon led, because he
Speaker 1: had the nerve and the guts to try and do
Speaker 1: the right thing.
Speaker 2: An editor's note in in twenty twelve, a Victorian coroner
Speaker 2: found there was no evidence to suggest police were responsible
Speaker 2: for Huey Wilson's death. The inquest heard a police car
Speaker 2: had been repaired around the time Wilson died, but police
Speaker 2: were cleared of any involvement as the coroner found the
Speaker 2: damage to the car was not consistent
Speaker 1: With Wilson's injuries.