I've sent you a couple of emails tonight so I thought I better post here before you go off again LOL He he he - who's laughing - you must be able to read my thoughts now - becoming the right psychic you are!.
Just found this interesting article on the net from the volunteer fire brigade near Badgingarra re those fires that occurred at the Marchagee Track Dec 2009 and Jan 2010. Have a read through - they've also got some good google earth maps detailing where fires were. They just happen to be in the same places that some of the concentrated searching was done when Hayley disappeared! http://www.ghvbfb.org.au/Fire%20Activit ... 9Dec09.pdf. The Marchagee Track can be accessed via Coalara Road - now that's interesting too isn't it!
Interesting info there indeed! Read the link.
Between Christmas & New Year in a wheat growing area. Fire started in a paddock - to me this sounds like a harvesting fire - harvest happens around that time, usually a little earlier up that way but I know wheat farmers who still are harvesting around Christmas New Year. A belt sips and gets hot, melts and ignites, a bearing gets dry and seizes and gets to ignition temp.
No one but no one lights a fire deliberately in such an area at that time - its when they like to get on the booze and celebrate - have a break many try to finish harvest the day before Christmas so they can party hard, thru the festive season - some don't quite make it so go hard straight after Christmas to finish before new year, cut corners on maintenance and harvest fires happen.
They don't want fire- in the paddocks because the stubble contains a lot of dropped grain and sugars / protein in the straw at that time of year - that sheep graze on to put on good condition.
It's a serious income loss any fire to stubble's, however - say about march - may after much leaching by the sun - having been grazed and rained on a couple times, all the grains eaten, the sugars and protein in the stalks are all leached and gone, and some farmers used too then burn their stubble's prior to the onset of autumn rains, to put potash back into the soil and make it easier to rip and and sow the next years crop. These days of low till stubble retention burnings just about gone outta fashion altogether.
IF someone were to want to light a fire, to hide evidence, as you suggest - it would be more cost effective to do so in the adjacent reserve than in a paddock - from a simple "insurance perspective" the property with the ignition sources insurance has to cop all the costs, so again if I'm wanting to be an arsonist and get rid of evidence - start the fire in a nature reserve not a farmers paddock (or my own paddock).
The very first time I went to Badgingarra maybe 12 months ago - whatever it was - I went to search the area Chris identified behind the water tank on the hill near town. What I didn't know was, that since the google earth pic was taken, the area had been burnt.
As I may have posted at the time, the fire far from 'removing evidence' - actually exposes it. That scrub isn't even waist high, more mid thigh at best the ground is white sand. The only thing that hides anything at ground level is the leaves on the scrub.
Burn the scrub and you have black sticks that were the main branches, silhouetted against the white beach sand ground.
Things like rabbit burrows - clearly visible from 200 yards away!
Any sort of a grave dug - would be instantly observable from great distance. Any human remains located above ground - again, would be instantly visible from some distance.
When the scrub has it's leaves - you could walk past 5 yards away and not see the rabbit burrows, disturbed ground or indeed any human remains above ground even.
A fire - far far from "removing evidence" would in fact, make that evidence much much more likely to be seen / found.
It's a good theory - but again experience on the ground there doesn't bear it out IMHO.
If we could just burn ALL the NParks there bare, in summer - then hover at say 50 feet above them in a chopper - you could search the entire area for Hayleys remains with a fine tooth comb in say 2 or 3 days tops.
What would take 1000's of volunteers and hundreds of days searching, could then be done with 2 or 3 people in only 3 days!
A big fire like that (which you risk with a summer wildfire) could find the remains, help link them to the offender & solve the case - thus jailing the culprits.
Knowing this would you as a culprit deliberately light such a fire?
I know I wouldn't!
It just doesn't add up is all.
Well not to me anyway...I've investigated arson professionally as a CALM firefighter for 8 years dealing with wildfires lit by arsonists.
to me it just doesn't hold water, but I understand and applaud your thought process all the same....
I don't want to discourage the thought process because it is possible - you might hit on something with this research method - it might hit the vital link / clue.
Example.
You mention a DOJ farm on Marchagee track.
That to me has real possibilities- is THAT something we could 'ask' one of the local JP's about?...whether low risk offenders do manual farm labor there?
Could one or more of them have stolen a vehicle for a joyride, - spotted & abducted Hayley and dumped her body, abandoned the car and walked back to the DOJ farm?
You see that works for me!
Why do I say that!
Well years ago again when working with CALM we had an aboriginal Elder employed by govt to work with troubled aboriginal youth, who all lived on a DOJ farm in our shire. He took them in a group in his vehicle down to a lake in our NP to do track restoration work etc, since it was a place of significance to his people and he wanted to get these teens in touch with their ancestry and history etc etc.
Far from achieving that - a few of them stole his vehicle while his back was turned and left him and the rest of his charges stranded in the NP, and went on a crime rampage around the district using his govt supplied new luxury car - while he was on foot - with no mobile phone communications in a national park!
It took him and the others a couple days to walk out of the NP and get "help" by phone, during which time the kids had an unfettered time using his car for smash n grab raids on liquor shops auto tellers and sporting shops (for guns) in the closest city. They shot up road signs all thru the district etc etc before the police got involved and put 2 & 2 together and caught them.
So - yes sometimes these DOJ farms - CAN be a center for so called low risk inmates - who aren't at all well supervised, and from time to time they DO in my experience anyway, run amok and get up to the very hi-jinks that landed them in jail in the first place.
I'd like to know more about this abandoned car - the location it was found and the area searched by the volunteers.
You would think the police would know who's car it was, that was abandoned and why, and the fact they invested so much effort there tends to make one wonder what they knew at the time that caused them to do this.
This is something we need to know more about i think.
I am guessing one could well invest some time searching there, that might not be wasted effort.
I also noted to you in one of my emails, near the Marchagee Track is a place named Pinjarrega Nature Reserve. Could that place be of interest for guys that come from Pinjarra???? All salt lakes there and it's on the northern boundary of Watheroo Nat Park.
I don't know that the name of a reserve being similar to where the youths grew up would influence their attraction to use such an area as a hangout or for dumping remains albeit it is an interesting similarity in nomenclature.
I would think things more practical like - distance thus fuel cost, road condition (threat of getting bogged stuck and needing help to get out again), likelihood of being observed by others etc, might be bigger influences as to where youths go when they want to be away from the sight of grown ups.
As you say - they will have a spot - a "rooty hill' of badgingarra...where youths go or on a date "to watch the submarine races" as it were. ;)
We are thinking about the refuse site...not really a great choice because - anyone might show up at any time of day or night to dump rubbish, shoot wild feral cats or foxes at the tip at night, etc - hardly an amorous spot - garbage tends to smell and spoil the mood.
We do need to know - where this Badjingarra "rooty hill" spot might be - and again maybe that's something one of the local JP's could help us with?.
And I didn't know this and I'm wondering if M new that there is a Ministry of Justice farm located on the Marchagee Track. Now would that be a place where crims would be sent to rehabilitate hmmmmmmmmm.
I think we need to know about this and if so, just WHO was at the facility on that fateful date in 1999 and what their record shows.
All in all - very good work Fossil Please keep it up!.
Cheers
