July 2018. The Fierce Country is a collection of 19 stories about the 'Dead Heart', our attempts to conquer it, or at least live with it, understand it, and maybe love it.
From the publisher's blurb:
The open spaces and isolated places outside Australia’s cities have unsettled us from first European settlement to today – often with very good reason. In this nail-biting book combining the notorious and little-known, acclaimed author Stephen Orr has collected true stories that have shaped and continue to haunt the Australian psyche: mysteries, disappearances, mistreatment and murder. Fatal conflicts between an Aboriginal tracker and the police employers hunting his community. An itinerant conman picking up tips for the perfect murder from a famous novelist around a campfire on the Rabbit-Proof Fence. Together, these tales chart an undercurrent of shifting cultural tensions as Australians find, lose and question who we are.
A chat about the book with Phillip Adams on Late Night Live.
From the Guardian Books, a think-piece (and final chapter) here.
Some thoughts about true crime and crime fiction on the Booktopia Blog.
Read a previously published extract ('Lasseter's Reef') here.
Indaily extract (Chapter 16: Robert Bogucki) here.
Advertiser extract (Chapter 10: Nicholas Bannon) here.
Adelaide Review extract (Chapter 12: The Faraday School Kidnapping) here.
From the publisher's blurb:
The open spaces and isolated places outside Australia’s cities have unsettled us from first European settlement to today – often with very good reason. In this nail-biting book combining the notorious and little-known, acclaimed author Stephen Orr has collected true stories that have shaped and continue to haunt the Australian psyche: mysteries, disappearances, mistreatment and murder. Fatal conflicts between an Aboriginal tracker and the police employers hunting his community. An itinerant conman picking up tips for the perfect murder from a famous novelist around a campfire on the Rabbit-Proof Fence. Together, these tales chart an undercurrent of shifting cultural tensions as Australians find, lose and question who we are.
A chat about the book with Phillip Adams on Late Night Live.
From the Guardian Books, a think-piece (and final chapter) here.
Some thoughts about true crime and crime fiction on the Booktopia Blog.
Read a previously published extract ('Lasseter's Reef') here.
Indaily extract (Chapter 16: Robert Bogucki) here.
Advertiser extract (Chapter 10: Nicholas Bannon) here.
Adelaide Review extract (Chapter 12: The Faraday School Kidnapping) here.
minor literature[s]
March 2018. This piece in minor literature[s] concerns James Agee, and the writing of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, as well as some of the pitfalls (and costs) of turning fact into fiction.
Australian Book Review
The Adelaide and Melbourne Review
'The Art of Reading' (December 2012)
Have our bookshops become the Library of Babel? Gibberish, trivia and a thousand ways to cook mince? What is the fate of literature in the Age of Distraction?
'History' (April 2013)
What did our grandparents listen to on the nightly radio? What did they cook? How did their kids entertain themselves? What are Condy's crystals? And does anything old really matter any more?
'Being Glenn Gould' (August 2013)
From Bach to The Idea of North (the radio documentary). Gould knew all about isolation.
'Year of the Luddite' (February 2014)
Why are we so obsessed with technology? A lesson from history.
'Pennies for Eileen' (August 2014)
A strange little Eileen biopic from 1951 perfectly captures Australian values from a bygone era.
'Fifty-One' (January 2015)
Robin Boyd's take on the lot of the Australian creative artist seems truer now than ever.
'Adelaide, Summer: 2015' (February 2015)
James Agee's lyrical masterpiece settles on the long lawns and coiled hoses of Adelaide, and the memory of Barbara Hanrahan, a hundred years later.
'Young Beavis' (April 2015)
Beavis Beck lived for books. Worked in EW Cole's Melbourne bookshop. Spent his life spreading the word.
'The Bones' (September 2015)
Every day we become smarter, yet less willing to use our intelligence.
'Life Between graveyards and bookshops' (May 2016)
An essay on deja vu, and how it follows us, reminding us of where we might have been.
'Dismaland' (July 2016)
A feature about Banksy's Dismaland, and how it might be a point of reflection for many of us (especially those interested in starting nuclear waste dumps).
'Adelaide in 1936: A Year of Great Promise' (March 2017)
A hundred years old, and still hopeful. So what's changed?
'Could Adelaide ever be the Berlin of the South?' (April 2017)
What makes Berlin big, in its thinking, ambitions, creativity? What are the lessons for Australian cities?
'I'm an Anarchist - So What?' (June 2017)
What makes Max Harris a great poet, and what has he got to tell us about freedom of speech?
'On the trail of the Stasi' (November 2017)
Describes a visit to the former East Berlin Stasi headquarters and prison, and asks is this a vision of the past, or future?
'A Tale of a Lit City' (January 2018)
To be a UNESCO City of Literature, Adelaide would at least have to like books.
'The Last Man in Adelaide' (February 2018)
Explores the growing number of ways governments encourage compliance.
'City of Smells' (April 2018)
Smell, memory and the past.
'Why?' (November 2018)
Asks a lot of questions that probably don't have any answers. The point? Of anything?
'Sunny-boy and story-free' (December 2018)
A small tetrahedral ice-block saved this country (almost) from illiteracy.
Have our bookshops become the Library of Babel? Gibberish, trivia and a thousand ways to cook mince? What is the fate of literature in the Age of Distraction?
'History' (April 2013)
What did our grandparents listen to on the nightly radio? What did they cook? How did their kids entertain themselves? What are Condy's crystals? And does anything old really matter any more?
'Being Glenn Gould' (August 2013)
From Bach to The Idea of North (the radio documentary). Gould knew all about isolation.
'Year of the Luddite' (February 2014)
Why are we so obsessed with technology? A lesson from history.
'Pennies for Eileen' (August 2014)
A strange little Eileen biopic from 1951 perfectly captures Australian values from a bygone era.
'Fifty-One' (January 2015)
Robin Boyd's take on the lot of the Australian creative artist seems truer now than ever.
'Adelaide, Summer: 2015' (February 2015)
James Agee's lyrical masterpiece settles on the long lawns and coiled hoses of Adelaide, and the memory of Barbara Hanrahan, a hundred years later.
'Young Beavis' (April 2015)
Beavis Beck lived for books. Worked in EW Cole's Melbourne bookshop. Spent his life spreading the word.
'The Bones' (September 2015)
Every day we become smarter, yet less willing to use our intelligence.
'Life Between graveyards and bookshops' (May 2016)
An essay on deja vu, and how it follows us, reminding us of where we might have been.
'Dismaland' (July 2016)
A feature about Banksy's Dismaland, and how it might be a point of reflection for many of us (especially those interested in starting nuclear waste dumps).
'Adelaide in 1936: A Year of Great Promise' (March 2017)
A hundred years old, and still hopeful. So what's changed?
'Could Adelaide ever be the Berlin of the South?' (April 2017)
What makes Berlin big, in its thinking, ambitions, creativity? What are the lessons for Australian cities?
'I'm an Anarchist - So What?' (June 2017)
What makes Max Harris a great poet, and what has he got to tell us about freedom of speech?
'On the trail of the Stasi' (November 2017)
Describes a visit to the former East Berlin Stasi headquarters and prison, and asks is this a vision of the past, or future?
'A Tale of a Lit City' (January 2018)
To be a UNESCO City of Literature, Adelaide would at least have to like books.
'The Last Man in Adelaide' (February 2018)
Explores the growing number of ways governments encourage compliance.
'City of Smells' (April 2018)
Smell, memory and the past.
'Why?' (November 2018)
Asks a lot of questions that probably don't have any answers. The point? Of anything?
'Sunny-boy and story-free' (December 2018)
A small tetrahedral ice-block saved this country (almost) from illiteracy.
Inside History
'Point Puer Prison'
Apparently, at some point, locking children away in this remote prison seemed like a good idea.
'The Tea and Sugar'
A train that serviced the needs of fettlers and their families along the Nullarbor for decades.
'Lasseter's Reef'
The life and legend of Harold Lasseter and his elusive reef of gold.
Apparently, at some point, locking children away in this remote prison seemed like a good idea.
'The Tea and Sugar'
A train that serviced the needs of fettlers and their families along the Nullarbor for decades.
'Lasseter's Reef'
The life and legend of Harold Lasseter and his elusive reef of gold.
Good Reading
The Advertiser
'Great Expectations' (23 September 2010)
The story of South Australia's most talented politician, Kelly Vincent.
'Turn of Fate' (12 March 2011)
The tragedy of the loss of the Page family in the outback.
Boom Crash Opera - wrestling's back! (24 September 2011)
A night at Riot City Wrestling.
'Afterlife: the tour to die for' (10 December 2011)
Behind the scenes at Centennial Park cemetery.
'After Midnight' (25 February 2012)
When the sun sets and the offices are closed, a different cast of people come out on to the city's streets.
'Sachsenhausen' (May 2016)
A day at Hitler's first concentration camp is a sobering experience.
'What's Behind The Door?' (January 2018)
Scott McCarten spends his spare time scouring the state for images of the past.
'Communism in Australia: the revolution continues at Semaphore' (April 2018)
A portrait of Bob Briton, head of the Communist Party of Australia
'The seventy year long lunch' (June 2018)
My mum and her friends have been having lunch for seventy friend-filled years!
The story of South Australia's most talented politician, Kelly Vincent.
'Turn of Fate' (12 March 2011)
The tragedy of the loss of the Page family in the outback.
Boom Crash Opera - wrestling's back! (24 September 2011)
A night at Riot City Wrestling.
'Afterlife: the tour to die for' (10 December 2011)
Behind the scenes at Centennial Park cemetery.
'After Midnight' (25 February 2012)
When the sun sets and the offices are closed, a different cast of people come out on to the city's streets.
'Sachsenhausen' (May 2016)
A day at Hitler's first concentration camp is a sobering experience.
'What's Behind The Door?' (January 2018)
Scott McCarten spends his spare time scouring the state for images of the past.
'Communism in Australia: the revolution continues at Semaphore' (April 2018)
A portrait of Bob Briton, head of the Communist Party of Australia
'The seventy year long lunch' (June 2018)
My mum and her friends have been having lunch for seventy friend-filled years!
Indaily
Various articles here.
New Matilda
Various articles at www.newmatilda.com
The Cruel City
Allen and Unwin 2011
Sample chapter:
John Balaban and the Sunshine Café Murders
On the night of Saturday, April 11, 1953, a waitress named Verna Manie jumped from the window of her first floor sleep-out at the Sunshine Café on Gouger Street. She fell twenty feet and struck the pavement with such force that she knocked herself out. She was covered in blood. Her screams had woken neighbours who started calling the police.
This was the endgame in a story of violence and murder that stretched from Paris to Tom Playford’s cardigan-wearing, tea-sipping, six o’ clock swilling city in the south – a city where nothing dramatic ever happened, apparently. It was also the end of the line for South Australia’s first serial killer, John Balaban.
Verna was employed at the Sunshine Café as a waitress. She lived in a verandah room on the first floor. Late on that Saturday night she’d been woken by John Balaban, 29, the husband of her boss, the café’s owner, Thelma Balaban. John came into her room, drunk, determined to make trouble. He asked Verna to come and look at the dead bodies of his wife, 30-year-old Thelma Balaban, and her mother, 66-year-old Susan Ackland.
There’s no real way of knowing how Verna removed the well-built, drunk and violent Balaban from her sleep-out, but police later found the room, with its blood-smeared walls, littered with upturned furniture. Perhaps Verna was stronger, or more persuasive, than she thought; perhaps Balaban fell, and was unable to stand. Either way, it was Verna’s lucky night.
She locked herself in her room, crawled through her window and jumped. She was found soon after, still unconscious, by a passer-by.
Today, John Balaban is buried between the northern walls at the old Adelaide Gaol. He was hanged on the 26th of August, 1953, at 8 am in the morning – the 62nd person executed in South Australia. John Balaban lies beside a roll-call of South Australia’s worst criminals. After he was hanged, early on a Wednesday morning, his body was taken out, laid in a grave (marked only by initials on a wall), covered with lime and filled in. He was only a young man when he was executed, but he had managed to leave a trail of death and misery in his wake.
John Balaban possessed an untamed anger. As he was being led to the gallows he said to the chaplain, who was trying to comfort him, ‘Why don’t you shut up?’
Today he appears as some sort of celluloid gangster, complete with black eye, split lip and screwed up nose. A photograph taken before his death shows a man with a high forehead, tight, black curly hair, a small mouth and fine teeth. He had been described by friends as ‘likeable’, and perhaps he was. He had become stepfather to Thelma’s 6-year-old son, Phillip Cadd, when he married Thelma six months prior to the killings at the Sunshine Café. Thelma must have thought he was decent enough when she’d married him; a good enough stepfather for Phillip. But at the time she couldn’t have known what awaited her and her family.
The nightmare at the Sunshine Café began late on the night of April 11. Gouger Street in 1952 was a more sedate place than it is today. Instead of Thai restaurants and nightclubs, there were pubs and bakeries, off-street factories and a police training depot. John had been drinking for hours, perhaps in the back room of the Sunshine Café. There is no explanation for why or exactly when he started his killing spree. Perhaps it was triggered by an argument with Thelma, a rage that had been simmering since he’d moved into the café after his recent marriage. It may have been the result of an undiagnosed mental illness. Or maybe it was just a case of white-hot fury – unresolved anger that stretched back to a violent father or traumatised childhood.
In a 1992 Advertiser feature entitled ‘Bloodbath at the Sunshine Café’, Andrew Male explained that Balaban had ‘indulged in a spree of violence’ leading up to the killings. This included attacks along the River Torrens, Balaban punching a young girl in a lavatory as well as fracturing a man’s skull with an iron bar.
It’s hard to get a clear picture of how the killings unfolded. Two days after the murders the Canberra Times explained that Balaban’s family ‘were battered about the head while they slept in three rooms above the café’. Other reports at the time claim that Balaban had chased his family through the café before murdering them. All reports agree that Balaban assaulted and used a claw-hammer to kill his wife, mother-in-law and stepson by striking them across the forehead and face.
Neighbours were woken either by the family’s screams or by Verna Manie’s screams from her room soon after the murders. When the police arrived at the café they found Thelma dead on her bed and Susan and Phillip beaten, unconscious but alive in their rooms. Susan Ackland died soon after and Phillip died a few weeks later in hospital.
Balaban had fled the café. He was found hiding in an alleyway that ran off Gouger Street. It’s interesting to speculate why Balaban had (seemingly) waited to be found. Whether he knew he’d soon be captured anyway; if he’d had enough of living with himself, of betraying people; or perhaps he was thinking of flight but, in his confused mental state, hadn’t been able to work out how or where to go.
He was examined at what was then Parkside Mental Hospital by a Dr H.M. Birch. He didn’t deny the killings at the Sunshine Café but, in a twist that does reveal something about his mental state, he then confessed to the murder of Zora Kusic.
John Balaban, it seemed, had form. Within months, or perhaps weeks of his marriage to Thelma, he’d met 29-year-old Zora Kusic in a restaurant in Hindley Street. It was the 5th of December, 1952. He accompanied Zora to her home at Torrensville. Again, the details are sketchy, but at some point, it seems, John tore of her clothes, she resisted and he attacked her. He then slashed her with a knife across the throat at least seven times, almost decapitating her.
In another strange twist Balaban was arrested and charged with the murder of Zora Kusic soon after the discovery of her body but, after a five day hearing, was released due to a lack of evidence. Although the police must have known they were dealing with a murderer there was nothing they could do to lock him up. Several months later this knowledge would come back to haunt them, and the community. It’s funny to think that a footprint, hair or piece of fabric might have helped put Balaban away for the murder of Kusic, and that Thelma, Susan and Phillip might have survived Balaban’s rage.
For it was a physical rage; the nature of the killings prove this. Prior to his execution, sitting in his death cell, Balaban even attacked and tried to strangle a prison guard. Perhaps the guard had made the mistake of looking at him the wrong way, saying the wrong thing or laughing.
Nonetheless, Balaban was not some dumb thug. He was an industrial chemist who’d worked as a metallurgist. He’d come to Australia from Romania in 1951. He was escaping the experiences of wartime Europe, looking for a new start. He’d settled in Adelaide, met Thelma and less than a year later, married her.
Postwar Romania held little for the young. The Soviet Union stripped the country of rare resources, making and keeping it poor. There was a culture of arrest, abuse torture and execution (estimates range from the tens to hundreds of thousands). Nearby countries such as Czechoslovakia fared little better. It is interesting to note that several other Eastern Europeans were among Australia’s list of executed criminals in the early 1950s. Jaroslav Koci and Jan Novotny, Czech immigrants, killed Darwin taxi driver George Grantham in April 1952, and were both hanged six months later. Karol Tapci, another Czech immigrant, killed Norman Perfect in a fight in 1952 and was hanged in Fremantle Gaol three months later.
Had a culture of violence produced a generation of violent men? Or was it just a coincidence? Do we need to look at other factors such as the inherent racism many migrants would have encountered upon their arrival in Australia? Or the fact that life was still a struggle, and that there was a lot of ‘baggage’ they couldn’t leave behind?
John Balaban was convicted for the murder of Zora Kusic on the 29th of July, 1953. That was enough for the noose. A month later he was dead. No delays, appeals or stays of executions. Perhaps John himself realised it was time for a reckoning – not just in law, but within himself: a time to make good all of the horror he’d inflicted upon so many others.
Just imagine how it might have been different. If John Balaban hadn’t come into the Sunshine Café for lunch one day in 1952; if Thelma hadn’t thought him handsome, and struck up a conversation. We never really know the people we share our lives with, and for some, the unlucky few, there’s no inkling of what lurks in the shadows of the past.
There’s been no Sunshine Café in Gouger Street for many years now. The street itself is a microcosm of the world as it’s arrived and settled in Adelaide: the sights and sounds of Europe and Asia, the pawn shops and gay bars, the footpath arguments and stabbings, shootings and everything else that comes with being part of the post-Playford world. There, on the footpath where Verna Manie landed, is our coming of age. A tragedy of very mixed blessings.
Allen and Unwin 2011
Sample chapter:
John Balaban and the Sunshine Café Murders
On the night of Saturday, April 11, 1953, a waitress named Verna Manie jumped from the window of her first floor sleep-out at the Sunshine Café on Gouger Street. She fell twenty feet and struck the pavement with such force that she knocked herself out. She was covered in blood. Her screams had woken neighbours who started calling the police.
This was the endgame in a story of violence and murder that stretched from Paris to Tom Playford’s cardigan-wearing, tea-sipping, six o’ clock swilling city in the south – a city where nothing dramatic ever happened, apparently. It was also the end of the line for South Australia’s first serial killer, John Balaban.
Verna was employed at the Sunshine Café as a waitress. She lived in a verandah room on the first floor. Late on that Saturday night she’d been woken by John Balaban, 29, the husband of her boss, the café’s owner, Thelma Balaban. John came into her room, drunk, determined to make trouble. He asked Verna to come and look at the dead bodies of his wife, 30-year-old Thelma Balaban, and her mother, 66-year-old Susan Ackland.
There’s no real way of knowing how Verna removed the well-built, drunk and violent Balaban from her sleep-out, but police later found the room, with its blood-smeared walls, littered with upturned furniture. Perhaps Verna was stronger, or more persuasive, than she thought; perhaps Balaban fell, and was unable to stand. Either way, it was Verna’s lucky night.
She locked herself in her room, crawled through her window and jumped. She was found soon after, still unconscious, by a passer-by.
Today, John Balaban is buried between the northern walls at the old Adelaide Gaol. He was hanged on the 26th of August, 1953, at 8 am in the morning – the 62nd person executed in South Australia. John Balaban lies beside a roll-call of South Australia’s worst criminals. After he was hanged, early on a Wednesday morning, his body was taken out, laid in a grave (marked only by initials on a wall), covered with lime and filled in. He was only a young man when he was executed, but he had managed to leave a trail of death and misery in his wake.
John Balaban possessed an untamed anger. As he was being led to the gallows he said to the chaplain, who was trying to comfort him, ‘Why don’t you shut up?’
Today he appears as some sort of celluloid gangster, complete with black eye, split lip and screwed up nose. A photograph taken before his death shows a man with a high forehead, tight, black curly hair, a small mouth and fine teeth. He had been described by friends as ‘likeable’, and perhaps he was. He had become stepfather to Thelma’s 6-year-old son, Phillip Cadd, when he married Thelma six months prior to the killings at the Sunshine Café. Thelma must have thought he was decent enough when she’d married him; a good enough stepfather for Phillip. But at the time she couldn’t have known what awaited her and her family.
The nightmare at the Sunshine Café began late on the night of April 11. Gouger Street in 1952 was a more sedate place than it is today. Instead of Thai restaurants and nightclubs, there were pubs and bakeries, off-street factories and a police training depot. John had been drinking for hours, perhaps in the back room of the Sunshine Café. There is no explanation for why or exactly when he started his killing spree. Perhaps it was triggered by an argument with Thelma, a rage that had been simmering since he’d moved into the café after his recent marriage. It may have been the result of an undiagnosed mental illness. Or maybe it was just a case of white-hot fury – unresolved anger that stretched back to a violent father or traumatised childhood.
In a 1992 Advertiser feature entitled ‘Bloodbath at the Sunshine Café’, Andrew Male explained that Balaban had ‘indulged in a spree of violence’ leading up to the killings. This included attacks along the River Torrens, Balaban punching a young girl in a lavatory as well as fracturing a man’s skull with an iron bar.
It’s hard to get a clear picture of how the killings unfolded. Two days after the murders the Canberra Times explained that Balaban’s family ‘were battered about the head while they slept in three rooms above the café’. Other reports at the time claim that Balaban had chased his family through the café before murdering them. All reports agree that Balaban assaulted and used a claw-hammer to kill his wife, mother-in-law and stepson by striking them across the forehead and face.
Neighbours were woken either by the family’s screams or by Verna Manie’s screams from her room soon after the murders. When the police arrived at the café they found Thelma dead on her bed and Susan and Phillip beaten, unconscious but alive in their rooms. Susan Ackland died soon after and Phillip died a few weeks later in hospital.
Balaban had fled the café. He was found hiding in an alleyway that ran off Gouger Street. It’s interesting to speculate why Balaban had (seemingly) waited to be found. Whether he knew he’d soon be captured anyway; if he’d had enough of living with himself, of betraying people; or perhaps he was thinking of flight but, in his confused mental state, hadn’t been able to work out how or where to go.
He was examined at what was then Parkside Mental Hospital by a Dr H.M. Birch. He didn’t deny the killings at the Sunshine Café but, in a twist that does reveal something about his mental state, he then confessed to the murder of Zora Kusic.
John Balaban, it seemed, had form. Within months, or perhaps weeks of his marriage to Thelma, he’d met 29-year-old Zora Kusic in a restaurant in Hindley Street. It was the 5th of December, 1952. He accompanied Zora to her home at Torrensville. Again, the details are sketchy, but at some point, it seems, John tore of her clothes, she resisted and he attacked her. He then slashed her with a knife across the throat at least seven times, almost decapitating her.
In another strange twist Balaban was arrested and charged with the murder of Zora Kusic soon after the discovery of her body but, after a five day hearing, was released due to a lack of evidence. Although the police must have known they were dealing with a murderer there was nothing they could do to lock him up. Several months later this knowledge would come back to haunt them, and the community. It’s funny to think that a footprint, hair or piece of fabric might have helped put Balaban away for the murder of Kusic, and that Thelma, Susan and Phillip might have survived Balaban’s rage.
For it was a physical rage; the nature of the killings prove this. Prior to his execution, sitting in his death cell, Balaban even attacked and tried to strangle a prison guard. Perhaps the guard had made the mistake of looking at him the wrong way, saying the wrong thing or laughing.
Nonetheless, Balaban was not some dumb thug. He was an industrial chemist who’d worked as a metallurgist. He’d come to Australia from Romania in 1951. He was escaping the experiences of wartime Europe, looking for a new start. He’d settled in Adelaide, met Thelma and less than a year later, married her.
Postwar Romania held little for the young. The Soviet Union stripped the country of rare resources, making and keeping it poor. There was a culture of arrest, abuse torture and execution (estimates range from the tens to hundreds of thousands). Nearby countries such as Czechoslovakia fared little better. It is interesting to note that several other Eastern Europeans were among Australia’s list of executed criminals in the early 1950s. Jaroslav Koci and Jan Novotny, Czech immigrants, killed Darwin taxi driver George Grantham in April 1952, and were both hanged six months later. Karol Tapci, another Czech immigrant, killed Norman Perfect in a fight in 1952 and was hanged in Fremantle Gaol three months later.
Had a culture of violence produced a generation of violent men? Or was it just a coincidence? Do we need to look at other factors such as the inherent racism many migrants would have encountered upon their arrival in Australia? Or the fact that life was still a struggle, and that there was a lot of ‘baggage’ they couldn’t leave behind?
John Balaban was convicted for the murder of Zora Kusic on the 29th of July, 1953. That was enough for the noose. A month later he was dead. No delays, appeals or stays of executions. Perhaps John himself realised it was time for a reckoning – not just in law, but within himself: a time to make good all of the horror he’d inflicted upon so many others.
Just imagine how it might have been different. If John Balaban hadn’t come into the Sunshine Café for lunch one day in 1952; if Thelma hadn’t thought him handsome, and struck up a conversation. We never really know the people we share our lives with, and for some, the unlucky few, there’s no inkling of what lurks in the shadows of the past.
There’s been no Sunshine Café in Gouger Street for many years now. The street itself is a microcosm of the world as it’s arrived and settled in Adelaide: the sights and sounds of Europe and Asia, the pawn shops and gay bars, the footpath arguments and stabbings, shootings and everything else that comes with being part of the post-Playford world. There, on the footpath where Verna Manie landed, is our coming of age. A tragedy of very mixed blessings.
