Elizabeth Krantz – 3 January 2008
 In a situation reminiscent of the racist murder of Andrew Farrugia, and the racist murder of Leon Robinson, a 49-year-old father of five was enjoying a game of beach cricket with his family at the coastal town of Geraldton 425 km north of Perth in Western Australia when he was attacked by a large group of Aboriginals and bashed to death with his own cricket bat. Bill Rowe, a well-known and respected farmer from the small farming community of Yalgoo, two hour’s drive east of Geraldton was enjoying a game of beach cricket with his family at Geraldton’s Sunset Beach late in the afternoon on Christmas Day when a group of Aboriginals spoiling for a fight with white people arrived and began harassing the family groups, rummaging through eskies and stealing alcohol. Intimidated, some families packed up and left. The police began to receive phone calls from family groups reporting the disturbances, thievery and intimidation. The mob turned their attention to the Rowe family, who believing they had safety in numbers, told the group of about five Aboriginals to stop taking drinks out of their esky. The gutless thugs left but returned a short time later with about 20 others and attacked the Rowe family with bottles, rocks and sticks. Rowe family members again urgently phoned the police. When Bill Rowe’s future son-in-law, Luke Neil, 29, told them to get out his esky, he was viciously attacked. Mr Neil’s face needed 35 stitches after it was slashed with a broken beer bottle. The attack also left him with a broken jaw and broken collarbone. “You white cunts are in for a bashing” As the family members were bundling Mr Neil into a car to take him to hospital the mob closed in around them hurling abuse. A woman in the group yelled, “you white cunts are in for a bashing”. As Bill Rowe was trying to protect Mr Neil from further attack he was bashed from behind with his own cricket bat and collapsed unconscious. Mr Rowe and Mr Neil were taken to Geraldton Regional Hospital, where Mr Rowe died at 2.30 am. His family was by his bedside when his life support was turned off. The police never arrived until the Rowe family had left. By that time the gutless mob had disappeared. Matthew Roy McDonald was charged over the death of Mr Rowe and jailed for just five years, a sentence described at the time by the shadow Attorney General as “woefully inadequate”. At the time of Mr Rowe’s murder, McDonald was serving a suspended jail term for unlawful wounding. Bleeding-hear magistrates and judges routinely give Aboriginal criminals heavily reduced sentences because they are “victims”. Like most of the black on white violence, the perpetrators are half-castes or part Aboriginals. They are as much European as Aboriginal but prefer to identify with the Aboriginal grievance industry. They are not residents of outback camps. They live in the suburbs along with the whites but seem to have a deep resentment of the white side of their background. |
|
|