Caroline Graham (3)

“The police poster has all the grim details. Full name: Patrick (Paddy) Moriarty. Approximately 178 centimetres tall. Black and grey hair. Age seventy. Last sighted at dusk on Saturday, 16 December 2017, when he left the Larrimah Hotel on his quad bike with his dog, Kellie. She’s pictured on the sign too -the red-and-brown kelpie looks young, friendly, with her tongue sticking out.”

To be honest I requested this thinking it was fiction, however Larrimah is non-fiction, a true crime show more investigation into the fate of a missing man, and the town he lived in.

Larrimah is a tiny outback town, spread over an area less than 1kmsq, in the Northern Territory on Wubalawun land, and at the time of Paddy’s disappearance, the population numbered just 12. It was a few days before he was officially reported missing, and wherever he had gone, he had taken nothing with him but the dog, not even the hat that rarely left his head.

Paddy’s disappearance may have gone largely unremarked by the wider world except no one can make sense of it. In essence this is a ‘locked room’ mystery. A thorough forensics investigation turned up no clues, neither did days of searching by foot, or from the air. Despite extensive police interviews, international media scrutiny, and an inquest, there has yet to be any answers.

There are theories of course. One of the most enduring is that 1 (or more) of the remaining 11 Larrimah townspeople murdered Paddy. Fran Hodgetts, whose home and tea house is situated across from Paddy’s house, was immediately a prime suspect. The two had a long history of acrimony - trading barbs and claims of harassment, but Larrimah is no stranger to feuds. At any one time it seems half of the town is at war with the other, whether it’s over the provision of pies to the passing trade, the leadership of local ‘progress’ committees, the massacre of a buffalo, or the theft of Mars Bars. There is also speculation that Paddy was abducted by drug dealers, swallowed by a sinkhole, or simply did a runner and has started a new life elsewhere.

In an attempt to understand the case, and hopefully solve the mystery, journalists Graham & Stephenson spent five years investigating the story (before this was a book, it was a Walkley award winning podcast called Lost in Larrimah), spending time with the residents of Larrimah, while also endeavouring to piece together a clearer picture of who Paddy was. In trying to answer their questions, this book develops into a portrait of both the missing man and the town of Larrimah, the two seemingly inseparable.

Rich with detail, whimsical and poignant, Larrimah reads like an Aussie yarn with its abundance of colourful, eccentric characters and unlikely sounding events, except this is a true story… well, in so far as the truth can be known. show less

When Paddy Moriarty and his dog Kellie disappeared into thin air, an investigation was launched, a search undertaken, but this is sinkhole territory, and it's Larrimah and it seems nothing is ever straight-forward in these parts.

Oddly enough, you'd think in a town of 11 people somebody would have seen / known something of where Paddy and Kellie went, but in this case not only is what happened to Paddy a total mystery, it turns out most everything to do with Paddy is a mystery, wrapped in an show more enigma, buried in layers of minding your own business.

There's nothing in LARRIMAH the book that solves the problem of what happened, and to be fair, whilst it might have started out as an investigation project, it did indeed become a love letter, to the town, the area that it's in, the people thereabouts, and Kadaitja country in general. Journalists Kylie Stevenson and Caroline Graham have spent years trying to work out what happened, how this place works, and why in hell there were 11 people interested enough in living in the middle of nowhere in a town like Larrimah. Feuding with each other is the main sport, and the place seems to be dying, particularly as the older residents start to drop (or in the case of Paddy - disappear).

I will admit I'd no idea what I was getting into when I started this book - and the only reason I started it was the subtitle to be honest. I mean "Larrimah: A missing man, an eyeless croc and an outback town of 11 people who mostly hate each other" has got to be one of the great titles, and it's all true. Of course that doesn't mention the pub (The Pink Panther with its gyrocopter); the zoo of animals out the back of it (including the blind croc); the teashop that does a good line in pies and signs; the antics with roadkill; the Caravan Park; the constant defacing of the aforementioned signs; and the full scope, breadth and creativity of the feuds. This is a town that could feud for the Olympics.

But the action isn't just set in Larrimah. Stevenson and Graham, working around COVID restrictions, seek out Paddy's past, places he's known to have worked (and did), places where it's less clear whether he was ever there. There's hints of relationships and kids that are never explained; there's stories of past feuds in other towns; and it all goes back to when he's supposed to have arrived from Ireland. It turns out that Paddy's a mystery right from the very beginning.

The thing I most came away from LARRIMAH with was just how easy it is for somebody to reinvent themselves in the wilder parts of outback Australia. How difficult it is to track somebody who obviously doesn't want to be tracked, how hard to pin down who they really are, or how they came to be where they end up. And when they disappear off the face of the planet - it could be a natural feature that's swallowed them up; it could be foul play; or it could be yet another reinvention. Turns out you may never know, no matter how much effort is expended.

Told in a slightly tongue in cheek manner, with a real love for the area shining through, LARRIMAH was fun, sad and highly entertaining (right up to and including mealworms in the air-conditioned backseat and fake holdups of tourist buses). Of course I'd like to think that Paddy and Kellie are out there somewhere hoping the fuss will die down, but there's the sneaking suspicion that we'll never know, no matter how hard these two journalists try to find out.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/larrimah-caroline-graham-kylie-stevenson show less

Yet another 5 star review? I don't finish books that I think are worth less than 5 stars and mostly I give them a fair run before giving up, so my endless stream of 5 star reviews is not because I am easily pleased, I just don't review lesser books (IMHO)

And so to Larrimah. I think the blurb says something like 'a small outback town with a population of 11 people and one of them goes missing and foul play is suspected, one of them also runs a pie shop .....'

That kinda sets the drift for this show more wonderful book. Set deep in the Australian outback, full of weird characters with told or untold unusual backstories, unfolds always on the promise of this mystery being solved.

But at every turn it seems that instead of answers, all that is discovered is just more questions.

Another of those wonderful Aussie books where the character with the biggest part is the land itself. The land (and everything in it) appears to want to kill the few non-aboriginal humans by every means possible at every available opportunity and has no speaking lines but is in every conversation.

One time a few years ago I spent a week in Adelaide and loved it. When it came time to leave I was on a shuttle bus to the airport, the bus was full of men returning to mines after a week or two of R&R. As were were being driven along I asked out loud why there were so many mass murderers in Australia? Without missing a beat all the men replied in unison, "because there are so many places to hide the bodies".

And there it was, the sheer scale of the land and how easy it would be to lose yourself (or a body) and no-one would ever find out unless by some sheer fluke. For example, if Western Australia was a country it would be the 10th largest country in the world, Queensland is 2.5 times bigger than Texas. You get the idea?

Now back to Larrimah. Well it does unfold but (no spoilers) not in the way you might expect. It does so in that way that a good Aussie book does by bringing YOU into its vast weirdness until you can feel the red dust on your skin as another 50 yards long road train thunders past on the dirt highway and slowly fades away into the vast distance.

If you've never read an Aussie novel start here. show less