The Backpacker Murders

Those of us who grew up reading the poetry of Banjo Paterson, and sung colonial songs in primary school, could be excused for having a romantic notion of life in the bush. The cold reality is that Australian country life could be harsh and brutal, and had the capacity to strip whole communities of people of their dignity. The bush has also been the scene of some of Australia’s most vicious murders, many of them unsolved to this day. The abduction and murder of seven backpackers in the early 1990s and the subsequent discovery of their bodies in the Belanglo State Forest, 140 kilometres southwest of Sydney, made international headlines. Australia had been seen as a safe haven for domestic and overseas travellers – especially young people journeying away from home for the first time – but the crimes of Ivan Milat changed that perception forever.