Missing Niamh - 2: Episode 2: Batlow

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

Niamh and two friends, Jess and Brodie, leave Armidale to head 800km south. In 2002, Batlow is a magnet for international back-packers, stopping on their travels to earn a bit of money. After a rough start, the girls settle into a local caravan park. https://missingniamh.com

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On Thursday the 14th of February 2002, Neem May and her two friends, Jess and Brody, left Armadale in northern New South Wales to head south. They first went to Sydney, then headed further south for a stint fruit picking in a small town called Batlow, which was famous for its apples. While the girls set off with much excitement, Niamh's friend Jess described an uneasy vibe that started the moment they missed the train in Sydney that would take them to Cootamundra. And then, bad luck seemed to follow them all. Batlow in inland New South Wales would put around 800 kilometres between Niamh and her parents in Armadale. If you look at Batlow from the air, it looks like an ornate patchwork quilt. That's because there are around 50 orchards

dotted around the town and its surrounds. These orchards produce around 10% of Australia's apples. It's a mark of the strength of the town that when the bushfires raged around it in the early days of January 2020, Batlow was declared undefendable, but that didn't stop the locals. The town lay in the path of a huge firestorm and it seemed nothing could save it. Residents evacuated, but a small band of local firefighters braved the onslaught each day. Flames even licked at the town's iconic Big Apple, but like the rest of the town, it emerged scarred, yet not destroyed. During the fires, the town turned blood red and the whole place looked like the depths of hell. But in ordinary times, Butlow's cornflower blue sky and fluffy white clouds provide the perfect backdrop for rolling hills in the distance.

The town itself is small, just a couple of main streets with other streets snaking off them. Bushfires aside, the Batlow of today physically isn't so different from the Batlow of 2002, the town Niamh and her friends stepped into. Here's what Batlow local Michelle remembers of the town in 2002. It was good. So you have different nationalities and different ages and people coming every year. Like the town was so busy back then when it was picking time and you could make friends with them. You could hang out with them. I'm still friends to this day

with people that I'd met back then. It was just, it was really good. They were really good people. There was every personality you could think of and yeah, people from different countries, they all brought something, but they spent money in town and they would yeah they were usually pretty friendly compared to now where there's not a lot of pickers that come to town anymore. According to Michelle things changed when local orchards began contracting with companies to bring in pickers for the season. Before this it used to be up to travelling backpackers like Niam to follow the harvest trail and find their own work.

Mostly they were a good bunch of people, but... You'd get your odd darrow, I suppose. Like, a lot of them were there just to have a good time, but you'd come across some that were just weird and some that drank too much and couldn't handle their frog or weren't friendly or, yeah. But majority of them were pretty good. Another local woman, Nicole, says that in 2002,

when Nahum came to town, Batlow seemed to have more travelling Aussie pickers than international ones. At picking season, Batlow was a thriving place to be involved in because there were so many different young people, traditionally, coming in. Historically, we used to get lots of international backpackers coming in, but that year in particular,

there seemed to be a lot more young Aussies travelling and backpacking. So it was busy, it was chaotic, there seemed to be a lot more young Aussies travelling and backpacking. So it was busy. It was chaotic. There's lots of stuff kind of always happening. Pubs are always full, that kind of thing. It's probably a good time to be around the town and in the town because there's, you know, lots of mixing and mingling. There'd be lots of informal kind of parties between pickers, lots of them gathering and congregating at the pub.

And that kind of becomes a bit of a hub then for other things to branch off. So very social if you're in that sphere. Most of the times it was really friendly. I don't think, I can't actually recall any time when there were any real issues. It's changed now because now you've got big contract groups coming in from Asia and the Solomon Islands, those kind of places. So they tend to stick together more in their own groups and they tend to be housed out on the farms, whereas back then there would have been a lot more people staying at caravan parks and those kind of things, whereas here it's much more structured now.

So it was probably a bit like a big uni-o week, really, for a lot of people. It would have been good value. Getting to Batlow was not as easy as it first seemed for Niamh, Jess and Brodie. Because they had missed their original train, they also missed the CountryLink bus that was supposed to take them further south to Batlow. Jess remembers what it was like when their train arrived in Cootamundra in the early hours of Saturday the 16th of February 2002. I don't know.

I think I'd been a pretty wild teenager and I didn't feel very wild as we left home. I just felt wary. And then the train rolled into Cootamundra and we probably arrived at like three or four in the morning and the girls got off the train and they just ran off into the town and I just stayed at the train platform with all of our staff. I just stayed there and then there was an old man, it was just like me and an old man at this train

platform in Kutamundra and the two other girls just ran off into the night. Kutamundra is 122 kilometres north of Batlow. There are no connecting trains between the towns and the only way to travel is by bus or car. Rather than see the girls stranded, Jess's mum arranged for a taxi to pick them up from Cootamundra and drive them to Batlow. The girls agreed to pay her back. So we ordered a taxi from a payphone and we got into the taxi and I don't think my mum or me realised how far that taxi was going to be from Cootamundra to Batlow.

I still don't actually know, but it cost hundreds of dollars and then we finally arrived at this caravan park in a place called Batlow. Like I had no idea where we were. And, you know, Niamh kind of perked up because she was like, yep, this is the place, this is where we're meant to be. And we booked in to this caravan park and we pitched a couple of tents. By Jess's reckoning, they arrived in Batlow around 5am.

The girls set their tents up and with the morning light they got a good look at the caravan park they would call home. The Batlow caravan park was set in a large expanse of lush green grass. A gravel road winds through, making it halfway into the park before looping back on itself. Caravans are dotted throughout. Dense bushland and tall trees line the perimeter. Campers would pitch tents around this boundary area to make the most of the shade from the trees in the hot afternoon sun. In the off-season, the place is eerily quiet, with only the sounds of the breeze rustling through trees, bird calls and the occasional truck passing along the nearby Batlow Road breaking the silence. But when the girls arrived, it was picking season and there were people from countries

all over the world. Jess wrote about their arrival in her diary. Saturday the 16th of February, arrived in beautiful Batlow. The environment is peaceful. Need to ask my mum to send the camera. Today we had our first day of work at Bowdoin's. We picked peaches. We met a girl called Christy from the Gold Coast. We met Geoffrey from Africa at the caravan park, Stephen from Perth, Andre from Germany. Brodie remembers their arrival too. It wasn't long

before her flimsy tent came to grief and she ended up in Liam's tent. It rained that night, so when we got there it was pretty sunny actually, but then that night it poured really, really badly and, yeah, my tent got destroyed straight away and all my stuff got wet and then Liam was like, oh, you know, you can come and stay in my tent. So then I was living in Liam's tent pretty much straight away after that because, yeah, my tent was just terrible. I was like, yeah, I had no idea what I was doing at all. I was not prepared.

Niamh was really prepared though. All of Niamh's planning and preparation made a world of difference once the girls settled in Batlow. She just was really organised and had things packed and already brought food with her and like, you know, her tent was really solid and she seemed really... She just put it up and seemed really capable and, I don't know, she just seemed very organised. She had, like, a list of, like, all the things that she had

and the weight of her luggage and everything like that, yeah. She was pretty... Yeah, she was pretty onto it. Like the journey to get to Batlow the early days there were anything but smooth sailing for the girls. It didn't take long for both Brodie and Neem to get injured while doing the unfamiliar labour of fruit picking. In the end Jess just wanted to call it quits and go home. And then we the three of us got a job working together for a couple of days picking peaches and maybe nectarines. And within the first few days, Brodie had fallen off the ladder

and she'd torn something in her leg. And so instantly she got work compensation and then Liam and I got a job working on another farm picking apples and in that first week of doing that I think that like I got put with a couple of guys picking apples one of of them, his name was John, and he was from New Zealand and he came from a farm in New Zealand. Really sweet guy. And he had a caravan with some other people who were moving out, so eventually we moved into this caravan.

With him there were like two bunk beds and a big double bed. So John and I took the bunks and Niamh and Brodie shared this bed because then what happened was Niamh fell off a ladder while we were picking fruit and she also injured her leg and so she was on workers' comp as well. And so John and I would go and pick fruit and Liam and Brodie had to stay at the caravan park because they were both on crutches and I really didn't want to hurt myself because everyone was making jokes that, you know, we were these three girls that had rocked up

and were just there to get some kind of workers' compensation. When everyone hurt themselves, I suggested, you know, I was like, let's just go home. Like, fuck this. Let's go. And Niamh was very persistent in wanting to stay. With Niamh and Brodie at the caravan park all day while Jess worked, the big adventure began to look very different from where she was standing. I don't know who she was trying to prove to, but she was very stubborn and she said, no, we're staying here. You know, we're going to make some money and, you know, we're going to go and buy a car and do this Brisbane trip. And then each day I would come back from work and there would be

a new character hanging around. Although Niamh and Brodie were off work, at least they got to recuperate in a caravan rather than a tent. This was a common transition for some of the fruit pickers at the camping ground. It wasn't uncommon to begin in a tent and then move into beds in caravans when they became available. The New Zealander whose caravan the girls moved into was a man called John Major. He was at the caravan park the entire time Niamh was there. As a more seasoned backpacker, what did John think of Batlow? people from Australia. Yeah, we had a good time. Their tent flooded. I was staying in one of the caravans and they sort of came knocking on my door and saying, John, can we stay in here?

He really looked after us. He had the caravan and it had three bunk beds and a queen-size bed and it was really quite big. After me and them had been living in a tent, I'd got in another tent. I'd been bitten by a spider in one of them and, like, my wrist was all messed up from what's really bad. And our tents kind of got destroyed and we were freezing and he was like, you girls can just move in and, like, pay part of the rent for the caravan.

And we were like, thanks. He's like, because I'm probably going to be leaving. Like, he didn't know what he was doing. And it was a massive help for us. We will be back after a short break. Niamh had told her family that she felt safer in the caravan because it had a door that could be locked. Brodie felt this too.

Yeah, well, people would just come up to the tents and be like, Hey, and what are you doing? You know, just there wasn't really a lot of privacy. To some, an environment like the caravan park in Batlow is great. People coming up and talking to you, stopping by your tent to say hello, meeting new people. But at the same time, boundaries are sometimes not observed. For the girls, that meant there was no escaping from the people who were camping there.

Overfriendliness can become unnerving. Some attention is unwanted. Little did the girls know, two people would soon arrive at the camp who would give off a bad vibe, one in particular, in spades. But back to fruit picking. Because Niamh and Brodie were injured, Jess left them behind and took the daily transport from the caravan park to the various orchards around Batlow. With the absence of her friends, Jess tried to align herself with good picking partners. I feel like I really didn't pick very much with Liam and Brodie at all because they had injured themselves so early on. And I just kind of thought that if I stuck with a fast guy that could pick, you know, I had John and Dave. And they were like the two people that I picked with most of the time because I

knew that they were reputable or John especially. Yeah by the time you got out there it would be just before the dawn and then when you get home in the afternoon they were long days. I was kind of feeling my way through everything and just trying to stay safe because I didn't feel very safe. A note in Jess's diary at the time says that her best pay was $103.80 for two days' work. This worked out to about $6.10 an hour. And this was when she was with the fast pickers. The slower you were, the less you made. Another difference among the fruit pickers was the amount of socialising they did. More professional pickers like John were there to work. The

younger pickers like Liam and Brodie were there to socialise and meet people as well. So if John was a seasoned fruit picker in Batlow to earn as much as he could, how did he view the girls? I think they were, I don't know, I think they just wanted a bit of a work. They sort of just earned enough to live and buy beer and then they would just take things off work all the time. Niamh obviously, now that I do remember, she hurt her leg, so she was off work a lot.

About once a week, Niamh called her family to stay in touch. Niamh was keen for her mum Anne to keep an eye out for any mail that needed to be forwarded to her. Neem also kept in regular contact with her sister Fionnuala in Sydney by both phone and email and she also sent group emails to her siblings and friends updating everyone on her adventures. Neem was known for her love of other cultures. She longed to travel and had her exchange student experience in France under her belt already. The idea of meeting other backpackers

from all over the world would have been hugely appealing to Niamh as she dealt with those early days in Batlow and her injured leg. Her dad Brian heard about all the colourful characters she'd met when Niamh phoned home. One of the things I think that she'd have enjoyed very much, I mentioned earlier, that she was very interested in people who were culturally different from herself and ourselves. So I think that she, in a sense, was quite looking forward to seeing more people from more places. By going back there, it wasn't just the fruit picking, but she thought you could do the fruit picking and enjoy the contact of young people and young people from elsewhere while she was there. It became quite the cast of characters from all walks of life. There was Joel and Sol.

Niamh became very close to Joel. Joel and Sol were best friends and Joel and Niamh had a lot in common. They were both quite academic. There was also a couple called Oops and Nicole. You know, they were just like these kind of beautiful indie, I don't know, like late 90s, early 2000s, just colourful people. And, you know, Nicole looked like a mermaid or something. And Oops had become Oops because he

was born into some kind of commune and he thought that he was a mistake. So he changed his name to Oops. The girls all made friends with lots of new people, which of course was part of the whole gap year experience. But Niamh had not cast off her core beliefs and soon got a chance to show her new friend Oops one of her most well-known traits standing up for the little guy Anyway, I think that Oops and Niamh they like planned to take revenge on one of the farmers who was underpaying people

and like they took firecrackers out to one of the farmers who was underpaying people. And, like, they took firecrackers out to one of the farmers' house and, you know, let them off on the veranda or something. So when we first got to the caravan park, there weren't many people there, and so you could kind of, you knew every single person that was there. And as the season progressed really quickly, more and more people started to arrive. With the arrival of more people in the caravan park,

the atmosphere changed. We met a man called Steve and Steve was an old guy in his 50s or his 60s and I remember as soon as I saw him I thought be careful and one night Steve was like hanging out with Niamh and Brodie and you know I'd sit around and join him where I could but everybody knew how uncomfortable I was and also I didn't have the same amount of energies what they did because I was working. But I remember Steve telling us about his life and that he had been some kind of driver of, I don't know, taking speed from one state to the next.

And I remember him watching me put my clothes out on the line one day and I just would have, you know, nothing to do with him and him saying to me, making a comment about how I was watchful and I didn't say very much. When Neham called home to tell her parents how she had sprained her ankle falling off a ladder, she was embarrassed on two levels. Firstly, she was stuck at the caravan park all day every day, unable to work. And secondly, she had been critical early on of people who she felt were deliberately injuring themselves so they could go on workers' compensation. She also knew of workers who had two IDs so they could get workers' compensation from one orchard and continue

to pick fruit at another, essentially meaning they were getting two incomes. So, even though she had a legitimate injury, Neham felt like she and Brodie were lumped in with the dodgy workers. Neham's leg healed over the following days and weeks and she was able to go back to work shortly after. She got a job at one orchard, but they put her to work on the outside rows where she felt there was less fruit and therefore less chance of making money. Luckily, Niamh found work at another orchard in walking distance from the caravan park.

She sent a letter to her mum and dad. Part of it reads, Hi Ma and Pa. How goes it? I'm back at work but am hopefully getting a job at Montague starting next Monday. The other orchard were trying to pull some dodgy shit about Compo but I had words with them and it's all sorted. Apparently there's graffiti in Heathrow Airport toilets saying, don't work for them in Australia. Why am I not surprised? We've moved into a caravan with Johnny from New Zealand who's really nice and quiet. There are people turning up for the season every day now and I'm so glad we can lock our door now that we're in a van. I'm glad that we've met a good group of people here, mostly Australians.

There are a couple of nice, normal people that we've been hanging out with, but there are a few dodgy alcoholic deros here too. Must remember to have eyes in the back of my head and wear my big boots just in case. Love, Nahum. After a few weeks, the shine began to wear off camp life and tensions developed between Nahum, Jess and Brodie. The girls had been through a lot together and sometimes that brings people closer together, and sometimes it doesn't. Living and working in such close quarters, there were few opportunities to spend time apart. One day, Jess and Nahum had a big fight in the caravan. Jess felt really disconnected from her two friends. The fight was interrupted by the timely arrival

of their friend Elisa, who had arranged to join them. She had driven to Batlow from Armadale with her boyfriend, Jesse. And then we had a big fight and I got really upset and she got upset too because there was so many people coming and going and I was always telling them to get out. I felt like a grandma.

That's why we had a fight because, you know, I just felt like this boring, annoying parent and also I wasn't a parent. Like I was, you know, I was 18. I remember they'd stay up and they'd play cards and they'd get drunk. And then I would like kick them out and then they would go to other people's places. And I said, I don't know who you are. I feel really, you know, disconnected from you. I've known you for my whole life and I just don't know what's going

on and I think that we should go home and we need to leave. And then, yeah, we went outside and then this car arrived and it was Lisa and her boyfriend, Jesse, and we were so happy to see them. And it was just like the best thing ever. And it just kind of changed the vibe on everything that had been going on because it had just been really not good. And then Lisa and Jessie just could not believe how happy we were to see them. The arrival of their friend Lisa and her boyfriend Jessie could not have come at a better time for the girls. It was someone new, someone Niamh loved to be with, and it completely changed

the group dynamic. We're driving through this countryside and these rolling hills with orchards everywhere and we're getting more and more remote and it was sort of serenely beautiful but wild. And I remembered we drove into this tiny little town and we were like, what is this place? And we found the caravan park and honestly, as we pulled up, there were all these girls just like running at us down through the caravan park and it was Neem and Jessica and Brodie and they were just like screaming and coming at us and they like landed on the ground in front of us and like,

oh, where are you? And it was like they were so excited to see somebody different and at the time it was sort of a bit affronting and then after being there for a few days I realised why because it's like this sort of closed little community and it was the same people. And they'd been there quite a while, I think, you know, picking apples and getting up to mischief. The friendship between Nahum and Lisa went back a long way.

So we both went to the same primary school, St Mary's. And I remember standing in the kindergarten yard and there was this tiny little girl standing on the cement. There were these sort of cement edges that were raised and she just looked too small to be at school. And she had her hair in pigtails, like piggy plaits, and I remember giving her a piggyback around the yard. And that was the first time I met her. I would describe Niamh as witty, funny, like really funny, intelligent. She could be really sensitive as well and kind. She was blunt as anything.

Lisa noticed the effect the fruit-picking lifestyle had on Niamh from the moment she arrived there. And so we were very close and I noticed that she really didn't look good. She seemed really down and she was drinking a lot. And I tried to have conversations with her and it just felt like I couldn't reach her on the same way that I used to be able to. Lisa's arrival lifted the girl's spirits for a time. As determined as Niamh was to stick it out, there may have been a little voice in her head telling her it was maybe time to call it quits on her fruit-picking lifestyle. Jess wrote a diary entry on the 17th of March, just over a month after arriving in Batlow. She wrote that Niamh was planning on travelling to Sydney to visit her sister Fanula.

She mentioned that Niamh was sick and having trouble finding work. Brodie wanted to stay at the caravan park, although she wasn't working. Jess didn't know what to do. A fellow picker asked her to go travelling with him, but she wasn't sure. While the girls were deciding on what to do next, two strangers arrived in town. And they were driving a vehicle so sinister that locals still remember it 20 years later. And then one day the black hearse arrived and when the black hearse arrived

these two men got out and as soon as I saw them and I saw that black hearse I thought they're baddies, stay away from them. Next time on Missing Niamh He said a couple of things which made me not like him. Like one was when we complimented the car. He was like, oh yeah, there's been 11,000 bodies that have been through there

and only two of them have been alive. She was happy. She was smiling more. She was talking about coming to Sydney. Evil, I guess, has to be somewhat attractive, doesn't it? Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to sneak into every corner.