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Getting Ready for the Port Arthur Massacre

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(L) John Howard b 1939 (picture taken in 1996 by Heidi Smith), (R) Barrie Unsworth. b 1934

 by Malcolm R Hughes

Today, twenty-two years after the Port Arthur massacre, I wish to look at how it was planned. I do not have any new data or Insider secrets, but there is much on the record that can help us reconstruct. Without doubt the massacre was a major undertaking. Who organized it? I present a conservative accounting as to how much was involved in ready-ing  for the event.

Three Meetings That Required Advance Bookings

As is well known, there were three meetings going on that day that helped the right people be where they would be needed.

  1. There was a conference of surgeons, from around Australia, at Royal Hobart Hospital, which finished at 1pm. on Sunday April 28 – 30 minutes before the shooting began at the Port Arthur Historic Site (hereinafter the PAHS).
  1. There was an international gathering of media people at a hotel in Hobart. The attendees were just settling in on Sunday for the start of their conference, on Monday morning.

  1. There was a meeting of staff members of the PAHS, particularly top management at Swansea. It was to be a two day seminar, starting Sunday 28th April. Ten in number, left PAHS two hours before the massacre started.

So far I have not said anything about a conspiracy. But I have had much experience with officials over the last ten years – mainly writing to them (right up to the Governor General) and logging their resolute non-replies, so you can be sure I do think it was officialdom that ran the entire event.

In this article I will not speculate as to exactly whodunnit. Nor will I make any effort to argue for the innocence of Martin Bryant – that should be clear from the mere fact that one ordinary person could not have managed all the complications of the day.

Back to the planning. It is likely that the purpose of Meeting 1 was to have an extra supply of surgeons at hand in case there was a sudden population of wounded, not killed, victims. The meeting in Royal Hobart Hospital made that possible. Such meetings always require the attendees to register well in advance. There is standardly a fee, so the bank accounts or credit card accounts for the doctors would reveal the date on which they paid their registration.

Meeting 2 would also have called for rego in advance. Since the majority of journalists and editors attending were from overseas, there must be records showing how far in advance they arranged their travel to Australia. (It is not my job to trace them; I am making the point that much advance planning went into it.)

Meeting 3, by contrast, did not provide a supply of needed persons. Rather, it provided us with a non-supply of the key group of people — the managers of the PAHS. Unprecedentedly, they held a meeting (with no known agenda) at a location 2 hours’ drive from Port Arthur, in Swansea.

By virtue of missing out on the action at PAHS, these personnel were spared from later having to give testimony as to what they saw, and of course they were spared from getting shot at.

There was yet another move to “get inconvenient personnel out of the way,” but it could have been arranged mere days in advance so I don’t include it in my list of advance-planning.  But I will mention it — namely, the “white powder affair.”

Notice of a drug situation came through on the police phone. This had the effect of causing two local cops to have to drive far north on the Tasman peninsula at around 1:00pm and thus be unavailable to respond in a timely way to the activity at PAHS. I assume the drug thing was a hoax — when the constables got there they found only white powder.

Three Preparations for Body-Handling

The following three things seem ludicrously revelatory of “malice aforethought,” yet they have not had any effect on bringing the murderers to justice.

  1. A mortuary truck was purchased in 1995 . And it was later offered for sale on the internet in 1998. It was capable of carrying 22 deceased persons. The purchaser was not exactly the government. It was a private contractor, Ray Charlton for Southern Districts Mortuary Services. Who was he to predict the (potential) need for such a thing? No other state in Australia had a similar vehicle.
  1. As is openly revealed in the “Port Arthur Seminar Papers,” published in 1997, embalmers prepared, in advance, a large supply of embalming equipment and transported it to Tasmania from the Victorian funeral company, Nelson Brothers. The author of that seminar paper was Stephen Parry. Researcher Keith Noble subsequently composed a “show cause” notice to Parry as to why he should not be charged with fore-knowledge of the massacre.
  1. There is also said to have been an extra supply of helicopters and pilots-on-call for that Sunday, where there would normally be none or very few. They were utilised both to transport inspectors to the site, once the shooting ended around 1:50pm, and to carry some of the wounded to hospital. A good question is: who arranged for those pilots? 

Two Big Adjustments in the Political Situation

  1. A federal election eight weeks before the massacre (March 2, 1996) brought John Howard into the prime ministership – ousting Paul Keating. Howard then arranged for a buyback of guns from the populace, in less than a fortnight after the massacre.
  1. Also, six weeks before the event, Ray Groom stepped down as premier of Tasmania – no reason given – and instead took over the portfolios that would give him control of the aftermath of the massacre, including Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Tourism and Workplace Safety.

Three Lesser Adjustments

  1. The State Government of Tasmania purchased the Broad Arrow Café from its private owner, Jim Laycock, one year in advance of the massacre. This went against the trend: government owned properties were being privatised. Was there any rationale presented for this purchase?

    (L) A younger Ray Groom, b 1944, and (R) Will Hodgman b 1969 — current premier of Tasmania
  1. Workmen’s Compensation provisions were changed by Premier Ray Groom in 1995 to eliminate coverage for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. Of course, many employees at PAHS wanted to sue for benefits for the PTSD they acquired on the job on April 28, 1996, but could not.
  1. A change in the Coroner’s Act had been made by the Tasmanian Parliament and given the Royal Assent on November 14, 1995, but it had a delayed effective date of February 1, 1997. Therefore, when Coroner Ian Matterson aborted his inquest in December 1996 (becuase Bryant had pleaded Guilty) the law that was still in force was the 1957 Coroners Act whose Section 22 provided that a coroner could not make a finding that conflicted with a plea of Guilty.
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Barry Unsworth at the Finger Wharf at Woolloomooloo, Sydney, 1987 (adapted photo – Fairfax)

A Mystery: the Prediction of a Massacre in Tassie by a NSW Premier

  1. As is often mentioned (on the Internet) as proof that there was a conspiracy to have a massacre at Port Arthur, Barrie Unsworth, premier of New South Wales said – way back in 1987, “There will never be uniform gun laws in Australia until we see a massacre in Tasmania”. Stated at a conference in Hobart.  Either he had a crystal ball, or was in-the-know. Or, conceivably he made a random choice a state to name – Tassie.

Recap

To recapitulate, a dozen odd things can be listed as reasonable indicators of forward planning of the Port Arthur massacre.

Three meetings that day: surgeons, media people, and PAHS personnel.

Three preparations for body-handling: purchase of a mortuary truck, preparation of a large embalming supply, and the arranging for extra helicopters and pilots that day.

Two big adjustments in the political situation: a federal  election that brought John Howard into the prime ministership, and a voluntary stepping down by Ray Groom as premier of Tasmania.

Three lesser adjustments: the purchase by government of the privately owned Broad Arrow Café, the change in Workers Compo to eliminate PTSD coverage, and a change in the Coroner’s Act to restrict a coroner’s scope.

The mystery of the prescience of Barrie Unsworth.

Everything I have listed is open-source knowledge. I have refrained from discussing many other factors that suggest forward planning, in hopes of making this list clean and incontestable. I do not claim that it PROVES that someone planned the massacre (or who that someone is), but it is extremely good evidence that the massacre was planned in advance.

To argue that the massacre was not planned you would have to be willing to say that each one of the 12 items is only a coincidence, and that the conjunction of all 12 of them is mere chance.

— Mal Hughes, aka “Aussiemal” is a regular contributor to GumshoeNews, determined to bring justice to the Port Arthur situation. He thanks Mary W Maxwell for assistance in constructing this article.

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35 COMMENTS

  1. Mal, I don’t suppose many people keep their boarding passes for 20 years but no doubt the airlines know everything. One time when I rang United Airlines, circa 2000, to make a fuss about my ticket, the lady on the other end started to read back to me practically my Life History of Flying.
    The big chain hotels also keep a “guest history.”

  2. What, no fingerprints?

    “The thirty shot magazine was discarded when empty by Bryant near the servery counter and that’s actually shown on the plan which your Honour will have in due course.”

  3. The above article is only the tip of the iceberg of what is now known of the Port Arthur murders.

    New-comers to Gumshoenews, may want to make other enquiries of information dug up by civilian investigators of this subject. There are several free downloads available.

    http://www.hiddenmysteries.org/conspiracy/conspiracy/parthur1.html Andrew MacGregor

    http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/palies1.htm Tony Pitt’s records of Joe Viall’s writings

    https://www.change.org/p/the-hon-will-hodgman-mp-martin-bryant-deserves-a-lawful-coronial-inquest-and-for-all-our-sakes/u/14798902 Keith Noble’s amalgamation of several writers works.

    Stewart Beattie’s book (not download) “A Gunsmith’s Diary”, I believe is a valuable source, but I have not been able to get a copy.

    Mary Maxwell and Dee Lachlan have written book, “Enough is Enough”

    • “MAYBE THE BIGGEST BLOT IN THE HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA.”

      Mal, the Port Arthur Massacre and the resulting conduct of the Australian legal system has made it easy for me. I could go on for hours with the injustices I have seen in Court. Corrupt police, lying judges, lying witnesses, lying media, etc. etc. – However, the Port Arthur massacre is a ‘one stop shopping on reality’. All I have to do is point to that one case to encapsulate 21 years at the Bar.

      Just research that one case and you will learn everything I learned in 21 years in the system. It will only take a few hours versus the years that I spent – the research into Port Arthur is really good value, more people should take that time as it is well spent – an education into the Australian reality in a nutshell.

  5. I’m still kicking myself that I missed the opportunity to shirt-front Unsworth about his “precognition” of Australian gun control laws and :a massacre in Tasmania”.

    I knew him as a kid, being a friend of his deceased son Tony.Hadn’t seen him for 30 odd years until I bumped into his charming wife Pauline and him at a funeral in Sydney a few years ago.

    Just didn’t seem the right thing to do, at my brother’s mother-in-laws funeral.

    Wish I did, in hindsight though.

    Just so he knows that WE know…..

  6. Barry Unsworth wasn’t the only ‘prophet’ of the Port Arthur Massacre, there was Roland Browne of the Tasmanian Coalition For Gun Control that said “We are going to have a massacre in Tasmania like those elsewhere.”

    Roland Browne was also involved with a ‘coincidence’ as he was having a meeting with the ‘Coalition’ when he got a call from the Police about the massacre. He arrived at the Police media centre before any of the media arrived. In fact, the first media team from the ABC, a skeleton crew for the weekend, saw and heard the Police roar down the road and scrambled to see what was going on. They were ‘surprised’ to see Roland Browne already there to push the gun control agenda.

  8. As to the comparison to the Lindt Cafe event, I find it interesting that I’ve never seen any sort of discussion re the most obvious common factor.

    In an armed society such as the U.S, “gunfree” zones such public educational & entertainment facilities are bound to maximise vulnerability. In a disarmed place, a Culture built on categorically denying the need for any form of self-defence, a cafe environment is,very obviously, going to to fit the bill quite nicely.

    • Berry what hope is there of a gun-stupid gal like me trying to defend herself against tanks and “space denial weapons”? Or even if i was gun-smart?

      The better goal is to get our cops to work for us instead of for “them.”

      • Acting defensively is a state of mind more than anything. Personally I wouldn’t be caught dead hanging around in a room full of strangers for the sake of a sandwich and a cup of tea. I was in Tassie a mere 4 years after P.A. and it was like, “ people, mobs of them, are still doing this!” The “lone nutter” heist had evidently been swallowed hook,’ line and sinker

      • The cops don’t want to work for us, Mary. They have their own police association whilst denying others similar associations or that “they are not needed!” They wanted Australia to be disarmed so people like you now feel “gun-stupid” and helpless. No one is telling you have to own a gun, but the NFA goes against libertarianism.

  11. I`ve always thought the whole thing was a set up-all the above info was there for anyone with half a brain,and to think that a simpleton with no firearm experience could shoot ,from the hip,head shots with a military rifle has got to be kidding !!!

  13. Does anyone know if the broad Arrow cafe was compulsory acquired by the state Tasmanian gov or the private owner was looking to sell anyway

  14. All this to disarm us is vertiginous. All the more reason to keep our guns from their blood stained hands. I bless the days I contacted Keith Allan Noble and found Gumshoe. I find many folk won’t look for the truth for fear of finding it. Q. Was there a response from Stephen Parry to the Show Cause notice.

  15. Really happy to see Aussies awakening en masse, I really hope someone gets Martin Bryant out of jail alive. I wish for his Mum to have some peace and justice too. Here is my comedy show from 2009 that got buried because I spoke up about PAM.
    I interviewed Andrew McGregor and Wendy Scurr in 2001 after I had done the little research (and fought the internal incredulousness that so many evil men could orchestrate something so disgusting for such a long game) required; to see Bryant was at worst, a drugged and burnt patsy.
    I have always been ridiculed or ignored by friends and family for speaking out, but the beautiful thing about natural, scientific, repeatable, testable, observable truth is, it doesn’t change. We must align with IT. Once we have, we can leave our work behind soundly and years later not have to edit a line.
    I also wrote a blog titled “PLEASE look again at the Port Arthur Massacre “which has had a quarter of a million views. Many Americans know more of the truth about this “event”, than Aussies, especially in the last 5 years or so of hoaxed and real false flag gun grabbing set up “events”we have all been exposed to, worldwide.
    Love the spirit here at Gumshoe, the way so many contribute, the way Dee is so polite but vigilant and unwavering, and Mary is still banging away at it.
    REALLY interested to hear what happened when Mary met Hans. Those white abbotoir boots, and the energy of those three men on that balcony that day in that photo (Overbeeke, Vialls and Noble)… they’re just really making me want to INSIST someone FOI requests Hans and sons victim impact statements of the day. In all these years I had NEVER heard that these THREE men were in the cafe after the massacre taking peoples details to make phone calls to worried family.. . . WTF! Someone just needs to make some kind of civil case like the way they got OJ the second time. Doesn’t matter the result, the evidence required to be presented would pardon Martin. I am no lawyer but I know a good one.. . .(Mary ; )

  16. As compelling as it sounds, there is nothing to corroborate the events actually had anything to do with the Port Arthur Massacre (PAM).

    Therefore I can only presume Martin Bryant is guilty. And anything to say about the PAM being staged as a false flag would only be disrespectful to the persons who were there at the time and the families and friends of the 35 victims who died there.

    • Oh Richard — here we go again. “would only be disrespectful to the persons who were there at the time and the families and friends of the 35 victims who died there. Typical mainstream lie.

      Imagine for a moment a Mafia boss guns downs a child in the street to teach the family a lesson. The few witnesses stay ‘mum’ for the fear of being punished. A homeless guy in the alley is blamed and goes to jail. Years later someone comes forward and says they have evidence the mafia don did it. Are you going to go with “would only be disrespectful to the persons who were there at the time and the families and friends…” No. I’m sure you wouldn’t.

      • Of course not. Now, there’s a problem with your argument about the Mafia. Firstly, a Mafia boss wouldn’t gun down a child in the street “to teach his/her family a lesson”. The Sicilian Mafia are very particular about innocent bystanders when it comes to a hit.

        In occasions where an innocent had died during a Mafia hit, the Mafiosi soldiers involved would be “whacked” in retaliation to the death of the innocent bystander. Which is why gangsters involved in a drive-by shooting during the Bootleg era was always a two car affair; the first car firing blanks so as to make all the bystanders duck for cover as the intended victim(s) would draw in self defence as the occupants of the second car fired live rounds killing the victim(s) without harming any innocent bystanders.

        Al Capone was notorious for killing anyone who botched a hit resulting in the death or injury of any innocent bystanders.

        Secondly, I have written a post on FB to which a person who was there at the time missed my point and confronted me over it, and I had to set her straight, telling her that my post was purely related to evidence and the lack thereof.

        I don’t deny the unusual series of events which took place prior to the Massacre had taken place. However, there is no evidence to prove these events had anything to do with the Massacre. And unless someone involved were to come forward and corroborate the claims related to these events, I can only dismiss them as coincidental.

        Then there is the claim of one or more professional shooters being involved. Such a claim would need to be corroborated by one or more of these shooters in question together with a confession of being the one(s) responsible for the 35 people who died there along the others who were wounded.

        Its not what you know that matters in a court of law, it’s what you can prove to a court of law that’s important.

      • You know someone is ill-gotten of information when they still hold the uneducated view that mafia has it’s base in an Italian past. Almost all organised crime terminologies have origins in hebrew or yiddish and back in 1932 86% of organised crime was run by Jewish interests. So, can we talk about YOUR problem with mafia?

  17. Have had enough.I went to Newtown high with him and knew cops involved.To get straight to the point anyone that thinks he did it alone is either a spook or severely mentally ill.If anyone is in doubt try to access the coroners report and do the sums.The bottom line is there could not be a trial allowed as people who knew him could testify.To that mafia dill ask Sergeant Lupo Prinz his opinion on autistic people controlling 3 crime scenes at once.Most conspiracies can be dispelled from people on the scene or knew participants well.Im TELLIN you it was 100!%impossible for Bryant to do it.not 99% 100%.

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