Salt Creek backpacker trial jury taken to remote case site of rugged beauty on the Coorong
THE terrain is treacherous — soft and sandy in places, shot through in others with brambles and shells that tear at clothing and flesh. This is what happened when the Salt Creek jury visited the scene. SEE THE IMAGES
THE terrain is treacherous — soft and sandy in places, shot through in others with thick brambles and sharp shells that tear at clothing and flesh.
The spot is incredibly beautiful but isolated, almost 4km from the nearest access road, and mobile phone service is intermittent at best.
Other people — and help — are 20 minutes’ drive away, back over an enormous sand dune and down the dirt track that leads to Salt Creek.
The only sound audible at Tea Tree Crossing, on Friday, was the ocean — but a year ago, prosecutors allege, the air was filled with the screams of two young backpackers.
The women, from Brazil and Germany, claim they were kidnapped and subjected to a brutal ordeal by the man they had trusted to drive them to Melbourne.
Prosecutors say the duo survived only by relying on one another to escape their attacker and, on Friday, sought to illustrate their desperate struggle using the scene of the alleged crime.
A Supreme Court jury of eight men and four women boarded SES four-wheel drives just after midday to begin their trek.
Prosecutor Jim Pearce QC led the convoy in an unmarked police vehicle, followed by Justice Trish Kelly and defence counsel Bill Boucaut SC.
The jury view began where the alleged ordeal ended — at the gate between the beach and the dunes where, Mr Pearce said, the women were rescued by passers-by.
The alleged incident began 3.5km northwest, in the brambly and shell-crusted dips between the dunes.
Jurors were shown where, in February last year, the man set up camp, then allegedly asked the Brazilian to go for a walk while the German woman slept in the car.
They retraced the duo’s steps into the dunes and saw where, it is alleged, he pushed her face-first into the sand, cut off her clothes with a knife, bound and sexually assaulted her.
And they saw the place where the German woman allegedly faced off with their assailant, prompting him to strike her four times, in the head, with a hammer.
Mr Pearce pointed out where investigators had later found the women’s personal items, including sunglasses and caps, hundreds of metres from the campsite.
They were allegedly discarded as the women fled — the Brazilian naked, the German bleeding profusely from the head as the man repeatedly mowed her down with his vehicle.
The view finished with a 2km drive inland, over steep and harsh terrain, echoing the path driven by the man while the German clung to the car’s bonnet and roof.
Jurors were told the woman later emerged from the dunes covered head to toe in her own blood while the man was arrested, without incident, sitting in his car back on the beach.
The trial continues on Tuesday.