Jai, Tyler, Bailey Farquharson: Family marks 20 years since dam tragedy
The dam that claimed three young brothers looks peaceful now, but for their grandparents the horror of that Father's Day night at the hands of child killer Robert Farquharson has never faded.
The dam outside Winchelsea looks peaceful now. The wire fence is strong, the water smooth and a once double-lane road at its side is now a dual carriageway.
Yet for one family it will never be just a farm dam.
It is the torturous place three young brothers – Jai, 10, Tyler, 7, and Bailey, 2 – drowned on Father’s Day, 2005.
Their father, Robert Farquharson, somehow escaped. Two juries would find he deliberately plunged his car into the water in a sick attempt to punish his estranged wife, Cindy Gambino.
He has always denied it.
On the 20th anniversary of a crime that shook Australia, the boys’ grandparents have spoken of how their grief has never eased, nor has their belief that justice was done.
A FAMILY DESTROYED
For Beverley and Bob Gambino, known as Grandma and Poppy to Jai, Tyler and Bailey, the pain of that night remains as raw as it was two decades ago.
“It is a scar that never heals,” Bob said.
“It seems like yesterday. It just doesn’t go away.”
Speaking from their Birregurra home, his wife agreed.
“A day doesn’t go by that we don’t speak about or think about them,” she said.
The boy’s mother, Cindy, died suddenly in 2022, aged just 50.
Her parents now see it as part of the collateral damage of Farquharson’s evil act on that lonely stretch off the Princes Highway.
“Our family has been completely destroyed by this.”
A NIGHT ETCHED IN DARKNESS
The horror of that evening also left its stain on those who rushed to the scene.
Among them was former Geelong Advertiser journalist, Kate Johnstone.
She was the late reporter at the time when a call came across the police scanner that a car had gone into a dam near Winchelsea.
Grabbing her notebook, she drove from the office blissfully unaware of what she’d soon be confronted with.
“I had no idea what I was walking into,” she said.
“I was one of the first there just because our office was so close.”
She recalled a man sitting in the back of an ambulance, wrapped in a blanket, as she walked towards the sirens and flashing lights.
Speaking to a police officer on the edge of the water, he leaned in and told her three young boys were in the car at the bottom of the dam.
“I remember feeling physically sick,” she said.
“It was not a normal crime scene. The gravity of what had happened was pressing down on everyone who was there.
“There was just silence, everyone was moving so carefully and slowly.
“Because it was too late.”
She called the newsroom and told them they would need to hold the front page.
“I had to phone the copy through to the subs desk from the dam,” she said.
While the details were not yet known, the magnitude of the tragedy was obvious.
Ms Johnstone, now 48, said her instincts immediately told her it was more than a tragic accident.
Yet her strongest memory was silence.
“I still remember the water,” she said.
“There wasn’t even a ripple on the surface of the dam.
“It looked deep and dark.
“It is something that has stayed with me forever.”
FROM TRAGEDY TO TRIAL
On September 4, 2005, Farquharson’s Holden Commodore left the Princes Highway and plunged into the dam.
He told police he had a coughing fit that caused him to “black out”.
Yet a witness came forward saying she saw his car braking and veering before leaving the road. The three boys were later found dead still strapped in their seatbelts.
At his first trial, in 2007, prosecutors argued Farquharson was driven by rage and jealousy after his marriage broke down.
One of his friend’s, Greg King, testified he had spoken of revenge against Cindy months earlier outside a Winchelsea fish and chip shop. A jury convicted him of three counts of murder.
The convictions were overturned in 2009, but a retrial in 2010 would also sink him. Farquharson, now 56, was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 33 years.
He remains behind bars inside Barwon Prison’s protected Hoya Unit, home to some of the state’s most sadistic inmates.
THEORIES AND FRUSTRATION
However, the case continues to stir debate, something that frustrates Bob and Beverley.
Books, documentaries and podcasts have re-examined the crash site, with new reconstructions, medical theories and everything in between dished up.
Supporters of the convicted child killer insist cough syncope – a rare condition that can cause sudden blackouts – could very well have explained the accident.
For two years after her children’s death, even Cindy Gambino supported his claims of innocence.
Until the evidence against him became too much.
“At first we supported Cindy, but as time went by … we put our trust in the court system and hoped they would get it right,” her mum said.
“And they did get it right.”
For most, Farquharson’s behaviour in the aftermath just didn’t pass the father test.
This included swimming to shore as his children sank, and not immediately calling triple-0.
Instead, after flagging down a car, he demanded to be driven straight to Cindy’s house so he could deliver the news himself. He later asked for a cigarette on the banks of the dam as
others dived in the water searching for the car, and his kids.
“We know he is guilty,” Bob said.
“We knew Robbie.
“You get to know someone over a long time.... and it fits.”
In the eyes of most, he is the country’s most despised family annihilator.
REMEMBERING JAI, TYLER AND BAILEY
Much of the family’s pain is now tied to the loss of their daughter and what could have been with their grandkids.
“Jai would have been in his early 30s by now,” Bob, 78, said.
“We could have had great grandchildren.”
There have been milestones missed – like 18th and 21st birthdays.
But a stoic Beverley said they had choices.
“We could either dig a hole and bury ourselves, or we could choose to rise above it,” she said.
“We have decided to rise above it.
“But it is hard. It is so, so hard.”
They now cling to the special times, like the annual Easter egg hunts on Easter Sunday.
The boys would arrive at their grandparents home on Barry St, baskets in hand, and eager to find the chocolate goodness hidden in the backyard.
Grandma, as she recalled with piercing clarity, would always hide some near a particular tree.
“One time Tyler raced to the tree but I actually forgot to put the eggs there that year,” she said.
“The look on his face was absolutely priceless.
“I can still see that face.”
Jai used to call Poppy’s favourite recliner “the Tattslotto chair”.
“My coins would fall out of my pockets and down the cracks of the couch,” he said.
“He used to clean me out.”
Both agree without the support of their own three children – Jason, Cameron and Scott – they would be lost.
“They have been our absolute rocks,” Beverley said.
“Very special boys.”
A DAM THAT WILL NEVER BE STILL
The dam at Winchelsea is now a place of quiet reflection. Three large white crosses line its fence line in memory of the three boys. Safety rails now act as barriers from the road to the paddock.
On its surface, the water lies flat and unbroken. But for the Gambino’s, and others like Kate Johnstone, it will never be still.
“I still avoid driving on that road,” the former journo said, speaking from her Aireys Inlet home.
“And I can’t look at that dam.”
Twenty years on, the story that lies beneath it will never be forgotten.
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Originally published as Jai, Tyler, Bailey Farquharson: Family marks 20 years since dam tragedy
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