Ruins of the Black Swan Hotel at Barfold, Victoria. Picture by Dave Callaway

However, a brief visit today yielded an interesting snippet regarding my great-great grandparents James and Sarah Evans.

I knew from Shire of Metcalfe rate books they owned a property at Barfold in Central Victoria between 1866 and 1876. I also knew that James was at various times a farmer, road building contractor and publican.

Everyone knows that running a pub isn’t easy, as this report from The Argus newspaper in Melbourne on January 24, 1872 confirms:

“A drunken and fatal brawl,” reports the Kyneton Observer, “took place on Sunday afternoon, at Barfold. Two men in a state of stupefaction commenced a quarrel at the house of an inkeeper named Evans. An argument arose between the deceased Thomas Corbin and a man named Isaac Simpson. Before any one could interpose, the two men were struggling in a small room off the bar. After sundry blows had been exchanged the deceased fell heavily to the ground, the accused falling on top of him. At this moment the landlord entered, and took Simpson by the collar and thrust him out. The deceased then called out, ‘Mrs. Evans, Mrs. Evans, I am a done man.’ He breathed heavily, rolled back his eyes, and died within a few minutes of the onset of the row.” At the inquest, a verdict of manslaughter was returned against Simpson, who was then committed for trial.

I searched for the trial report, but couldn’t find one. Unfortunately the Kyneton Observer hasn’t been digitised yet.

I might check the inquest file one day at the Public Record Office.

Note: The picture above is published courtesy of Dave Callaway. It is believed to be the ruins of the Black Swan Hotel at Barfold. I don’t know if that’s the building where the fatal brawl occurred.

However, my philosophical objections to capital punishment have receded as I get older. In some circumstances I believe it may be appropriate.

In February 2009, I wrote an article elsewhere about what should happen to arsonists who ignited the terrible Victorian bushfires. I said the time has come for the community and politicians to seriously consider reintroducing capital punishment.

The fact many of Victoria’s horrific fires were deliberately lit begged the question of a suitable penalty if the offenders were caught and convicted.

I considered that execution was a fitting punishment given the lives that were lost.

The strongest argument against capital punishment is the risk of getting it wrong and killing an innocent person.

Religious objections fail scrutiny considering mankind’s history.

If the facts of a case can be proved beyond any doubt whatsoever, and reasonable appeals and reviews are exhausted, judges should have the option to hand down a death sentence for terrible crimes of mass murder.

People on the street of all political backgrounds formed that view in the aftermath of the bushfires.

It could be argued that capital punishment is too good for homicidal arsonists in that they should be made to live with the guilt of their crimes forever.

However, society should not have to bear the cost of keeping them in prison.

And the ultimate message of deterrence should be sent to anyone who might contemplate deliberately lighting a destructive fire in the future.

A life sentence seems too light for the perpetrators of devastation and misery who causes untold tragedy.

It’s an unpleasant subject, but unless one holds strong views on ethical grounds, it seems logical to me that capital punishment is appropriate for heinous crimes when the guilt is beyond doubt.

Six teenagers who pleaded guilty last month were placed on a 12-month probation order and had no conviction recorded against them for the 2005 rape of the 10-year-old girl in Aurukun on Cape York. Three others – aged 17, 18 and 26 – were given suspended jail sentences.

In sentencing, Judge Sarah Bradley (pictured) said the girl had “probably agreed” to have sex with the nine, prompting calls for her sacking this week.

The judge has come under intense criticism and I was going to join the pack.

In researching this article however, I came across the Courier Mail’s edited version of the transcript. It’s been edited to avoid identifying the victim and the juvenile defendants.

The transcript shows the Crown prosecutor sought the sentences which were handed down, making it ironic the Attorney-General is now seeking to appeal them.

In court, the prosecutor Steve Carter said the defendants were “very naughty for doing what they’re doing but it’s really – in this case, it was a form of childish experimentation, rather than one child being prevailed upon by another, although – as I said, although she was very young, she knew what was going on and she had agreed to meet the children at this particular place and it was all by arrangement, so – for that purpose.”

There was no victim impact material. Mr Carter told the judge: “None of the penalties that I’ve been instructed to seek have been, involve custodian penalty, immediate custodial penalty, not even for the adults.”

He acknowledged the victim was not capable of giving consent. Although that “doesn’t excuse them, it does in some way lessen the fact that there was no actual force in the sense.”

Her Honour: “But she was only 10 at the time, wasn’t she?”

Mr Carter: “Yes, that’s right, and there’s no possible way that she could have consented willing (sic) – knowingly, with the full knowledge to these offences, even though – that she’d gone through the motions of having sex with these people and I’d submit that that’s something as well. They didn’t force themselves on her, threaten her, or in any way engage in any of that sort of behaviour.”

For the Crown and the judge it seemed to come down to the fact the accused and the victim were Aboriginal and there was no force involved.

If a white girl had been abused in similar circumstances it’s intolerable to think the rapists would have escaped custodial sentences, even the juveniles.

Who am I to say the judge decided wrongly based on her interpretation of the cultural circumstances?

It’s important to maintain separation between the state and the judiciary.

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has stepped dangerously close to crossing the line. The prosecutor has been stood down pending an investigation, the judge is under fire and an appeal is planned. The Federal Government has weighed in as well.

Presented with agreed submissions from the defence and the Crown it is hard to imagine the judge having decided any differently.

Sure, in principle the standards of justice should be the same for all Australians, but in reality they aren’t.

Aboriginal incarceration rates are much higher and life expectancy is much shorter. Sending a group of boys to prison may just have entrenched them in the dark side of a bad system.

I certainly don’t condone what happened to the girl and personally I think custodial sentences should have been given to the adults involved, regardless of their intellectual capacity.

I just think the politicians and the media should back off from a witch hunt against the judge and the DPP. They shouldn’t be made scapegoats for systemic failures.

That’s a little surprising when you consider that journalists are writers. But when you think about it, we are craftsmen while novelists are artists. We ply a trade while they follow their creative spirits. We have responsibilities, they don’t.

Three good books about newspapers come readily to mind. PG Wodehouse wrote Psmith, Journalist in 1915; Evelyn Waugh wrote Scoop in 1938 and Terry Pratchett published The Truth in 2000.

In Wodehouse’s classic, Psmith arrives in New York on a cricket tour and becomes involved with the home entertainment weekly “Cosy Moments” which he transforms into a hard-hitting investigative journal. He rides the bumps of organised crime and American politics along the way.

In Waugh’s story, scribe William Boot is mistaken by the publisher of the Daily Beast for a war correspondent. He is uprooted from writing country garden features to covering the civil war in Ishmaelia. Both novels are cleverly satirical.

Pratchett’s The Truth is a typically fantastic work from the author of the Discworld series. The hero in this case is William de Worde, who teams up with dwarfs to print the first newspaper in Ankh-Morpork.

As usual, Pratchett offers some tremendous insights into human nature. His observations of the newspaper profession are also very sharp, suggesting excellent research or personal knowledge. For instance, he offers a rare literary tribute to the unsung work of sub-editors.

I’ve just finished reading The Truth for the second time. I found the focus on hired assassins to be distracting and kept wanting the story to get back to the trials and tribulations of The Times.

There are some great one liners, like when the dwarfs make a typesetting error with the newspaper’s logo, which becomes: “The truth will make you fret”.

I related personally to the serial pest who kept coming into the office with remarkable vegetables. Anyone who has worked on a country newspaper will know there are people in most towns who like to show off their giant tomatoes or funny-shaped parsnips.

I admit it’s one of my long-term ambitions to write a satirical novel about newspapers. I started taking notes of strange but true incidents last year, like when one of my reporters disappeared while on the trail of visiting Mongolian detectives.

I have heaps of material; just need the time to write it.

Originally, the idea was to walk up to some random stranger and slap them, while friends recorded the event on their mobile phones. Hilarious, I don’t think! Whatever endorphins that act released obviously became very attractive, because it has now become de rigeur to commit acts of minor violence upon random strangers even when there is nobody there to record the event.

I hope this bizarre behaviour doesn’t travel past England’s shores in popularity but I won’t be surprised if it does, or if indeed it’s already happening in Australian cities.

At the age of 40 it’s tempting to moralise about the lack of values in today’s society. I won’t though. I’ll look for other explanations instead.

The “happy slapping” attack on Karyn’s 13-year-old son struck a chord with me because this week we reported a random act of violence in the Kalgoorlie Miner. A group of five white males bashed and kicked an elderly Aboriginal man who asked them for a cigarette outside a Boulder hotel.

Nobody has been arrested yet. If someone is hopefully brought to account it will be interesting to hear the defence because it appears to have been an act of senseless, random, racial violence.

Overt physical violence is a logical next step for the teenagers who engage in “happy slapping”. This type of behavior was either non-existent or highly unusual when I was that age some 20-25 years ago. So what has changed?

I’m not an academic by any means, but I’ve developed a theory that today’s generation is the most selfish, as a whole, to ever strut the planet.

People are very focused on themselves. Ironically, that encourages a pack mentality to develop which is even more selfish in its outlook. Humans are basically tribal creatures. The self-centred individual needs other self-centred individuals to rationalise and endorse his or her own selfish behavior. The pack is greater than the single and more dangerous. Something like Lord of the Flies.

This tendency has been present throughout history but flourishes today because people are better educated, healthier and wealthier.

For much of history a large number of humans have been virtual slaves with short lifespans and life was cheap. The peasant had little time or inclination to think for himself. His life was mapped out for him from the day he was born and he accepted this fate, which was indoctrinated through his faith system and culture as well.

Through most of human history there has also been a necessity for people to band together for the greater good. The pack mentality was in that sense a positive energy. It was critical for defence against enemies, to gather the harvest and to ward off hardship.

This was also the case for western society in the first eight decades of the 20th century. World wars needed people to share, care for others and work together under a benevolent authoritarian state. The legacy continued until the 1980s via the older generation and a sense of wariness surrounding the Cold War.

No such threat exists today. We have a largely prosperous society and a growing resentment among those who are poor towards those who aren’t. The affluent are often bored and without a traditional sense of values to care for others.

I hate to say it, but no immediate resolution presents itself. I won’t advocate authoritarianism, and although I have religious faith, I accept it can’t be forced on people. The likely solution is severe hardship, either through war or major natural disaster.

There is ample evidence that humans will band together in a positive sense to overcome adversity. The responses to September 11 and the tsunami show this to be true.

Sadly, I think it will take a massive disaster to realign society’s values towards a prevailing goodness.

The commission’s powers include being able “to compel a witness to attend a hearing, to produce documents, to obtain a search warrant on application to a judge, to intercept telecommunications and use surveillance devices, to use assumed identities, and to conduct integrity tests”.

I’m not convinced it’s necessary or desirable to allow an investigative organisation the right to tap private phones without genuine suspicion of wrongdoing. The CCC’s inquiry into alleged misconduct by public officers seems to be very much a fishing trip, and without phone taps the evidence would be flimsy to say the least.

Even with the telephone evidence the private discussions are open to various interpretations.

The ministers who have been paraded before the commission have definitely been indiscreet. I don’t believe they are corrupt. I’m certain they are not the first ministers to leak cabinet discussions but they will probably be the last.

Politics is already a profession that has its leading players living in a fishbowl of public examination. It’s difficult to attract quality people to state politics in particular, and although party pre-selection processes leave a lot to be desired, it’s going to be even harder to recruit candidates who aren’t party hacks.

It’s fair game now in Western Australia for ministers to have their private discussions recorded and monitored. Not many people will be willing to live under that level of scrutiny.

In terms of the ministers currently before the commission, I can’t help but think that Premier Alan Carpenter is largely to blame for relaxing Geoff Gallop’s previous ban on links with lobbyists Brian Burke and Julian Grill. Carpenter blurred the lines and some ministers stumbled across it.

The fall-out isn’t good for the government or the people of Western Australia.

His main character, Inspector Kurt Willander, is a thoughtful introspective man who reflects on societal change while solving murder mysteries.

This particular book was different to anything I’ve read by British or American authors. There wasn’t a build up of suspense, but more an unravelling of why certain things had to be.

Willander gradually comes to understand that three brutal murders were committed by a woman seeking revenge against men who abuse women.

Although the murderess wasn’t named until late in the book, she appears in cameo scenes throughout and there is no puzzle regarding her method or motive.

Mankel drew an interesting parallel with a vigilante group committed to seeking retribution against criminals not apprehended by police.

The values of modern Sweden come under scrutiny without any pompous moralising.

Wallander’s approach and methodology are fascinating to read and there is subtle humor in the digs at police bureaucracy.

There’s no great pace to this book, but it gives an insight to Sweden and police work generally.

It’s important to keep some perspective though. The candlelight vigils and apparent national obsession with this case is over the top.

The Singapore High Commissioner made some telling comments yesterday about the lives that Nguyen would have harmed if the heroin he was carrying had reached its destination. Some 26,000 hits was the amount that he held.

Drugs are evil and Nguyen was part of an evil system. The penalty doesn’t fit the crime, but we shouldn’t portray him as a victim.

The media interest is just because he’s Australian. Think of all the people executed each week in China, the United States and elsewhere. Some of them may be innocent. I weep more for them.

Have you ever committed any war crimes? Are you a terrorist? They’re not the exact words, but they may as well be.

I can just picture Osama Bin Laden sitting in his cave thinking he can trick the Australian Government into giving him citizenship by answering "no" to both questions.

Obviously, terrorists will attempt to deceive. I suppose that if the deceipt is discovered the government can deport them for telling fibs on the application. That’s the only reason I can see for asking such questions.

I’m currently reading “In the Moon of Red Ponies” by James Lee Burke. The Daily Mail described Burke as the “most literary” of modern crime writers, and I have to agree.

It’s not often a single line in a book stands out in my mind. I came across this gem tonight:

But Johnny was also an idealist, and it’s the idealists who, given the chance, will incinerate half the world to save the other half.

Harsh but true!