A little life lost in the shadows
Baby’s grim death raises serious questions about the child welfare system
‘HOW gorgeous! Can’t believe you’re a mum! Lucky Bub!’ a Facebook friend gushed beneath the black and white photo of a smiling, seemingly happy family.
They say a picture never lies but this one did.
Because there was certainly nothing ‘lucky’ about the circumstances into which the big-eyed baby in the happy snap was born.
He and his little sister lived on the streets with their homeless parents — a 48year-old boozer and allegedly violent schizophrenic and his 23-year-old private school and university-educated partner who had somehow fallen under his spell.
Less than 18 months after the Facebook photo was posted, their baby daughter was dead — allegedly thrown into the Tweed River by the father.
The tragedy has sparked community anger and toplevel investigations into how authorities in Queensland and NSW could possibly have allowed such young children to be living rough.
The family was well known to police and government child safety officials on both sides of the border, as well as welfare services.
They had been staying in parks and toilet blocks up and down the Gold and Tweed coasts for months, travelling in a battered black Toyota HiAce van.
Authorities were alerted at least as early as May, when a Surfers Paradise resident wrote to the Gold Coast City Council to express concern about the crying baby sleeping on a wooden platform overlooking Surfers Paradise beach.
Council staff wrote back five days later, telling the resident to raise the matter with other authorities as it was not the council’s responsibility.
At an extradition hearing on Wednesday, Southport Magistrates’ Court heard the father had attacked a council inspector on September 5 after the officer visited the family’s illegal campsite in the sand dunes at Broadbeach.
Broadbeach police also received a phone call from a worker in the area at 9.50am on Friday, concerned about the baby’s cries and the yelling between the adults.
“My worker had heard a baby crying,” the manager of the business said.
“He rang the police at 9.50am — it’s on his phone. He heard a young baby crying and an adult was yelling. My bloke was that concerned about the kid screaming. They (the police) didn’t come to us at all. I don’t know if they sent anybody down to check on the people in the park.”
Documents tendered at Tweed Heads Local Court, where the father appeared on Thursday charged with his daughter’s murder, reveal the family came into contact with police early last Saturday, just hours before allegedly killing his baby.
The documents state police were called to Broadbeach about 3am and found the man and his partner “well affected by intoxicating liquor”.
“Concerns were held for their ability to provide care and shelter for their children aged one year and 11 months and nine months of age,” police stated.
Officers then drove the family to Kingscliff on the Tweed Coast, home to an indigenous elder to whom the father was related.
A neighbour said yesterday she was woken by banging on the elder’s door and a man yelling “let me in, let me in”.
“It’s just devastating,” she said of the baby’s tragic death.
Another resident said she saw the family on Saturday morning before they caught a bus to Tweed Heads.
Court documents say the family arrived about midday at Chris Cunningham Park next to the Jack Evans Boat Harbour — “an area wellknown to be frequented by itinerants and homeless”.
The documents allege the father handed the baby to another woman in the park but she gave the little girl back, telling him: “I can’t do it, I’m living on the street.”
The family later took shelter from a heavy storm in the Tweed Mall shopping centre.
CCTV footage allegedly captured the family pushing the baby, wearing only a nappy, in a shopping trolley.
The father then allegedly told his partner he was going to give the baby to an elder.
“It is alleged the accused took the child and threw her into the nearby watercourse of Boyd’s Bay or the Tweed River,” the documents state.
He then allegedly returned to his partner and son. The three family members continued to shelter from the storm before catching a bus to Broadbeach.
Documents allege the father was arrested at 12.26am on Monday over a domestic violence incident with his partner.
Eerily, late-night beach walkers found the baby washed up on Surfers Paradise beach eight minutes later.
The father has been remanded in custody until his next court date on February 25 next year.
Meanwhile, investigations are under way into how the family could have slipped through the cracks in the system.
“I want answers,” Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said this week. “The Queensland public want answers, and we want those answers as quickly as possible.”
A Tweed Heads woman who tried to intervene in a violent domestic dispute between the couple before the baby’s death said the community had failed the girl.
“I never for one minute thought it would get to that (the baby’s death) so shame on all of us, because nobody did anything. We failed her.”