NATHAN Carnie doesn’t mind wading through the muck and filth of humanity.
For the last five years, he’s been busy reading and writing about the very worst of us, those so desperate and soulless they are driven to take the lives of others.
It’s what the Mildura-based author seemed destined to do.
“All my life, I’ve been interested in crime scene forensics, human anatomy, that sort of thing,” he said.
“But I wasn’t smart enough to get into the industry. So, writing is the only way I can do it.”
Carnie is the man behind Your Town Murders, a homegrown publishing house whose mission is to scout Australian cities and towns for true murder mysteries and skeletons in closets.
Carnie has written five books so far, including the three-volume Monsters of the Mallee series, which focused on crimes committed in Victoria’s northwest, just over the river down south.
It was inevitable that Carnie’s attentions would swerve toward Broken Hill, and his newest book, Homicide Hill: A Far-West Homicide Handbook, catalogues the worst of crimes to have occurred in a city the author describes as appearing “innocent and harmonious to most”, but harbouring with a “sinister underbelly”.
From suspicious mining accidents of the bad old days to more recent mysteries like the drowning of the entire Smithson family (save father and husband, Harold) at Menindee in 1971, Carnie dives deep into the newspapers and court proceedings, never presuming to pass judgement himself, but to simply tell the tale.
It’s raw and sometimes ugly, which is exactly how Carnie likes it.
“I’m not trained in writing,” he said.
“For me, it’s just all about my passion for forensics. In a way, I’m even just trying to inspire locals to delve into that themselves. It’s like that Butterfly Effect – you create a small energy and it travels out in a ripple effect. I like the thought of that.”
Carnie is almost done with his next book, about murders in Shepparton, for which he enlisted a writing partner in John Killick, the notorious bank robber who sensationally escaped from Silverwater Correctional Complex by helicopter in 1999. Having authored a handful of his own memoirs, Killick, now a free man, was a useful partner in crime writing.
“John has been really helpful,” Carnie said. “He knew some of the people we were writing about, because he was in prison with them. He’s lived it.”
Wading waist-deep in human jetsam can be an exhausting business, even for a hardened enthusiast like Carnie. But he said he’s determined keep mining the dirt in Australian cities and townships.
“I am worried about losing a little bit of passion,” he said.
“It’s really hard work for what you get out of it. I’ve written six books now and they’ve all done well, but sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it.
“I’ll keep battling away. All art is like that I suppose.”
Homicide Hill: A Far-West Homicide Handbook can be purchased from The Broken Hill Bookshop in Argent Street, Under the Silver Tree in Sulphide Street or from yourtownmurders.com.
