Les and Paul Mulholland were born on the Hawkesbury and have lived the entirety of their lives on Dangar Island. Two of eight brothers, they joined their father Bill on his oyster leases before they could read. Aged twenty, they became fearless brawlers at the Brooklyn Hotel. Men who would fight drunk or sober, Friday night or Sunday morning, evenly matched or mob handed, clean or dirty.

Les favoured the tense walk into some fresh air for his challenges, halfway up the slope to the Police station mostly, where there was gradient enough for him to only have to kick the beaten body once to have it roll all the way down the narrow street to the crossroad.

Paul though liked the immediate and brutal effect of a blow caught unawares, he liked the sound of a skull hitting hard on the floor, the gradual seep of blood from an ear or nose. Paul liked the hushdown in the bar as the patrons eased away from his work, and watched.

Six years ago they decided to cultivate an acre of hidden valley behind Melvy’s Wharf, just north of Fisherman’s Point, and they used their oyster boats to transport watering gear, camo netting, fencing wire, tents beds and firearms. The valley was last occupied by a lone zealot who left a baked mud and wood hut and a crippled white stallion two months before the brothers arrived. Self named Zechariah; he had poisoned himself eating local Burgonia Wattle and died unable to draw breath, curled up like a dead cat on the floor of his dark hovel.

Scoured and foul, the marks of his last agony were evident in the grooves his heels had hammered out in the bare dirt.

The brothers tossed Zechariah’s remains into the bush where it slowly rotted into the earth, festooned by maggots and clouded by bushflies.

Melvy’s Wharf was owned by a young Swiss family, Roger and Odile, childless. They had both moved into the area from Geelong and were often seen lying prostrate in the mud naked, blackened by the sun, covered by mosquitoes and sand flies, unmoving, monumentally insensible to the progress of the day.

Hotel talk had it as LSD, neighbors spoke of demonism, Les and Paul just walked past them one day and took ownership of their valley.

Les Mulholland: Subject of NSW Police Report (Confidential distribution) – File dated 14/March/2006 – Centrally Filed under DDSA, Reference 243, Northern Districts.

Les Mulholland.

Aged 25, medium build, black hair, medium height, brown eyed. NDM (No distinguishing marks)

Recent Record of Interview is as follows.

March 2006 – Assault in company

February 2006 – Assault

January 2006 – Assault occasioning grievous bodily harm

September 2005 – Menacing behavior

June 2005 – Attempted rape

April 2005 – Attempted abduction of minor

January 2005 – Arson

September 2004 – Vagrancy

April 2004 – Break and Enter

January 2004 – Assault in company

October 2003 – Arson, destruction of sanctified property.

June 2003 – Breaking Garnishee bond

February 2003 – Bigamy

Convictions – 11

Court appearances – 25

Les

The file notes that in many instance witnesses were not forthcoming and some alleged victims declined charges, the file notes that Les Mulholland was not subject to victim intimidation restraints at any time in he last 3 years. The file also notes that Les Mulholland is suspected to have been involved in the 1999 unsolved disappearance of his younger brother George.

George, aged 12 and born mute, was found buried to the neck behind oyster lease 15a, a lease operated by the Mulholland family adjacent to Snake Island. The boy had been buried alive in the middle of a large mangrove-crab pit, and attending Police reported that by the time they arrived – 2 days after his reported disappearance – his head had been eaten back to the bone, both inside and out.

The body however had remained preserved by the mud. Ligature marks were found around his ankles and genitals. His intestinal cavity was full of gravel, his feet had been rudely crushed and the crude tattoo punched into his back by nails dipped in black paint read NILI.

Dr Desouza of the Sydney University interpreted this a the Hebrew initials for ‘ The Eternal One of Israel will not prove false ‘

The same initials were later found scratched on the wall of Zechariah’s hovel, just above the fireplace, itself a three-foot pit of lime scoured bones.

Investigations are continuing.

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