Amidst the sea of celebrity gossip, sport and associated thrilling content (does anyone really care that Michelle Obama ordered some new boots?) that news.com.au serves up, the chance to brighten up my day is a special moment.

News stories that make me chuckle are far and few between.

News stories that involve children dying that make me chuckle are as rare as hens teeth.

Going back to my standup days I always hated it when a comedian attempted to elicit audience sympathy by stating they were “going to hell for this next joke”. By stating it they automatically set the mindset up of the audience to expect something crude, vulgar and most likely politically incorrect.

As I read the story of how three Brisbane children died back in 2006 I searched the depths of my soul to muster up some sympathy.

There was none. Just the stifled rumblings of laughter, the result of a psyche I thought I knew.

It was the tail end of the summer, or more accurately the beginning of Autumn. On what was probably a warm balmy Saturday night Hayden Duncan (11), his brother Glen Duncan (8) and Reggie Fisher (9) were hanging out at Redbank station. The boys were sitting on the train platform with their legs dangling over the side.

These kids clearly had a bright future ahead of them.

Senior Constable Kym Gralton happened to walk past and asked them to leave the station.

The three boys told Senior Constable Kym Gralton to “f**k off”‘ before moving on to pelt a train with rocks.


As far as I’m aware not only is swearing at a police officer just not on but throwing rocks at trains? What the hell is a Senior Constable doing taking shit from three little kids and watching as they commit crimes?

…oh, did I mention the boys were Aboriginal?

After “throwing five or six rocks at a train, which smashed a window”, the boys continued on home choosing to walk along the train tracks.

Despite “trains in the area (being) put on alert that youths were on the track”, (uh, why didn’t someone just you know, remove them?);

the driver of the M101 Brisbane-bound train did not see the boys’ shadows until they were 20 metres away.He said the driver then hit the emergency brakes on the train but it did not come to a stop until 375m after the collision point.

The boys died instantly just before 6.30pm.


Who says fate doesn’t have a (twisted) sense of humor? I think part of the amusement comes from the general feeling of satisfaction one gets when the typical Australian bogan terry tough cunt community get piledrived back to reality.

Now given the circumstances you’d imagine police would then rock up at the parents house, break the news of the deaths and share a cuppa with the parents over some memorable stories of their kids stupid behaviour (of which I’m sure there would be plenty).

Exhibit A:

Hayden and Glen’s father Joe Duncan said the boys were following the train tracks home because they didn’t want to walk on a busy road.


Yeah because walking on train tracks is much safer then walking on the footpath of a busy road. Who knows what great academic feats these kids might have gone on to achieve.

Instead of chalking this one up to stupid kids do stupid things, everybody’s instead after someone to blame. Yesterday was the first day of a Coroner’s inquiry into the death of the boys.

The inquest, which is expected to run for three days, will examine the use of train headlights in city areas, the response of rail officials to instances of trespass onto corridors and the actions of the train driver.


The train was running without headlights because the driver didn’t want to interfere with motor traffic, which I think is fair enough if the railway line is adjacent a busy road. Looking at Google maps there appears to be some sort of depo across the road from the station so I’m assuming that this is where the kids threw rocks at the train.

Given this the driver was travelling at 80km/h, indicating it was probably a freight train and not stopping at stations. Admittedly I’m not sure how fast suburban trains travel in Queensland so it might have been a passenger train.

In any case, trains travel on train tracks and whether they have their lights on or not if you walk on a train track there’s a good chance you’re going to get turned into pancakes. As for the response of the rail officials, well you only have to look at the behaviour of the senior constable to get a feel of the castration authorities have when it comes to dealing with minority groups.

What we have here is a failure to call a spade a spade. Stupid kids die stupid deaths, let’s all move on.

In a culture of angelic children and scapegoating if we continue to relieve people of their personal responsibility, later down the track we wind up with clowns like David Paul Rowntree.

A teenage criminal with a staggering 69 offences against his name has been ordered to pay $152,000 compensation for a house he burned down to cover his fingerprints. Rowntree was sentenced to three years in a Youth Justice Centre.


I mean really, it took 69 prior offences in the rotating door that is the youth justice system before this kid burnt a house down and was given an appropriate sentence? This kid should have been locked up years ago and is a prime example of how judges engaging in anti-populism doesn’t work.

If the Queensland government wants to hold an inquest into the deaths of Hayden, Glen and Reggie then the only items on the agenda should be why their deadbeat parents were allowed to massively neglect the upbringing or their moronic kids.

1. Why are people dying on the Kokoda trail?