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Warning: This story contains the name and images of a deceased Indigenous person.
The uncle of an Indigenous teenager found dead on rural train tracks 37 years ago says he discovered blood in the boot of a nearby car wreck.
His uncle Don Craigie told an inquest on Thursday that the white Torana stayed beside the train line for weeks.
He and his brothers also walked on an overpass to try and understand how Haines had come to lie on the tracks.
Craigie remembered thinking: “There’s no way he could have got across here”.
The inquest is taking another look at Haines’ death following an initial police inquiry that determined he was either intentionally or inadvertently on the tracks in a disoriented state after the car accident.
His family has never believed that version, nor accepted an open finding handed down after a 1988 inquest.
The Gomeroi teenager’s body was discovered with a folded towel or blanket under his head, surrounded by cardboard boxes.
Deputy State Coroner Harriet Grahame will consider the adequacy of the first police investigation, which the family believes was hindered by racism.
Craigie mentioned that during his nephew’s childhood, a resettlement area for Indigenous families in the Coledale neighborhood of Tamworth was derogatorily labeled as “Vegemite valley.”
“I believe it was the police and the taxi drivers that started up this Vegemite valley,” he said.
“You’d jump in a taxi and say Coledale, and they’d say Vegemite valley or ‘veggie’.”
Craigie also gave a vivid description of the day he found out his nephew had died.
He was standing at a taxi rank in Moree, about 250 kilometres north of Tamworth, when his brother drove up to him and delivered the news.
“It was raining, pissing down all around the area,” Craigie recalled.
“He pulled up and said something to the effect of ‘Mark’s dead’.
“I just felt something come over me, I nearly collapsed.”
The inquest is due to conclude on Friday before the coroner considers her findings.
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