Thirty years ago, Listener editor Kirsty Cameron was a Sydney-based writer for an Australian news magazine, dispatched to Dunedin with a photographer to file a story in the weeks after the Bain family murders.
Robin, it was said, was a nice man, would wave from his car. David, now, he was a bit unusual. Strange a boy of that age having a paper round, sort of a young fogey really – a 22-year-old who sang in a choir. The others? Generally: Arawa beautiful, nice; Laniet beautiful, troubled; Stephen a regular kid. And Margaret, well she was the odd one. Quite intense, very private. A funny lot really, kept to themselves.
This information was doled out over cups of tea around Andersons Bay and in narrow terrace houses in the city. We were walking the neighbourhood for that artless journalistic practice, the death knock. That means being the first person to the door of a relative/neighbour/witness will elicit a scoop, information passed to the first person to ask for it. And often, it works, people almost relieved to download to a stranger. Other times, knocking met with a sharp instruction to get off my effing property before I set the dog on ya. It’s uncomfortable, but in news reporting it’s part of the job, a way to build a picture of who were these people central to the story; the softer parts that are later woven around the ugly facts and allegations from police statements and court testimony.
In Andersons Bay and around the city, we knocked and rang bells, introduced ourselves and they were opened to us: come in, get out of this cold. The fire’s on, I’m making tea. We talked to neighbours, friends, a fellow chorister who’d had quite a bit to do with David. Never in a million years, etc.
On Every St, the remains of the Bain’s rumpty villa smouldered. Authorised by stunned relatives, it had been torched by the fire brigade to stop it being a ghoulish attraction. It did seem bizarrely quick, barely a fortnight after the murders. It incinerated any remaining physical evidence, which would become a later thorn for the prosecution and defence.
We learned that the Bain marriage was strained: when Robin was in town he slept in a caravan in the garden. That Laniet may have been a sex worker, information that was often prefaced with a “I don’t like to say, but I have heard …” (There would be later allegations in court that her father had sexually abused her). More often, the comments were that the Bains were a bit weird, but you know, ordinary. People were truly shocked.
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Margaret may have loathed her husband but at Taieri Beach School he was dear, kind Mr Bain.
We drove out to Taieri Beach to try to talk to some of the school community. In a fluke of timing – pre-social media there were no online message boards to check – we arrived as the local hall was being set up for a memorial assembly.
I expected a cool response – this was a community in shock, finding a way for grieving children to express their thoughts. Who wants Australian media hovering?
But, again, we were welcomed, directed to the table where those thick teacups peculiar to halls around the country were laid out, giant double-handled teapots filled. Have a cup of tea, have you eaten? Help yourselves to the baking … We silently slid into a back row, humbled by the genuine warmth and hospitality.
One by one, the students stood and read poems they’d written against a backdrop of art created for Mr Bain. Many were acrostic – they were sad and funny and reflective and honest. Mr Bain was tall, he was kind. Some referred to the wide world Mr Bain had shown the children: here in rural Otago in 1994 at the very beginning of the internet, he had set up a computer in the classroom and the kids communicated with a small school in Japan. I remember thinking that whatever else Robin Bain was, he was a thoughtful teacher.
On the second day of our visit, the snow fell lightly, then faster until Dunedin was dusted, its grey stone streets postcard pretty. Between the cups of tea in front of pot-bellied stoves, we slid in our useless leather-soled Sydney shoes on icy streets to eat toasties in cafes with steamed-up windows, single cigarettes for sale alongside hot chocolates.
On our last night in town we decided to see a movie, a new Kiwi film that had just opened and was yet to screen in Australia. At the end of Once Were Warriors, the photographer and I stayed in our seats, him pale, shocked; me in hot tears for the tragedies of Grace, Beth, Jake, and Robin, Margaret, Arawa, Laniet, Stephen, and David, too.
From the Listener archives: “Robin was no killer”: Michael Bain on the Bain murders.
