Let’s Bring Them Home: Hundreds march for missing Aboriginal men in South Hedland, Broome and Geraldton

Travelling through WA’s remote north, it’s not hard to see how one might go missing — an endless expanse of pindan and spinifex where one could easily disappear into the landscape and never be seen again. WA’s North West Kimberley and Pilbara regions cover 931,413sqkm — an area larger than Germany and France combined — and remains largely uninhabited. This vast and unforgiving terrain is where at least five Aboriginal men have gone missing. Over the past three years, Wesley Lockyer, Zane Stevens, Clinton Lockyer and Wylie Oscar have disappeared in the region, while another boy, Jimmy Taylor, vanished 50 years ago. Pilbara man Wesley Lockyer went missing after leaving the Jinparinya Aboriginal Community in October 2022, with land searches unable to find any clues as to what might have happened to him. Clinton Lockyer was last seen on the morning of October 31, 2022 in Roebourne, while Kimberley stockman Wylie Oscar was last seen leaving Junjuwa Aboriginal Community near Fitzroy Crossing in November 2022. Jimmy Taylor disappeared after walking to the shops in Derby in 1974 and was never seen again. Recently, infamous child abuser John Melverne Bodey was questioned over the 12-year-old’s disappearance. In April, Zane Stevens went missing near Broome after the 21-year-old Pilbara man’s ute was found bogged in heavy marshland at Coconut Wells. Brenton Shar from the Mid West town of Geraldton also went missing in early May, while another man from the Kimberley, Jeremiah Rivers, vanished in suspicious circumstances while on a pig hunting trip with six others in Queensland in 2021. On Wednesday July 31, families of all seven men organised Let’s Bring Them Home marches in South Hedland, Broome and Geraldton to raise awareness and rally support to find them. Wesley Lockyer’s relative and Hedland march organiser Henry Lockyer said there were mixed feelings surrounding the events. “As a community of Aboriginal people, we get quite frustrated that we have to take to the streets and make noise to really be seen and heard, just to get the same treatment as everybody else; that’s really what yesterday was about,” he said on Thursday August 1. “It was communities across the Mid and North West all working together to make a clear statement to both the State and Federal governments and the police to say ‘we need this to be resolved, we need more support, we need more resourcing’. “The families and the communities where these men are from are feeling that there’s no response or no action taken compared to other missing people. “That’s why we’re calling for a task force to address not only this crisis of our missing men, but to address the continued disappearances of Indigenous people across WA. “We also want members of the public or people who may be known to Wesley or any of the missing men to come forward with any information and speak with the families and the police.” Mr Lockyer said notions around Aboriginal culture may be contributing to the inadequate response to the disappearances. “There may be some misunderstood stereotypical racial ideas that young Aboriginal men just go walkabout and that could explain why they are missing, but we know this is not the case,” he said. More than 200 protesters joined the March in South Hedland, which local police also attended. “The protest wasn’t directed at local police. It was about changing the policies, changing the processes so local police can do more,” Mr Lockyer said. “We invited the police to stand with us on stage because we wanted to make it quite clear that we are working with our local police and we want them to be working with us. “But we want them to do better, and through changing those policies and processes, that will allow them to do better for our people.” Wesley Lockyer’s mother, Joanne Taylor said she has been disappointed with the lack of communication from police around her son’s disappearance. “We need a better support network for families of missing persons and the Missing Persons Unit needs to contact families regularly with updates,” she said. “We hear nothing and we are feeling alone and abandoned, and that our children are not important enough. We need better systems in place for regular searches (and) a better systems in place for rewards. “We need to know what more can be done throughout until all resources have been exhausted to find our children, and bring them home.”