On Thursday, the 14th of February 2002, Niam May and her two friends Jess and Brodie left Armadale in northern New South Wales to head south. They first went to Sydney, then headed further south for a stint fruit picking in a small town called Batlo, which was famous for its apples. While the girls set off with much excitement, Niam's friend Jess described an uneasy vibe that started the moment they missed the train in Sydney that would take them to Kudamundra. And then, bad luck seemed to follow them all. Batlo, in inland New South Wales, would put around 800 kilometers between Niam and her parents in Armadale. If you look at Batlo from the air, it looks like an ornate patchwork quilt. That's because there are around 50 orchids dotted around the town and its surrounds. These orchids produce around 10% of Australia's apples. It's a mark of the strength of the town that when the bushfires raged around it in the early days of January 2020, Batlo was declared undefendable, but that didn't stop the locals. The town lay in the path of a huge firestorm, and it seemed nothing could save it. Residents evacuated, but a small band of local firefighters braved the onslaught each day.
Flames even licked at the town's iconic Big Apple, but like the rest of the town, it emerged scarred, yet not destroyed. During the fires, the town turned blood red and the whole place looked like the depths of hell. But in ordinary times, Butler's cornflower blue sky and fluffy white clouds provide the perfect backdrop for rolling hills in the distance. The town itself is small, just a couple of main streets with other streets snaking off them. Bushfires aside, the Batlo of today, physically, isn't so different from the Batlo of 2002, the town Nahum and her friends stepped into. Here's what Batlo local, Michelle, remembers of the town in 2002.
It was good. You have different nationalities and different And ages and people coming every year. The town was so busy back then when it was picking time, and you could make friends with them, you could hang out with them. I'm still friends to this day with people that I'd met back then. It was really good. They were really good people. There was every personality you could think of. And people from different countries, they all brought something, but they spent money in town. And they were usually pretty friendly, compared to now where there's not a lot of pickers that come to town anymore.
According to Michelle, things changed when local orchids began contracting with companies to bring in pickers for the season. Before this, it used to be up to traveling backpackers like Niam to follow the harvest trail and find their own work. Mostly, they were a good bunch of people, but- You'd get your odd derro, I suppose.
A lot of them were Yeah, just to have a good time. But you'd come across some that were just weird and some that drank too much and couldn't handle their frog or weren't friendly. But majority of them were pretty good.
Another local woman, Nicole, says that in 2002, when Naim came to town, Batlo seemed to have more traveling Aussie pickers than international ones.
At picking season, Batlo was a thriving place to be involved because there were so many different young people, traditionally, coming in. Historically, we used to get lots of international backpackers coming in, but that year in particular, there seemed to be a lot more young Aussies traveling and backpacking. It was busy, it was chaotic. There's lots of stuff always happening. Pubs are always full, that thing. It's probably a good time to be around the town and in the town because there's lots of mixing and mingling. There'd be lots of informal parties between pickers, lots of them gathering and congregating at the pub, and that becomes a bit of a hub then for other things to branch off. A very social, if you're in that sphere. Most of the times it was really friendly. I can't actually recall of any time when there were any real issues. It's changed now because now you've got big contract groups coming in from Asia and the Solomon Islands, those places. They tend to stick together more in their own groups, and they tend to be housed out on the farms. Whereas back then, there would have been a lot more people staying at caravan parks and those things, whereas it's much more structured now.
It was probably a bit like a big Uni O week, really, for a lot of people. It would have been good value.
Getting to Batlo was not as easy as it first seemed for Naim, Jess, and Brody. Because they had missed their original train, they also missed the country link bus that was supposed to take them further south to Batlo. Jess remembers what it was like when their train arrived in Kooja Mundra in the early hours of Saturday, the 16th of February, 2002.
I don't know. I think I'd been a pretty wild teenager, and I didn't feel very wild as we left home. I just felt wary. And then the train rolled into Kooja Mundra, and we probably arrived at like three or four in the morning. And the girls got off the train, and they just ran off into the town, and I just stayed at the train platform with all of our staff. I just stayed there, and then there was an old man. It was just me and an old man at this train platform in Kudamundra, and the two other girls just ran off into the night.
Kudamundra is 122 kilometers north of Batlo. There are no connecting trains between the towns, and the only way to travel is by bus or car. Rather than see the girls stranded, Jess's mom arranged for a taxi to pick them up from Kudamundra and drive them to Batlo. The girls are to pay her back.
We ordered a taxi from a pay phone, and we got into the taxi. I don't think my mom or me realized how far that taxi was going to be from Kudamundra to Bathlow. I still don't actually know, but it cost hundreds of dollars. Then we finally arrived at this caravan park in a place called Bathlow. I had no idea where we were. Niam perked up because she was like, Yeah, this is the place. This is where we're meant to be. We booked in to this caravan park, and we pitched a couple of tents.
By Jess's reckoning, they arrived in Batlo around 5:00 AM. The girls set their tents up, and with the morning light, they got a good look at the caravan park they would call home. The Batlo Caravan Park was set in a large expanse of lush green grass. A gravel road winds through, making it halfway into the park before looping back on itself. Caravans are dotted throughout. Dense bushland and tall trees line the perimeter. Weather. Campers would pitch tents around this boundary area to make the most of the shade from the trees in the hot afternoon sun. In the offseason, the place is eerily quiet, with only the sounds of the breeze rustling through trees, bird calls, and the occasional truck passing along the nearby Batlo Road, breaking the silence. But when the girls arrived, it was picking season, and there were people from countries all over the world. Jess wrote about their arrival in her diary.
Saturday, the 16th of February, arrived in beautiful Batlo. The environment is peaceful. I need to ask my mom to send the camera. Today, we had our first day of work at Bowden's. We picked peaches. We met a girl called Christie from the Gold Coast. We met Jeffrey from Africa at the Caravan Park, Steven from Perth, Andre from Germany.
Bro Katie remembers their arrival, too. It wasn't long before her flimsy tent came to grief, and she ended up in Niam's tent.
It rained that night. So when we got there, it was pretty sunny, actually. But then that night, it poured really, really badly. My tent got destroyed straight away, and all my stuff got wet. Then Niam was like, Oh, you can come and stay in my tent. Then I was living in Niam's tent pretty much straight away after that. Because my tent It was just terrible. I was like, Yeah, I had no idea what I was doing at all. I was not prepared. Niam was really prepared, though.
All of Niam's planning and preparation made a world of difference once the girls settled in Batlo.
She just was really organized and had things packed and already brought food with her. Her tent was really solid, and she just put it up and seemed really capable. I I don't know. She just seemed very organized. She had a list of all the things that she had and the weight of her luggage and everything like that. She was pretty onto it.
Like the journey to get to Batlo, the early days there were anything but smooth sailing for the girls. It didn't take long for both Brodie and Naim to get injured while doing the unfamiliar labor of fruit picking. In the end, Jess just wanted to call it quits and to go home.
And then the three of us got a job working together for a couple of days picking peaches and maybe nectarines. And within the first few days, Brody had fallen off the ladder and she'd torn something in her leg. So instantly, she got work compensation. And then, Naima and I got a job working on another farm picking apples. And in that first week of doing that, I think that I got put with a couple of guys picking apples. One of them, his name was John, and he was from New Zealand, and he came from a farm in New Zealand. Really sweet guy. And he had a caravan with some other people who were moving out. So eventually, we moved into this caravan And with him, there were two bunk beds and a big double bed. So John and I took the bunks, and Niam and Brodie shared this bed because then what happened was Niam fell off a ladder while we were picking fruit, and she also injured her leg, and so she was on workers' comp as well. And so John and I would go and pick fruit, and Niam and Brodie had to stay at the Caravan Park because they were both on crutches.
I really didn't want to hurt myself because everyone was making jokes that we were these three girls that had rocked up and were just there to get some worker's compensation. When everyone hurt themselves, I suggested, I was like, Let's just go home. Fuck this. Let's go. And Niam was very persistent in wanting to stay.
With Niam and Brodie at the caravan, caravan park all day while Jess worked, the big adventure began to look very different from where she was standing.
I don't know who she was trying to prove to, but she was very stubborn, and she said, No, we're staying here. We're going to make some money, and we're going to go and buy a car and do this Brisbane trip. And then each day I would come back from work and there would be a new character hanging around.
Although Niam and Brodie were off work, at least they got to recuperate in a caravan rather than a tent. This was a common transition for some of the fruit pickers at the camping ground. It wasn't uncommon to begin in a tent and then move into beds in caravans when they became available. The New Zealander whose caravan the girls moved into was a man called John Major. He was at the caravan park the entire time Niam was there. As a more seasoned backpacker, what did John think of Batlo?
It was a small town, tiny, but it was all right. I mean, the work was fine, and the campground had some good people there, met a lot of backpackers, people from overseas, people from Australia. We had a good time. Their tent flooded. I was staying in one of the caravans, and they came knocking on my door and saying, John, can we stay in here?
He really looked after us. He had the caravan, and it had three bunk beds and a queen-size bed, and it was really quite big. After me and him, we've been living in a tent, I'd have gotten another tent. I'd been bitten by a spider in one of them, and my wrist was all messed up from what's really bad. Our tent got destroyed, and we were freezing. He was like, You girls can just move in and pay part of the rent for the caravan. We were like, Thanks. He's like, Because I'm probably going to be leaving. He didn't know what he was doing. It was a massive help for us.
We will be back after a short break. Naam had told her family that she felt safer in the caravan because it had a door that could be locked. Brodie felt this, too.
Yeah. Well, people would just come up to the tents and be like, Hey, what are you doing? There wasn't really a lot of to see.
To some, an environment like the caravan park in Betlo is great. People coming up and talking to you, stopping by your tent to say hello, meeting new people. But at the same time, boundaries are sometimes not observed. For the girls, that meant there was no escaping from the people who were camping there. Over friendliness can become unnerving. Some attention is unwanted. Little did the girls know, two Two people would soon arrive at the camp who would give off a bad vibe, one in particular in spades. But back to fruit picking. Because Niam and Brodie were injured, Jess left them behind and took the daily transport from the caravan park to the various orchids around Batlo. With the absence of her friends, Jess tried to align herself with good picking partners.
I feel like I really didn't pick very much with Liam and Brodie at all because they had injured themselves so early on. I just thought that if I stuck with a fast guy that could pick, I had John and Dave, and they were the two people that I picked with most of the time because I knew that they were reputable, or John, especially. By the time you got out there, it would be just before the dawn. Then when you get home in the afternoon, they It was long days. I was feeling my way through everything and just trying to stay safe because I didn't feel very safe.
A note in Jess's diary at the time says that her best pay was $103.80 for two days work. This worked out to about $6.10 an hour. And this was when she was with the fast pickers. The slower you were, the less you made. Another Another difference among the fruit pickers was the amount of socializing they did. More professional pickers like John were there to work. The younger pickers like Niam and Brodie were there to socialize and meet people as well. So if John was a seasoned fruit picker in Patlo to earn as much as he could, how did he view the girls?
I think they were, I don't know, collectors. That's one a bit of a work. They just earned enough to live and buy beer, and then they would just take these off work all the time. Niam, obviously, now that I do remember, she hurt her leg, so she was off work a lot.
About once a week, Niam called her family to stay in touch. Niam was keen for her mom, Anne, to keep an eye out for any mail that needed to be forwarded to her. Niam also kept in regular contact with her sister, Fannula, in Sydney by both phone and email, and she also sent group emails to her siblings and friends, updating everyone on her adventures. Niam was known for her love of other cultures. She longed to travel and had her exchange student experience in France under her belt already. The idea of meeting other backpackers from all over the world would have been hugely appealing to Niam as she dealt with those early days in Batlo and her injured leg. Her dad, Brian, heard about all the colorful characters she'd met when Niam phoned home.
One of the things I think that she'd have enjoyed very much, I mentioned earlier that she was very interested in people who are culturally different from herself and ourselves. So I think that she, in a sense, was quite looking forward to seeing more people from more places By going back there, it wasn't just the fruit picking, but she thought you could do the fruit picking and enjoy the contact of young people and young people from elsewhere while she was there.
It became quite the cast of characters from all walks of life.
There was Joel and Soul. Niam became very close to Joel. Joel and Soul were best friends, and Joel and Niam had a lot in common. They were both quite academic. There was also a couple called Upps and Nicole. They were just these beautiful indie, I don't know, late '90s early 2000s. They were just colorful people. Nicole looked like a mermaid or something. And Upps had become Upps because he was born into some commune, and he thought that he was a mistake, so he changed his name to Upps.
The girls all made friends with lots of new people, which, of course, was part of the whole Gap Year experience. But Naim had not cast off her core beliefs and soon got a chance to show her new friend, Oups, one of her most well-known traits, standing up for the little guy.
Anyway, I think that Oups and Ni'am, they planned to take revenge revenge on one of the farmers who was underpaying people. They took fire crackers out to one of the farmer's house and let them off on the veranda or something. When we first got to the caravan park, there weren't many people there, and so you knew every single person that was there. As the season progressed really quickly, more and more people started to arrive With the arrival of more people in the caravan park, the atmosphere changed. We met a man called Steve, and Steve was an old guy in his 50s or his 60s. I remember as soon as I saw him, I thought, be careful. And one night, Steve was hanging out with Niam and Brody. I'd sit around and join in where I could, but everybody knew how uncomfortable I was. And also I didn't have the same amount of energies what they did because I was working. But I remember Steve telling us about his life and that he had been some driver of, I don't know, taking speed from one state to the next. And I remember him watching me put my clothes out on the line one day, and I just would have nothing to do with him and him saying to me, making a comment about how I was watchful, and I didn't say very much.
When Naim called home to tell her parents how she had sprained her ankle falling off a ladder, she was embarrassed on two levels. Firstly, she was stuck at the caravan park all day, every day, unable to work. Secondly, she had been critical early on of people who she felt were deliberately injuring themselves so they could go on workers' compensation. She also knew of workers who had two IDs so they could get workers' compensation from one orchard and continue to pick fruit at another, essentially meaning they were getting two incomes. So even though she had a legitimate injury, Niam felt like she and Brodie were lumped in with the dodgy workers. Niam's leg healed over the following days and weeks, and she was able to go back to work shortly after. She got a job at one orchard, but they put her to work on the outside rows where she felt there was less fruit and therefore less chance of making money. Luckily, Niam found work at another orchard in walking distance from the caravan park. She sent a letter to her mom and dad Head. Part of it reads, Hi, Ma and Pa. How goes it?
I'm back at work, but I'm hopefully getting a job at Montagu starting next Monday. The other orchard were trying to pull some dodgy shit about compo, but I had words with them, and it's all sorted. Apparently, there's graffiti in Heathrow Airport toilets saying, Don't work for them in Australia. Why am I not surprised? We've moved into a caravan with Johnny from New Zealand who's really nice and quiet. There are people turning up for the season every day now, and I'm so glad we can lock our door now that we're in a van. I'm glad that we've a good group of people here, mostly Australians. There are a couple of nice, normal people that we've been hanging out with, but there are a few dodgy, alcoholic deros here, too. Must remember to have eyes in the back of my head and wear my big boots just in case. Love, Naim. After a few weeks, the shine began to wear off camp life and tensions developed between Naim, Jess, and Brody. The girls had been through a lot together, and sometimes that brings people closer together, and sometimes it doesn't. Living and working in such close quarters, there were few opportunities to spend time apart.
One day, Jess and Naim had a big fight in the caravan. Jess felt really disconnected from her two friends. The fight was interrupted by the timely arrival of their friend Lisa, who had arranged to join them. She had driven to Batlo from Armadale with her boyfriend, Jessie.
And then we had a big fight, and I got really upset, and she got upset too, because there were so many people coming and going, and I was always telling them to get out. I felt like a grandma. That's why we had a fight, because I felt like this boring, annoying parent. And also I wasn't a parent. I was 18. I remember they'd stay up and they'd play cards and they'd get drunk. And then I would kick them out, and then they would go to other people's places. And I said, I don't know who you are. I feel really disconnected from you. I've known you for my whole life, and I just don't know what's going on. And I think that we should go home and we need to leave. And then we When we went outside, and then this car arrived, and it was Lisa and her boyfriend, Jessie, and we were so happy to see them. And it was just the best thing ever. And it just changed the vibe on everything that had been going on because it had just been really not good. Then Lisa and Jessie just could not believe how happy we were to see them.
The arrival of their friend Lisa and her boyfriend to Jessie could not have come at a better time for the girls. It was someone new, someone Niam loved to be with, and it completely changed the group dynamic.
We're driving through this countryside and these rolling hills with orchids everywhere, and we're getting more and more remote. It was serenely beautiful but wild. I remembered we drove into this tiny little town and we were like, What is this place? We found the caravan park, and on a Obviously, as we pulled up, there were all these girls just running at us down through the caravan park. It was Niem and Jessica and Brody. They were just screaming and coming at us. They landed on the ground in front of us. They were like, Where are I? And they were so excited to see somebody different. And at the time, it was a bit affronting. And then after being there for a few days, I realized why, because it's this closed little community, and it was the same people. And they'd been there quite a while, I think, picking apples and getting up to mischief.
The friendship between Nahum and Lisa went back a long way.
We both went to the same primary school, St. Mary's. I remember standing in the kindergarten yard, and there was this tiny little girl standing on the cement. There were these cement edges that were raised, and she just looked too small to be at school. She had her hair in pigtails, like piggy plats. I remember giving her a piggyback around the yard, and that was the first time I met her. I would describe Niam as witty, funny, really It was funny. Intelligent. She could be really sensitive as well and kind. She was blunt as anything.
Lisa noticed the effect the fruit picking lifestyle had on Naim from the moment she arrived there.
We were very close, and I noticed that she really didn't look good. She seemed really down, and she was drinking a lot. And I tried to have conversations with her, and it just felt like I couldn't reach her on the same way that I used to be able to.
Lisa's arrival lifted the girl's spirits for a time. As determined as Naam was to stick it out, there may have been a little voice in her head telling her it was maybe time to call it quits on her fruit-picking lifestyle. Jess wrote a diary entry on the 17th of March just over a month after arriving in Batlo. She wrote that Naam was planning on traveling to Sydney to visit her sister, Fannula. She mentioned that Naam was sick and having trouble finding work. Brodie wanted to stay at the caravan park, although she wasn't working. Jess didn't know what to do. A fellow picker asked her to go traveling with him, but she wasn't sure. While the girls were deciding on what to do next, two strangers arrived in town, and they were driving a vehicle so sinister that locals still remember it 20 years later.
And then one day, the Black Hearse arrived. When the Black Hearse arrived, these two men got out. As soon as I saw them and I saw that Black Hearse, I thought, They're baddies. Stay away from them.
Next time on Missing Nahum.
He said a couple of things which made me not like him. One was when we complimented the car. He was like, Oh, yeah, there's been 11,000 bodies that have been through there, and only two of them have been alive.
She was happy. She was smiling more. She was talking about coming to Sydney.
Eva, I guess, has to be somewhat attractive, doesn't it? Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to sneak into every corner.
Niamh and two friends, Jess and Brodie, leave Armidale to head 800km south. In 2002, Batlow is a magnet for international back-packers, stopping on their travels to earn a bit of money. After a rough start, the girls settle into a local caravan park.
https://missingniamh.com