Tad’s Legacy

By Howard Conkey

This is a story of Tad whose death was a tragedy. Despite a life that held such promise, he lost his way to the most abused and misunderstood drug, alcohol. Tad’s story shines a light on vulnerability, human rights, and mental health through an intimate portrayal from his earliest years growing up in Africa to his fateful last days when seriously ill he vanished without trace from a major hospital. A missing person investigation by police failed to find him leaving his corpse to be discovered by chance months later shockingly in the middle of Australia’s national capital. The inquest that followed exposed systemic failings and led to major changes. It also highlighted what else needs to be done in the interests of public safety to ensure it never happens again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Feb 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9798369494738

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Copyright © 2024 by Howard Conkey.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the author at [e-mail]

Cover photograph: Tahadesse Kahsai addressing a public meeting soon after returning from the conflict in Eritrea in 1980. (Photo from Karin Stokman.)

Rev. date: 03/19/2024

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You don’t have to agree with my interpretations or conclusions (as a journalist), but as my reader you are relying on me to steer you soundly so that you can form your own judgements.

Leigh Sales, Any Ordinary Day, Penguin Random House Australia 2018

If on my theme I rightly think,

There are five reasons why men drink:

Good wine, a friend, or being dry,

Or lest I should be by and by;

Or any other reason why.

Henry Aldrich, 1647-1710

As an alcoholic you will violate your standards quicker than you can lower them. You will do shit that even the devil will go, ‘Dude.’ An alcoholic, we’re like arseholes – we can’t wait to shit on everybody, family, friends. We’ll be like, ‘Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, go fuck yourself, fuck you, fuck. I’m fucked.’

Robin Williams, Comedian and Actor, talking about his alcohol addiction in the documentary, Come Inside My Mind, 2018

There’s that lovely moment when you’ve had that first drink, the second drink, you get this wonderful rush, feeling like, ‘Oh, now I’m myself, now I feel normal.’ As you go along it’s harder and harder and you have to drink more and more. When things get out of control, the enormous amount of shame only fuels the need to drink more.

Tim Olsen, Children of the Brush, ABC TV’s Australian Story, 3 May 2021

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Key people

Terminology and Acronyms

Preface

PART I

1 Escape

2 Beginnings

3 Four days before vanishing

4 University

5 Day zero

6 Eritrea

7 Action stations

8 Drinking problems

9 Day 10 – Back on the job

10 Disco fever

11 Day 28 – Escalating matters

12 Drug of choice

13 Day 29 – On-ground search

14 Bottom of the barrel

15 Day 31 – On-ground search continues

16 Day 33 – Chasing leads

17 Drying out

18 Day 40 – Winding up the investigation

19 Day 94 - Found

PART II

1 Inquest commences

2 Sivakumaran

3 Calvary Hospital witnesses

4 What Finch did

5 Hospital culture

6 Liu

7 Old school spin

8 Chinese whispers and timing

9 Initial police efforts

10 Swiss cheese

11 Escalation

12 On-ground searching

13 Reality of death

14 Police improvements

15 Mental health detention powers

16 Making sense of it all

17 Formal findings

Epilogue

Attachment 1 Recommendations

Attachment 2 Tad’s medications at Calvary

Attachment 3 Medical records and discharge history

References

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I’m indebted to many people who have helped me with this book. In particular I mention Greg Brackenreg for his ongoing encouragement and counsel helping me focus on the importance of the story and reminding me more than once why it was worth telling. Greg also played a vital role in the legal aspects of the coronial inquest following Tad’s death and his unique background in the health profession along with his legal mind helped achieve an outcome in solid recommendations that will benefit many vulnerable people. Tad’s children – Vanessa, Rezina and Addam – allowed me to represent them in pursuing an inquiry into their father’s death, the evidence from which underpins much of this book which in no small part was possible because of the extraordinary diligence and professionalism of Matthew Callaghan, the investigating police officer, who went above and beyond to produce a brief of evidence that provided many of the answers. Karin Stokman, Fessehaie Abraham, Mekonen Lema, Sabur Fahiz, and Val Browning generously gave me their time and shared many memories of the Tad we all loved. Andrew Welsford presented a timely kick to help me focus and finish the book. Many friends and acquaintances indulged me by listening to the story when I was trying to get my head around key issues all equally shocked as I was about what happened to my dear friend. Finally, my partner Carolyn O’Rourke and my family entertained the excesses of a lengthy writing process and I will always be enormously grateful for their support when I needed to bend an ear.

KEY PEOPLE

Hospital staff

Elaine Bell

Manager of the Patient Inflow Unit at the time Tad was admitted to Calvary Public Hospital and was the After-Hours Hospital Manager the day he absconded. She was also put forward by Calvary at the inquest to highlight changes since Tad’s death in her new position as Director of Nursing.

Joseph Cho

Registered nurse who was looking after Tad at the time he disappeared.

Roselle Dayrit

Registered nurse who looked after Tad on the overnight shift before he went missing.

Simon Finch

A hospital wardsman and the last known person to see Tad alive.

Sheryl Harrison

The hospital’s administrator, executive member, and Director of Clinical Governance.

Lucy Liu

Ward Four East Clinical Nurse Consultant who incorrectly addressed an email containing a Missing Patient Report to police which led to a critical delay of more than a day in the search for Tad.

Ingrid Parker

Junior Medical Officer on duty when Tad went missing.

Seevaratnam Sivakumaran

Tad’s treating doctor and senior consultant physician at Calvary.

John Vinen

Head of the Medical Division at the hospital and a member of the hospital’s executive who initiated the development of a written Missing Patient Policy.

Police

Gregory Butler

Senior Constable who was Search Mission Co-ordinator for the on-ground search effort.

Matt Callaghan

AFP investigator who prepared the police brief of evidence for the coroner.

Alixandra Chan

AFP Police Operations member staffing the call-line which handled the initial phone call from Calvary Hospital seeking police assistance in finding and returning Tad to care.

Brett Coutts

Conducted an examination of dwellings near where Tad’s body was eventually found.

Peter Dean

Operations Sergeant managing calls to the police call-line the day Tad went missing.

David Holland

Shared responsibility as manager of ACT Police Operations and jointly decided police action after receiving an email from the hospital seeking assistance in finding Tad.

Damon Hoyer

As acting Sergeant, he was team leader to the police officer assigned the responsibility of case officer on the first day of the missing person investigation into Tad.

Jason Kennedy

Acting North District Superintendent responsible for the oversight and management of all patrol resources in the City, Belconnen and Gungahlin districts of the ACT. Put forward by the Australian Federal Police to highlight changes to processes and procedures in the wake of Tad’s death.

Steven Ladd

Oversaw and assisted Callaghan in the preparation of the police brief of evidence.

Steven Salleo

Constable who was assigned case officer for Tad’s missing person investigation.

Rohan Smith

Salleo’s patrol boss and supervisor who the constable reported progress on the missing person case in the first month of the investigation.

Carolyn Uhe

Acting City Police Station Sergeant who reviewed the missing person investigation a month after it commenced prompted by a media enquiry and immediately escalated matters including an on-ground search.

Legal players

Sarah Baker-Smith

Counsel assisting the coroner at the inquest.

Greg Brackenreg

The family’s solicitor for the inquest.

Brody Buckland

The family’s barrister at the inquest.

Lisbeth (Beth) Campbell

The coroner.

Hilbert Chiu

Barrister representing the ACT Government and Calvary Hospital.

Callan O’Neill

Barrister representing the Australian Federal Police at the inquest.

Others

Tim Coxhead

Samitarian Services case worker.

Paul Luckin

Anaesthetist and search and rescue expert who estimated how long Tad could have survived and how he died.

Mandy Evans

Acting ACT Chief Psychiatrist who provided information on restraint provisions under the Mental Health Act.

Narya Reeves

Tad’s Samitarian Services case worker at Kanangra Court.

Neal Skipper

Manager at Havelock House where Tad resided who first raised Tad’s deteriorating mental health with Canberra service providers.

Brendan Wallace

Tad’s neighbour who told police he heard him in his apartment the night he left Calvary Hospital.

TERMINOLOGY AND ACRONYMS

PREFACE

The best place to start my friend Tad’s story is at the end. His death was a tragedy characterised by missed opportunities, misjudgements, and mistakes that sent shock waves through health and police circles in Australia’s national capital raising serious concerns about the failings of major institutions in caring for and protecting our most vulnerable. That he was found dead in the heart of Canberra by chance months after he went missing caused doubts to linger about the adequacy of an accredited hospital to provide a safe environment for its patients, whether he was failed by mental health services aware of his deteriorating condition, and the conduct of an unsuccessful missing person case by police. There is also a question mark about whether official processes that investigate deaths like his consider all aspects so that the community can be confident critical public safety issues are addressed.

Early in Tad’s life his light shone very bright. He was extraordinarily charismatic and personable. He was greatly loved by those that knew him for his generosity, humour, warmth, intelligence, and love of life. Many thought he would make a huge positive contribution to any field. But in middle life he became a chronic alcoholic and in later years his life increasingly crumbled around him. At the end, Tad was critically ill and required frequent medical treatment either presenting or being admitted constantly to hospital for liver disease and other ailments associated with alcohol abuse. After addressing his acute symptoms, he was discharged back to the community only to present again weeks later in a persistent downward spiral. A few days after being admitted to hospital for the last time, he began hallucinating, became increasingly agitated and aggressive, and was judged incompetent and at risk of harming himself. But in this state, he was able to walk out of hospital without anybody noticing and disappear. Imagine then three months later the shock for Tad’s loved ones of his body being found close to that same hospital, his corpse partially mummified and grotesque after rotting in the open, exposed to an intensely hot Australian summer.

That Tad was able to sneak off and leave hospital while in its care and so sick was the first mistake in this tragedy. Police who were called to help return him to treatment insisted they would only respond to an email. This was the second mistake when time was critical. The email was incorrectly addressed which was not realised for a full day. That was the third mistake. It is likely all three proved fatal and undermined any real chance of finding Tad before he died. But they weren’t the only mistakes by a long way.

Tad’s tragedy highlights how misunderstood is the life-threatening nature of alcohol withdrawal. It shows the need for ongoing training for both police and hospital staff regarding people who go missing. It spotlights systemic problems in key institutions due to policy, practice, and procedural failures. It raises questions about whether a power imbalance evident at a public hospital between doctors, nurses and a wardsman undermined the care of a patient, and if a workforce heavily reliant on staff from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds were contributing factors. One of several major issues that remains is an ongoing tension between someone’s human right to refuse care and the preservation of their life when suffering a temporary mental health episode, something health professionals deserve greater clarity and guidance on which may well require legislative change. It also questions whether an inadequate initial police response could go to prejudice based on previous involvement with him, was a consequence of a lack of supervision and support for an inexperienced officer on his first missing person case, or was a failure to crank up an investigation during a relaxed and extended holiday period.

Australia is a rich nation that has a tradition of providing for those in need or least able to care for themselves. It is part of the deal we have with each other and those in power. Jeff Sparrow captured it well writing in The Guardian, In democratic theory, the modern state legitimates itself through a simple bargain: we pay its taxes and obeys its law. In return, it protects us and keeps us safe. This is our social contract. As a country we also rally around those that need our support. It is part of who we are, and we are proud of it. It is a core value. But Tad’s story may be an example of whether society ultimately still cares about the Tads of our community. Has an Australian ideal we held so dearly changed? Is there a percentage of people that are now expendable? Are there people we shouldn’t waste scarce resources on? Is this what really happened with Tad?

Equally it could be argued that Tad was fully responsible for his own demise. No one forced him to drink excessively and his death then becomes an abject lesson. Opportunities were provided for him to live a sober life and he was helped dry out most notably for the longest time towards the end. Was his death then a case of some people can’t be helped no matter what? Why couldn’t he change his destructive lifestyle? What demons were at play that caused him to drink to the extent he did?

Tad contributed to Australia and became a naturalised citizen after migrating here to study from his birth country in the Horn of Africa. At various times he taught high school, was a night club owner, diplomat, and manager of several small businesses. He was a high achiever and an effective advocate for his homeland Eritrea lobbying Australian Governments to recognise its independence and provide humanitarian relief during its 30-year conflict with Ethiopia.

But then he lost his way and for much of his later life was addicted to alcohol. At this time Tad benefitted enormously from his adopted country and a society able and willing to support him. When his illness was at its worst, he was only able to contribute a small amount in return.

Tad’s story is far more than a tragedy, its consequences and what must be changed to ensure it never happens to any other. It is also about how a young African from a war-torn country came to settle in Australia, a traumatic event that had consequences for his long-term behaviour. It also goes to a quest for answers that turned up uncomfortable truths about Tad himself.

This book has been the cause of much soul searching about whether it was right to expose the worst of my dear friend’s life and how far he fell because of alcohol abuse. Was this fair on him or his family let alone those people in various institutions who came within his orbit at the end? I wrestled with whether those closest to him wanted to be reminded of him when he was at his worst. They deserve to remember him at his best when he was full of love and fun. But Tad’s death showed how vulnerable he became and how reliant he was on our institutions when at his greatest need. Police officers and health workers have some of the toughest and most critical jobs in the community for which they deserve the highest respect. They experience some of the best and the worst there is and expectations are they keep stepping up and delivering to the highest standards. So important is their work that when things go wrong the result of which ends in a death, there is a need for intense scrutiny to learn the lessons and make all the necessary changes to ensure it never happens again. While much positive change has already occurred because of Tad’s death, there is still a need to fully implement all the recommendations that arose from his inquest along with those the evidence suggests should be made that are outstanding and remain relevant. Progress to date and further improvements ultimately will be Tad’s legacy.

PART I

The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.

Mahatma Gandhi

1

Escape

Tad made good his escape at precisely 10.28am. It was ridiculously easy. For days he had been shuffling around the hospital ward to such an extent staff no longer paid him any particular attention as he made his way to get tea or go to the toilet or TV room often talking to himself. He’d already sussed out the security code on the door One, two, three, four. Enter and didn’t need to memorise it as it was written on top of the keypad to help staff and visitors come and go. He could just as easily have tailed someone out. He waited for his chance then took it making his way to nearby stairs down to the lobby and casually strolled out the main entrance.

Dressed in a t-shirt, tracksuit pants, and sneakers, a baseball cap hid a mostly bald head with only grey wisps remaining around both ears. Poor diet had left him gaunt. Dark skin for years had masked his true age, but illness now exposed the deceit. Vanity meant he would never admit to being as old as 61 and he’d laugh outrageously when the truth was revealed and challenged by those who really knew in a game played out each birthday. In his own mind he was still 49. Many confused him as being Indian or Pakistani when in fact he was Eritrean, a proud African a long way from his homeland having lived most of his life in his adopted country of Australia.

Tad turned left after leaving the entrance and made his way alongside a busy road that swung around the hospital. It was the patient ID band on his wrist that made Simon Finch stop and take a closer look at him near the entrance to the Emergency Department. He didn’t appear to be in any stress. He looked okay and was moving quite well sticking to the footpath. Tad always had an easy, almost fluid look to his walk, a distinctive gait that was casual, languid even when he had been fit, but chronic alcoholism had brought poor balance and with it more of a slow shuffle.¹

Oh, where are you from? Finch asked. Tad kept walking, focussed, seemingly not aware he was being spoken to. Finch said more pointedly and a little louder, Look, any chance you’d want to go back and talk to a doctor? It was then that Tad seemed to recognise Finch was talking to him. I’m not going back, he said, pointing a finger. You can’t stop me! He began to speed up.

Finch had been on his morning tea break as a wardsman. Smoking was banned inside and near the building, so he had gone to an area popular with staff known as The Log. It was a quiet spot beyond a car park near a trail hardly anybody used that led off into thick bush on the eastern side of the hospital. He was on the way back to duty when he saw Tad. Finch didn’t know Tad had been at the hospital so many times he warranted the label frequent flyer hospital staff gave to the Tads of their world. How was he to know how seriously ill Tad was or his condition had worsened that very morning hallucinating and accusing others of beaming him, having pointed a laser in his face, and insisted on being moved to another bed. Staff knew he was confused, not orientated to where he was, and his agitation was extreme. He had been awake all night constantly walking about and being rude to nurses refusing by early morning to have his vital observations taken on a well-known journey experienced medical staff had witnessed before. The third or fourth day for someone withdrawing from alcohol is critical and it was at this time an alcoholic would hit the wall and start craving booze. If patients like Tad were going to flee, it was then, and he was bang on schedule.

At 10am his new nurse Joseph Cho tried to take his obs. Fuck off! Tad told him not for the first time. Cho had been trying for hours without success to get a doctor to see Tad as his symptoms worsened. A few minutes later Cho was able to give a higher dose of a tranquilliser as well as a strong pain killer to almost immediate effect seemingly calming him down. Normally the drugs dull the senses, thinking becomes cloudy and foggy and agitation is reduced. The hospital restrains alcohol withdrawal patients with medication to prevent them leaving, not like in the old days when the dose was so strong it made them virtually comatose. While the drugs helped curb Tad’s aggression, they also momentarily buoyed him making him feel better than he was and his singular thought returned to escaping, to getting away and finding a pub or a bottle shop. From early in the morning the cravings had started and now hours later he was desperate for a drink.

Tad slowed his pace and looking back towards Finch held out a palm. Have you got any bus money? he asked. No, Finch replied. Tad turned away and kept walking. Finch said later there was nothing that caused him to doubt Tad’s competence or to suggest he should consider stopping him. He wished Tad had taken a swing at him and got aggressive as it would have given him an excuse to restrain him and call a Code Black to summon other wardsmen. If Finch had known how sick Tad was or that his doctor had grave concerns about his health, he would have stayed with him and watched where he was going. He knew what duty of care meant and the ID tag was enough to make him concerned. Finch hurried towards the entrance to Emergency and the wards beyond to check if in fact Tad was a patient absconding. He last glimpsed him making his way in the direction of a nearby bus stop. Nobody else later recalled seeing Tad the day he vanished without trace.

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¹ Tad’s gait and lack of balance was a consequence of his alcoholism. It is referred to as peripheral neuropathy.

2

Beginnings

Look at most maps of the Horn of Africa and one place you normally won’t find is Bore, a ramshackle collection of corrugated tin sheds held together by nails punched through rusted Coca Cola bottle tops. Truck drivers plying Ethiopia’s most vital trading route must pass through Bore, the last stop going north to Eritrea’s Port Aseb on the Red Sea. They can get anything they fancy in this hot, dusty little village no wider than one house deep stretched a kilometre either side of potholes well north of the capital Addis Ababa. Food and drink are cheap, so too the goods smuggled in from neighbouring Djibouti, and the sex in its HIV-AIDs riddled brothels.

Bore lies in one of the world’s most in-hospitable places, the Danakil Depression, part of the Rift Valley and the route Homo sapiens first took to leave Africa and populate the world beyond. Once an inland sea, the depression is thought to have been created around the time of Christ when lava blocked off the waters and igneous flows spewed out across the desert creating huge expanses of black rock. Some of the hottest temperatures on earth have been recorded in the Danakil and its common to experience days above 50 degrees Celsius. Throughout this harsh environment live two million Afar, 85 per cent of them nomads who claim an association with the area dating to around 1,700BC and who say they were once slaves to Egypt’s pharaohs. The Afar are a feared race of people known in years past to cut off the scrotums of their enemies slain in battle and to proudly display the dried remains as trophies on their wrists. These days they tend to goats and long horned cattle that graze on salt bush and are penned on the rock flows each night in yards constructed from thorny acacia bushes. The Afar choose to sleep on the rock instead of the sparsely vegetated desert to avoid malaria carrying mosquitoes and a superstition that evil spirits rest under trees at night.

Bore is near ground zero for the work of former Australian nurse Valerie Browning. Since the early 1990s, Browning and her Afar husband, Ismael Ali Garde, have delivered health and education programs to nomads through hilltop clinics and open-air classrooms. Illnesses such as TB, measles, diarrhoea, malaria, whooping cough and anaemia contribute to the Afar having one of the world’s highest infant mortality rates on the planet estimated by Browning to be at least 35 per cent and the lowest life expectancies at 47 years for women and 53 for men. The practice of female genital mutilation is widespread and prolonged childbirth gives rise to fistulas and community shunning for afflicted women because they smell of urine.

Browning was originally attracted to the Danakil in 1973 with her Sydney and fellow Crown Street Hospital nursing friend Rowene Brooker through a call from the Sudan Interior Mission (SIM) for help to address famine in Ethiopia centred in the north and in nearby Tigray. Images of skeletal children and queues of desperate people waiting at food distribution centres to receive a meagre handful of grain too sick to move and covered in flies shocked the world. Estimates put the number of deaths resulting from the drought in the hundreds of thousands.

As fate would have it, Brooker and Browning met a young Tadesse Kahsai who would be their translator and assistant. The close friendship that developed would eventually bring him to Australia. He spoke excellent English and was well educated having attended university in Asmara, Browning said. She knew him as Tadesse, a pronunciation and spelling she said he later changed to Tahadesse because it sounded more Amharic, Ethiopia’s main language, than his native Tigrinya. Tadesse was very amiable and a good joker and proved indispensable in helping us treat people, she said.

Tad was the middle child of four boys and a girl and grew up in Dekemhare 40 kilometres south of the elevated Eritrean capital Asmara. At an altitude 1100 feet lower than Asmara, Dekemhare enjoyed better weather and was a favourite with Italian migrants who discovered the area was good for growing grapes and established a local wine industry. At one stage there were as many as 10,000 Italians in Eritrea’s second largest city.

Life for Tad’s family was tough, and they were extremely poor. His father Kahsai Woldemariam was a policeman who died when Tad was quite young. Though his mother Fannah was still alive, Tad was educated at the nearby SIM orphanage and boarding school for boys or waifs where he was taught by Minnesota born missionary Ailene Norton who well remembered him many years later. Tadesse was always special to me ever since he entered our SIM Boys School, Norton said. Maybe it is because I am challenged by spirited boys like him…. Grade Four was one I remembered best. He seemed to be out of the class for acting up more than he was in class. Still, he was such a likeable student and kept the class lively.

SIM started in 1893 as an interdenominational Christian group aimed at evangelising the 60 million least-reached people of sub-Saharan Africa. It decided to establish a school in Eritrea for ‘needy boys’ in early 1951 and looked for a suitable property as a guest home for missionaries and a place to get some relief from Sudan’s scorching heat. Several options were suggested including an Italian trucking company compound in Dekemhare with a fourplex to accommodate staff three blocks away. To prepare for the first intake of students in September 1954, SIM teachers started to learn Tigrinya and sewed 100 sheets, shorts and shirts for 50 boys they were expecting to commence. Soon the time came to take in the first boys, Norton said. The boys were brought by relatives and even village chiefs. A few of them had one parent living. Orphans had priority. Since none of the boys had been in school it was decided the first thing they should learn would be to use their hands. Carpentry, leather work and sewing were added to the Eritrean school curriculum. Religious teaching played a major part of the school with Bible classes and chapel every day along with Sunday School and evening devotions.

Tad commenced at the school aged eight in 1961 and graduated completing Grade 8 in 1969. His older brother Teshome and younger brothers Tsegai and Samuel also went to the school. English, maths, science, geography, and history were all taught in English by their foreign teachers. Tad excelled academically and was soon recognised as a gifted communicator fluent in five languages - Tigrinya, English, Arabic, Italian and Amharic. Religion was very important to the young pupil and he played hymns on a piano to accompany singing at the school.

His schooling coincided with growing tensions between Eritrea and southern neighbour Ethiopia that led to full scale war that lasted 30 years, one of the longest liberation struggles of modern history. The catalyst for the fighting can ultimately be traced back to Italian colonisation in the late 1800s, but it was brought to a fore after Italy lost Eritrea to the British during World War II. Ruled by the United Kingdom as a protectorate for the better part of a decade, the United Nations sowed the seeds for the Eritrean-Ethiopian conflict when the General Assembly agreed in December 1950 to establish Eritrea as an autonomous state with its own legislative, executive, and judicial powers, but federated with Ethiopia under the sovereignty of the Ethiopian crown. This arrangement was meant to last 10 years when a plebiscite would decide on independence or unification for the two countries. But Ethiopia began to violate and undermine the arrangement almost immediately aided and abetted by the superpowers aware of Eritrea’s strategic importance with 60 per cent of the world’s oil being moved in tankers along its 1,000-kilometre Red Sea coastline. Both the Soviet Union and the United States at various times supported whoever was in power in Addis Ababa over the interests of Eritreans. As more and more rights were removed, protests eventually led to guerrilla fighting which was met with increasing reprisals from Ethiopian forces. Tensions kept escalating and an Eritrean ambush in 1970 led to retaliation against civilians and the first flood of refugees leaving the country.

The famine that took hold in the sub-Saharan in the early 1970s developed to be one of the world’s worst. As it swept north Africa, SIM established a community development wing to assist relief efforts in Eritrea and North Ethiopia which brought Browning and Brooker to the region and their work with Tad. SIM was active in the famine areas and later provided community development projects such as weaving, making oil and soap, sewing, crafts, gardening, well-digging, water-capping, clinics, and literacy, Norton said. The Ethiopian Government allowed 40 SIM Christian students to work with young people from Britain, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA. We all lived under one roof.

The Australian nurses formed a medical contingent and with Tad and another translator Samuel aimed to feed and care for the Afar in the Danakil. The two nurses ran daily clinics as best they could. We had no idea of tropical diseases and Tadesse and Samuel helped as they knew a bit about malaria and so on, Browning said. Samuel spoke a language very similar to Afar and we often went from Samuel to Tad to help translate. They found the Afar were coping well accustomed to living in desert conditions.

The team was with the Afar during three attempted coups to overthrow Emperor Haile Selassie that generated significant tensions and it was only later they managed to get out unscathed. Brooker and Browning returned to Australia in 1974 and maintained contact with Tad. An offer to sponsor him to migrate eventuated soon after. I signed for Tadesse to come to Australia telling embassy people in Sudan I had $10,000 in the bank when I did not have a cent, Browning said. All of those coming to Australia were students so university study was somehow part of their ambition. From Tad’s perspective, the offer presented an opportunity for a new life as his homeland further descended into war.

Before he could leave, however, passage and a passport needed to be arranged and in mid-1975 Tad travelled to Addis Ababa to organise both. Tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea were particularly high at the time. Resistance fighters were involved in skirmishes with Ethiopian forces on the outskirts of Asmara and, in retaliation, army soldiers went from door to door in the city and indiscriminately killed many. Travel was banned for those wanting to head north to Asmara, but it did not stop people heading south to the Ethiopian capital. When Tad arrived in Addis, he went to SIM’s Community Development Guest House.

Fessehaie Abraham, like Tad a student at the SIM School in Dekemhare, was at the guest house. I didn’t know Tad before then because he was a few years younger than me, Fessehaie said.² He remembered Tad was very religious at the time. It was very important to him, he said. He used to read the bible and sing and play a guitar he had been given.

Norton said she was happy Tad had been given the opportunity to leave Africa to live in Australia, but Fessehaie said at least one person who held a senior leadership role in SIM was not. Tad had embraced the strict Christian religious values and views that SIM evangelised to such an extent that he led congregations and encouraged those not of the faith to come forward to the alter to receive God’s blessing. What concerned Dr Connell Dewey, SIM’s Head of Community Development, was Tad’s promise would be lost to the mission compromised by what he suspected were more relaxed Anglican religious views of those sponsoring his move to Australia. Dewey’s concern for Tad’s sober Christian lifestyle and values would prove prophetic. But rather than the timid influence of the Anglican Church eroding Tad’s fundamentalist beliefs, he should have been more worried about the world of wine, women and song SIM’s disciple was about to embrace wholeheartedly in a new country.

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² After being introduced, Eritreans are usually referred to by their given names. On a case-by-case basis their middle name is also included.

3

Four days before vanishing

Kelly Graham was pretty inebriated four days before Tad disappeared. He had been drinking quite a lot and now, early in the evening of Boxing Night 2015, he was enjoying even more drinks with mates Brendan Wallace and Cameron Irons. Suddenly the door burst open and in walked Tad shirtless and wearing tracksuit pants which were covered in urine. He could barely stand.

He was shaking pretty bad and talking about needing a needle, Graham later told police. "He just walked in. Like I said, the door just started opening and I sort of, ‘What’s going on?’ He stood there for a few seconds, didn’t answer me. I said, ‘What do you want?’ and I heard something like ‘needle’ or something like that. I looked at my mate and that’s when I said, ‘No, get the fuck out. No needle here bud.’ I