21
Half way up the six steps leading to the entrance foyer of the Alice Springs police station, Superintendent Cameron, ‘Yap Yap’, Barker stood on the wide landing, waiting for the impatient throng of media personnel to quieten sufficiently for him to speak. Addressing the various arms of the media was a task he had carried out numerous times but had never become comfortable with. It was the jostling and jockeying for position, and the cacophonous jumble of voices as questions were hurled at him from all directions of the media scrum that rankled him: and this all before his press conference had even begun.
The crowd of journalists completely blocked the footpath in front of the headquarters building, even spilling over the gutter onto the verge of the street. The afternoon sun beat down
