It arrived in a box. Not an envelope. A box, the kind reams of paper come in, and it was heavy, and the courier made me sign for it twice, and I knew before I opened it that they had finally admitted everything, because why else would it be so heavy.
They had not admitted everything. They had admitted nothing, four hundred times, and then they had given me a recipe.
The request
In December 2008 I lodged a request under the Freedom of Information Act with the Bureau. Which Bureau, people ask. I sent it to all of them. Meteorology, Statistics, the one for rural something, and a fourth one Shane found online whose name I could not pronounce but whose address was in Canberra, which was enough for me.
I asked for “all documents, photographs, recordings, correspondence, memoranda and pamphlets held in relation to Boolaroo Downs, the Doolan family, the animal known as Beryl (QLD-0447-B), the events of 14 March 1994 and any subsequent visitation, removal, return or observation”.
Three of the four said they held nothing. The fourth, after eleven months, two internal reviews and an invoice for $31.40 in photocopying, sent the box.
The contents
Four hundred and six pages, A4, double-sided. Pages 1 to 211: black. Pages 213 to 406: black. Not the usual redaction where you get a few words and a date and the shape of a paragraph. Solid. Edge to edge. Toner so thick the pages stick together. Shane held one up to the light bulb and you could see nothing, and he said “they’ve redacted the redactions”, and I believe he is right.
Page 212 is a recipe for a caramel slice.
Page 212
I reproduce it here in full because the public has a right to know.
Exhibit A — page 212 of 406
CARAMEL SLICE (Easy)
Base: 1 cup SR flour, 1 cup coconut, ½ cup brown sugar, 125 g butter melted. Press into tin. Bake 15 min at 180.
Filling: 1 tin condensed milk, 2 tbsp golden syrup, 60 g butter. Stir over low heat until thick. Pour over base. Bake 10 min.
Top: 200 g dark chocolate, 2 tsp oil. Melt. Spread. Set in fridge.
Cut while slightly warm or it cracks. — M.
It is handwritten. It is on a sheet of departmental letterhead. It has been photocopied so many times the letterhead is a grey smear, but you can make out a crest.
Dr Faraday’s analysis
I gave page 212 to Dr Faraday on the Tuesday and he came back on the Friday with eleven pages of his own, which I will summarise.
He first considered that the recipe was a mistake, a staff lunchroom document swept into the file by accident. He rejected this. “Nothing in four hundred and six pages is an accident,” he said. “They decided what we would see, and what we would see is this.”
He then applied what he calls the Numerical Method. One cup, one cup, half a cup, 125 grams. One tin, two tablespoons, 60 grams. Two hundred grams, two teaspoons. Fifteen minutes, ten minutes, 180 degrees. He wrote the figures in order and read them as a bearing and a distance from Boolaroo Downs, and the point they describe, he says, is 212 kilometres south-south-west of the Top Paddock, “in the general direction of Roma”.
He then applied the Lexical Method. Condensed. Golden. Set. Base. Press. Cut while slightly warm or it cracks. He read this as a description of a procedure, and the procedure, he says, is not for a slice. It is for a cow. “Condensed. Golden. Set in fridge.” He did not elaborate and I did not ask him to.
Finally he considered the signature. M. The Collective has three candidates. Meteorology. Military. Maureen, who is a cow and cannot write, but who was in the circle in 1995, and whom Dr Faraday has never fully cleared.
A word from management
I made the slice. It's very good. The tip about cutting it warm is correct. The pages are black because Warren ticked the box for "all documents" on a form that went to a records section, and what they sent him was a scanned copy of a file that had been archived to microfiche in the eighties and the scanner was set wrong, and someone in the office noticed, and slipped the recipe in as an apology. That is how public servants apologise. With slice. — Noreen
Where it stands
I have appealed. The appeal has been acknowledged. The acknowledgement is one page and it is not redacted, and it says that my concerns have been noted, and Dr Faraday has pointed out that “noted” is what you do to a thing you intend to keep.
The box is in the second bedroom. The four hundred and five black pages are being examined one at a time under a lamp by Shane, who is thirteen now and has found what he believes is a fingerprint on page 388. The recipe is on the fridge.
They sent me four hundred pages of nothing and one page of something, and the something was a slice, and the slice was good. I do not know what that means. I know that it means something.
Keep watching the paddock. Keep watching the post.
— Warren
Document U8MC-09-0104. Status: LEAKED. This file is retained indefinitely, or until the Men in Beige ask for it, whichever is never.