Struberville: Consequences of Isolation

On a remote cattle station in outback Australia, four gold prospectors push their luck and pay the price. Venturing too close to the homestead they attract the attention of the landholders, who arrive armed and dangerous. Only three of the prospectors make it out alive.

This IPPY award-winning book is the true story of Bruce Schuler's murder on Palmerville Station on July 9th, 2012. His murderers, Stephen Struber and his wife Dianne, had for decades been behaving as a law unto themselves, terrorising all who dared cross their land. Or as Struber saw it, playing Cowboys and Indians. With real bullets.

By happenstance, author Monte Dwyer interviewed the cattle farmers barely two months before the crime was committed, while he was gathering material for his previous Red in the Centre book, The Nomads at Large. Hearing about the Struber's reputation, Dwyer brazenly 'cold called' the property and fronted the graziers about their recalcitrant behaviour, reasoning that the situation was relevant to the many Nomads taking caravans through leasehold properties where they weren't always welcome. Unsurprisingly, the Strubers denied his assertions, but when Schuler was murdered his video interview became of interest to the Queensland police, who in turn opened their files to Dwyer. With such quality source material to further bolster the unusual perspective of having insight into the murderers BEFORE they committed the crime, Dwyer realised only he could write this book. So he did.

Struberville is a riveting account of the murder and the investigation, the search for a body that was never found and the court case that convicted on circumstantial evidence alone. It is a heartbreaking look at the hardships faced by a widow without a body to bury, and her fight to introduce a No Body No Parole clause into the parole legislation in Queensland. And it is a study in errant human behaviour and what happens to the civilising influence of society when nobody's watching out there.