The
Bain Family Massacre
On
June 20th, 1994, just before dawn, five members of the Bain
family were shot dead in their Dunedin home.
The
police were called by David Bain just after 7 am. They found
David (22), apparently very distressed, and Robin Bain (58),
his wife Margaret (50), their daughters Arawa (19), Laniet
(18) and son Stephen (14) all shot dead with David's .22
rifle, which was lying beside Mr Bain.
David
said he had returned from his paper round and found them dead.
Apparently his father had shot the others and then shot
himself. He was an emotionally disturbed ex-missionary who had
been recently having sex with his 18 year old daughter.
But
the police found the rifle did not have Mr Bain's fingerprints
on it, only David's, so they charged him with murder.
David
wore weird-patterned woolen jersies to his first trial in
1995, and was convicted.
He wore a conservative black suit to his retrial in 2009 and
was aquitted.
The
murderer left bloodstained sockprints on the carpet, and
David's foot was 3 cm shorter than his father's. David's
innocence could have been proved in five minutes if he had
walked in wet socks across the courtroom floor and made
significantly shorter prints than his father made on the
carpet.
But
his defence team would not allow this.
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Derek Kirkland
Derek
Kirkland, 'the Singing Shearer,' was born in 1939 to
non-musical parents. Most of his life he has lived on a small
farmlet on a hill overlooking Plimmerton. Derek has never
joined the drift to the city. Instead the city has drifted
towards him, as all the empty farmland surrounding him has
been filled with suburban sprawl. He has never married and has
spent his life shearing in the Wellington region, in recent
years tending the sheep on lifestyle blocks.
In the 1960s he joined the Wellington Country and Western Club
and began writing songs. A singer and multi-instrumentalist
(guitar, fiddle, autoharp, mouth-organ double bass), he later
joined the Plimmerton Bush Band and the Celtic Cowboys doing
barn dances and ceilidhs. He has also been in Country singing
duos for many years.
He has written some 90 songs. His song-writing closely
observes the daily rural life about him, with clever rhyming
and much quiet humour. Ragwort and pet lambs, council roadmen
and mice in the mash-tin, ponyclubs and daggy bum ewes are all
part of his songscape. He avoids the mawkish sentitimentality
of popular lovesong, and also the abstract pontification that
marrs some folksong.
His ballads, like those about his Uncle Mervyn and Winks
Jones, paint vivid pictures of farming life around Wellington
in days past, and he and also has a knack of quickly getting a
topical song to air using a parody of an old but instantly
recognizable song.
Dead Red Robin On Record
2009 Derek
Kirkland, Daggy Bum Boogie, CD and DVD
You can buy
this beauifully made CD and DVD set from Derek, or from its
producer Julian Ward.
The original
1926 song
When
the red, red robin comes
Bob, bob bobbin' along, along,
There'll be no more sobbin' when
He starts throbbin' his old, sweet song.
Wake up, wake up, you sleepy head;
Get up, get up, get out of bed.
Cheer up, cheer up - the sun is red.
Live, love, laugh and be happy.
What if I've been blue,
Now I'm walkin' through fields of flow'rs.
Rain may glisten, but
Still I listen for hours and hours.
I'm just a kid again,
Doin' what I did again,
Singin' a song
When the red, red robin comes
Bob, bob bobbin' along.
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