SALT CREEK MURDERS

John and I spent hours choosing between all the young woman leaping at the chance to take this position. We put one little ad in the paper, and we got thirty-five letters. There is a glut of girls at the present moment, a worldwide glut and one can take one’s pick. I hope you won’t take it in the wrong way if I tell you I personally was in favor of a Miss Beatrix Zwager who was younger than you, and fresh off the boat and very eager to please.

Salt Creek Murders is based on the true story of a series of murders committed in the 1850’s in the Coorong in South Australia. In the play Jane Macmanimum starts work as a domestic at the Salt Creek Hotel, an isolated frontier out-post, and the first thing she witnesses is an adulterous embrace between Nellie, her employer, and Malachi Martin, a yard-hand. A week later, Nellie’s husband, John Robinson is murdered. Over the course of the play the lives of Nellie, Malachi and Jane become disturbingly intertwined, a triangular relationship of love, greed, fear, and desire, leading remorselessly to a tragic conclusion. As the Hotel deteriorates, and money is scarce, Malachi commits another murder in which Nellie may or may not be complicit, and Jane seems unable or unwilling to extricate herself from an increasingly perilous situation. Alongside this is a separate but related narrative, the story of a friendship, both poignant and funny, between a trooper and an aboriginal tracker, as they pursue Malachi for his crimes.

X, y, Lancho Davey, Sally Hildyard, and Steve Mouzakis in Salt Creek Murders.

PRODUCTIONS:

Mainstreet Theatre.

Directed by Tom Healey.

Mt Gambier, 2002.

Regional and Geelong tour, 2004.

AWARDS:

Won-

Wal Cherry Award

Salt Creek Murders was on the VCE school curriculum in 2024 as part of the theatre studies course.