In Thologolong, a small mark on the map in the Victorian high country, the sky is clear, the Murray River is up and Australia\u2019s longest manhunt has come to an end.<\/p>\n
Standing among the dried leaves and eucalyptus bark, the Victorian police chief commissioner, Mike Bush, is addressing reporters. Fugitive Dezi Freeman died here on Monday morning<\/a>, Bush says, after a three-hour standoff in which \u201cmultiple\u201d shots were fired \u2013 although investigators are yet to determine whether any of them were shot by Freeman.<\/p>\n He was hiding out in a converted shipping container at a property on Murray River Road<\/a>, less than 1km from the New South Wales border and about 100km from the property near Porepunkah where he was last seen, on 26 August, running into the bush after allegedly shooting dead two police officers.<\/p>\n Until the shots rang out at 8.30am Monday, Murray River Road was just a picturesque bit of bitumen that weaved through remote cattle country, used only by locals and an occasional caravan looking for a quiet spot along the bank of Lake Hume. The nearest large town, Albury-Wodonga, is over an hour\u2019s drive away.<\/p>\n By mid-morning, it was busy with police cars. A large media throng was gathering at the gates of the property, which backs into Mount Lawson state park.<\/p>\n Murray River Road is a picturesque drive on the Victoria-NSW border. Photograph: Ellen Smith\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Thologolong is named for a heritage cattle station where Murray Grey cattle were first bred and most of the valley is still owned by the same farming family which founded it: the Sutherlands.<\/p>\n The property where Freeman was hiding out belonged to Richard Sutherland. He has been in Tasmania for the past four months, his family say, and had no idea Freeman was there. He\u2019d never met him, they say, and had no sympathies to the sovereign citizen movement associated with Freeman.<\/p>\n Rocky Sutherland, a cousin of Richard, runs cattle on a neighbouring farm. He told Guardian Australia he had not seen anything suspicious in the months the property had been believed to be vacant. He was stunned to hear what had happened up the road.<\/p>\n \u201cI heard it on the news this morning,\u201d he says. \u201cI was surprised that he was here. Like, fuck \u2013 it\u2019s a bit of a shock.\u201d<\/p>\n Thologolong is best known for Murray grey cattle. Photograph: Ellen Smith\/The GuardianPolice and forensic investigators at the shipping containers where Dezi Freeman was found. Photograph: Ellen Smith\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Richard had been away for months and people in the community knew he was travelling, Sutherland said.<\/p>\n \u201cHe is in Tasmania with his grandkids and he\u2019s got relatives down there,\u201d Sutherland said. \u201cHe sort of lives [at the property] on his own but he\u2019s been down there all summer.<\/p>\n \u201cIf [Freeman\u2019s] come on foot, I reckon he\u2019s just staked it out to see if there was anyone there. There\u2019s obviously no one living there.\u201d<\/p>\n Sutherland says he checked on his cousin\u2019s property after he heard the news and found it covered with police, including the highly trained tactical Special Operations Group. Helicopters had been going overhead all day.<\/p>\n \u201cI just assumed he [Freeman] was in Buffalo Park, dead, or hiding somewhere. There\u2019s a lot of mine shafts up there,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Neil Sutherland, Richard Sutherland\u2019s younger brother who also farms at Thologolong, told ABC radio that he had heard a gunshot and helicopters circling overhead at about 5am on Monday but had \u201cno idea\u201d the locality had been on the radar of police, nor had he seen detectives in the area during the seven-month manhunt for Freeman.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t know what was going on because it was still dark,\u201d he told the ABC.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was definitely not regular because there were helicopters \u2026 circling the area and I heard a loudspeaker and a siren, but I couldn\u2019t hear what they were saying on the loudspeaker because of the helicopter.\u201d<\/p>\n Later, he told Albury-Wodonga newspaper the Border Mail on Monday that his family was \u201cin shock\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s never even met Dezi,\u201d he told the paper. \u201cI\u2019m very surprised, I thought he would have perished \u2026 He\u2019s a very good bushman if he\u2019s walked all this way.\u201d<\/p>\n January bushfires<\/p>\n It\u2019s the second time in two months the property has been crawling with first responders. In January, the Walwa-Mount Lawson state park fire ripped through the area, spreading through 120,000ha before it was contained over a month later. Rocky Sutherland says it had started right behind the property and, after it broke out, the Country Fire Authority built a firebreak on the forest\u2019s edge, using the property as a thoroughfare.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fire started almost near where he was, right behind there,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were a lot of trucks in there, going in and out because they put a firebreak behind the hills here. So they had a lot of machinery in there, bulldozers, heaps of fire trucks.\u201d<\/p>\n The fire took off in \u201cfairly benign conditions\u201d, the Victorian state control centre told reporters on 6 January, but spread rapidly under extreme fire conditions the next day.<\/a> It burned through 120,914ha before being declared under control 11 February.<\/p>\n Features of the landscape that make fires hard to control \u2013 the remote, rugged hills, small winding roads and patchy-to-nonexistent mobile phone service \u2013 may have made it an attractive place to hide out. The converted shipping container, from which police say Freeman emerged on Monday morning, is so far back from the road that it\u2019s difficult to see. An occupant could go unnoticed.<\/p>\n The Victoria police chief commissioner, Mike Bush, addresses the media in Thologolong. Photograph: Ellen Smith\/The Guardian<\/p>\n