Between two of the Gold Coast’s ageing unit blocks, less than a kilometre from the Surfers Paradise glitter strip, there is a pocket park with a shower, by a path leading down to the beach.
On Tuesday morning a local wanders back through the park shirtless after his daily swim. George tells Guardian Australia he saw the canopy there, a makeshift tent in a small clearing between a wooden platform and some mangroves.
He saw the homeless couple and their children, a newborn and a toddler, returning to the campsite one evening with a pile of blankets. Like hundreds of others who saw the family, George didn’t know their story. He never spoke to them.
“And they say he killed the baby?” he says. “Bastard.”
The four of them slept in Sydney Hamilton family park briefly in June. Of the hundreds who saw them, a few contacted authorities. They stayed in the park for about two weeks, before moving to another spot in the sand dunes at Broadbeach, a few kilometres south.
Police will allege that the nine-month-old baby girl was killed by her 47-year-old father south of the border in New South Wales, in Tweed Heads, where the family had slept in another park for the past few months.
The infant’s body was found on the beach at the northern end of Surfers Paradise. The cause of death not yet known but what led to it is already being passionately debated by local residents and politicians.
Was it just the alleged act of a parent? The failure of authorities to intervene sooner? Or was this a collective failure of the village; the one that was supposed to help raise the child but which ultimately failed to save her?
‘You wouldn’t bring family here’
“We’re losing a sense of community,” the Rev Jon Brook says from his office, above the St John’s church hall, a crisis centre that serves hot meals to the homeless and poor in the heart of Surfers Paradise.
On Tuesday there were 80 people lining up for food, some taking sandwiches home so they had something for dinner.
Brook says at least 20 people are sleeping rough nearby. Others are couch surfing or in camping grounds or boarding houses – “atrocious, horrible, revolting places which are usually are sources of all sorts of crime and horrendous behaviour, sadly”.
“There wouldn’t be a week goes by where there would be someone with kids who would come by and have a meal here,” he said. “There was a period up until not that long ago where we would at least see one or two families turning up who were living in cars, a week.
“You’re looking at something that’s so ingrained. We’ve actually had third-generation homelessness here. Grandmother, mother and child. All homeless.
“The community needs to be more engaged. Because who is going to want to spend all of that money on something that really people want to pretend isn’t there? …
“It’s not until this sort of crap happens where this poor child, nine months old – just an atrocious thing.”
Brook says the number of homeless people isgrowing in a place where holidaymakers often outnumber permanent residents.
Outside the church, groups of partying school leavers ride mopeds along the footpath, dodging the few people who have lingered on the doorstep after lunch. At night, the schoolies will pack into nightclubs and strip clubs.
“Have you been down here during the evening to Surfers?” Brook asks. “You wouldn’t bring family here, would you? Not at all.”
Family moved regularly, friends say
The mother of the nine-month-old child was pregnant again, Guardian Australia has learned. She came with her family to St John’s occasionally for food or other assistance, and is known to many of the regulars.
The 23-year-old arrived in town from Victoria a few years ago. She met her partner, a Surfers Paradise local, and they lived together for more than two years in a van– unremarkable in parts of the Gold Coast and northern NSW, where lines can be blurred between homelessness and a happy, hippy lifestyle.
Queensland’s child safety department won’t comment on the specific case or the extent of its involvement with the family. It’s understood the department was notified about the children several times but unclear what outreach occurred.
Last year the department received almost 330 similar notifications a day – about 119,000 in total. About 6,400 of those resulted in a “substantiation” that a child has been harmed, or is at risk of harm.
The Gold Coast Bulletin spoke to a woman who said she had heard the baby crying during a cold night in Sydney Hamilton park and had contacted the local council. Brook says volunteers and staff at St John’s would have also contacted child safety authorities; they were required by law to report children who were homeless or at risk. Queensland police have confirmed that the family was known to them.
“I found [the father] to be pleasant and cooperative, I’ve never seen him intoxicated,” Brook says. “He wasn’t a problem at all, he slept here, we had the church open in the evening when it was cold. I know they were seeking help, that’s why they presented to us.”
Locals who have met the family say they would see them regularly, then not for long periods if they had shifted campsites.
“There’s a transience among the homeless,” Brook says. “It’s like they are migrating north, then you see them three or six months later and they’re heading back south …
“I mean, how do you keep an eye on the needle in a haystack? I think the resources are very light-on for the services that are there to protect the child. And I think too, I really believe, that those who are responsible for allocating the money don’t know what the solution is.”
On Wednesday, the morning after another infant – from nearby Logan – was killed, the Queensland government announced tougher penalties for child homicide as the findings of a year-long review by the sentencing advisory council were made public. The review, prompted by a string high-profile cases where adults had been found guilty of manslaughter of a child and had received relatively light prison sentences, recommended that “the defencelessness and vulnerability of the child victim” should be considered an aggravating factor.
The government says it will also broaden the definition of murder in an attempt to reduce the numbers of people ultimately found guilty of manslaughter but not murder.
The father of the dead infant found at Surfers Paradise will be charged under NSW law. He is in custody in Queensland but should be extradited on Wednesday afternoon.
The ABC and several other media outlets reported that police were investigating whether the child was allegedly killed by the father as some form of “sacrifice”.
The couple’s older child, a two-year-old boy, is now in the custody of Queensland’s department of child safety.
‘We are all responsible’
Wendy Coe ran Rosies, a charity and homeless support service on the Gold Coast, for several years. In an open letter written on Tuesday and published by the Gold Coast Bulletin, Coe said she had been contacted by a friend about the family about six months ago.
“Personally, I did nothing and I will regret this until the day I die,” Coe wrote.
“I considered doing something but I was not in the crisis business any more and I was tired. So I did nothing.
“I have no idea how to face my friend who originally notified me of this family’s plight. She tried everyone she could think of to get help for this family and this newborn baby and I let her down. We all let her down. We are all responsible for this little baby’s death.
“Some on the Gold Coast who had contact with or knew of this family will have sleepless nights, be full of remorse and will carry a lot of guilt for a very long time. I will not carry this burden alone but it is a burden I will bear.”
