A true story

Western Australia was awash with diamond talk in 1943. Thousands of brilliantly cut, gem quality diamonds some the size of shirt buttons were missing, some said to be buried in undisclosed locations along the Kimberley coastline in the north of the state. The only man who knew where the fortune lay was standing in the dock of the Criminal Court in Perth with his two co-accused Frank Robinson and Jim Mulgrue but he wasn’t talking. The normally garrulous larrikin Beachcomber Jack Palmer was for the first time in his life keeping his mouth firmly zipped.

 

It was a beachcomber’s dream come true. Jack Palmer was sailing north from Broome to Beagle Bay when he stopped at the wreckage of a Dutch Dakota. Noting hundreds of bullet holes that pockmarked the DC3, Palmer marvelled at how anyone survived the attack. The plane piloted by a former Russian flying ace who became a naturalised Dutch citizen flying for KLM Dutch airlines, Captain Ivan Smirnoff was ferrying Dutch refugees and military personnel escaping Japanese invasion from the Dutch East Indies to Australia, when it ran into the path of Japanese Zeros returning from the Broome air-raid.  Twenty four aircraft were destroyed  and  as many as  100 lives were believed  lost in the air raid on Broome many of them Dutch women and children.

 

In what was later described as the greatest flying show on earth, Smirnoff managed to duck and weave the cumbersome unarmed aircraft through relentless strafing for more than fifty kilometres landing the DC3 in a tight spiral safely on a long sandy stretch at Carnot Bay dousing a port engine fire in the surf. The survivors set up camp on the remote beach battling heat, thirst and starvation as they watched shot and injured passengers die one by one including a mother, Maria Van Thuyn and her baby.  Four people lost their lives .

 

Finally rescued by aborigines and German missionaries from the Beagle Bay Mission the survivors had no idea the package they lost in the surf on the first day of the attack was worth a fortune.

 

Back on board the pearling lugger, Eurus, Jack Palmer opened the sealed brown package he had found on the plane and watched as the light of a king’s ransom cascaded on to the dinner plate. 

 

.At Pender Bay, he met up with two Broome men, Jim Mulgrue and Frank Robinson sitting out the war in the quiet bay. Palmer offered them some of his diamonds, they both took some, 

 

Japanese zeros flying towards Broome on a second air-raid reminded the men of the possibility of invasion and Palmer in a pang of conscience decided to leave his lugger, and walk over 100 kilometres to Broome to sign-up. Major Gibson was stunned as the latest recruit poured out a salt & pepper container full of diamonds.

 

As diamonds started appearing all over the Kimberley it became clear that the diamonds Palmer handed in were only a small part of the booty. An aboriginal, Willie Chatwell had traded some for tobacco, a Chinese storekeeper was arrested trying to sell diamonds and others were recovered by a Native Welfare Officer by the name of Mark Knight and diamonds also turned up under the verandah of a Broome House. Jim Mulgrue had refused to take the diamonds after an argument with Palmer and Robinson’s diamonds were later recovered from an aboriginal woman.More than 4000 top quality diamonds had been recovered but millions of dollars worth of diamonds remain unaccounted for.

 

Jack Palmer, James Mulgrue and Frank Robinson were arrested and charged with stealing the diamonds. Palmer let a smooth talking lawyer by the name of Lappin do the talking for him. Mr Lappin described Palmer as a poor simple fool, who, after removing the diamonds from the plane, had no idea of their value and did not know what to do with them. His attempts on several occasions to hand over the stones to the proper authorities were acts which spoke far louder than his random words. “Every member of the jury should ask himself what he would do if he found himself in circumstances similar to those in which Palmer had been placed,” Lappin said. The talk worked.Chief Justice John Northmore directed the jury that the evidence was “unsettled”. Verdicts of not guilty were returned by a jury of six after four days of evidence after only 30 minutes in retirement.

 

“Diamond” Jack Palmer as he became known, was a free man. Palmer continued his coastwatching duties until the end of the war. He bought a house and a blue Chevrolet he nicknamed Bluebird and regularly indulged the local native women with gifts. He worked occasionally and was never without money. At one time he paid the entire wages of the wharf staff when their pay was late.On his deathbed, Diamond Jack was asked by Father McKelson of La Grange Mission what he had done with the rest of the diamonds. Smiling broadly, Palmer said he had handed them all over to the authorities.