When the first Wolf Creek film premiered in 2005, it was ambiguously marketed as being “based on true events”.
Indeed, the plot was familiar to those who knew the stories of Ivan Milat, who in the 1990s murdered seven backpackers aged 19-22. It also bore a striking resemblance to the murder of Peter Falconio, a British tourist who disappeared while travelling with his girlfriend Joanne Lees in the Northern Territory in 2001. It’s believed that Peter and Joanne were driving at night in the Australian outback when another man, later found to be Bradley Murdoch, flagged them down, saying he had noticed their van was having engine trouble. Peter got out of the driver’s seat and followed the man to the back of the car, when Joanne heard a gunshot. The man then tied her up and threatened her with a gun, but she was able to escape, hiding in the dark bushes while he tried to find her.
On the back of the success of the first Wolf Creek film, Wolf Creek 2 was released in 2013, telling a fictional story about the return of serial killer Mick Taylor. This time, he killed two police officers, a German couple, and kept one British man captive, torturing him. When that man escapes, the public don’t believe his story, and he is deported back to the UK.
In 2016, Stan dropped the first season of Wolf Creek the TV series, which followed Eve, a 19-year-old American tourist targeted by Taylor. When she escapes, she seeks revenge on him. Then, on December 15, Stan released the second season of Wolf Creek. In the six episodes, Taylor comes across a bus of international tourists, and hunts them down. We won’t include spoilers for it here, but you get the idea: So many murders. So many tourists. So much outback.
Listen to Clare Stephens and Laura Brodnik discuss whether season two of Wolf Creek is just too gory on Mamamia’s TV podcast, The Binge. Post continues after audio.
But while many assume the Wolf Creek franchise is entirely fictional after the first film, a close look at some of Australia’s most chilling backpacker crimes tells a very different story. Here are just some of the gruesome murders, apart from those perpetrated by Ivan Milat and Bradley Murdoch, Wolf Creek appears to draw from.
The Kimberley Killer
In June 1987, five people from Western Australia were murdered while camping in the remote Kimberley region. First, a father and son fishing while their wives waited at camp. Marcus Bullen, 70, and his 42-year-old son were shot in the back and found in shallow graves. Then, just five days later, a young couple, 26-year-old Phillip Walkemeyer, and his 25-year-old fiancee Julie Warren, as well as their friend Terry Bolt, 36, were shot after deciding to camp an extra night.
The entire Kimberley region was on high alert, with police setting up roadblocks and people locking their doors for the first time. Ten days after the first murders, a camouflaged vehicle was spotted, and when it was investigated, 26-year-old German tourist Josef Schwab appeared. After a shoot out with police, Schwab was shot in the chest.
The Northern Territory's Hannibal Lecter
Andy Albury has confessed to at least 13 murders in the Northern Territory and South Australia. He was 15 when he committed his first murder - that of a 14-year-old boy who he buried under a boat shed. His killings were unimaginably brutal, mutilating one woman, and hacking one man to death with a machete before dumping him in a river.
When sentencing Albury, Supreme Court Justice Martin said he had "a fantasy about terrorising a town by committing casual, motiveless murder for the purpose of making people frightened that they may be the next to be killed".
In a 2004 letter to prison authorities, Albury described killing as his "occupation," and said, "I am unstoppable, I love my work".
The Snowtown murders
Between 1992 and 1997, several individuals, but most notably John Bunting, Robert Wagner, and Mark Haydon, murdered 11 people, eight of whom were dismembered and disposed of in barrels of acid.
The victims, mostly from South Australia and the Northern Territory, were murdered in truly disturbing ways - and tortured with items such as an electric shock machine, hand and thumb cuffs, pliers and hammers.
Bunting in particular has been described as "a man who took depraved pleasure in torturing and killing people he believed to be a scourge on society," and it is said he enjoyed looking into the eyes of his suffering victims, so he could pinpoint the very moment of their death. He is also described. as having laughed while torturing the people he killed.
Together, the murders committed in the Australian outback in the last few decades have created a type of folklore which lends itself to the horror of Wolf Creek. The story of foreign backpackers, exploring the great unknown in frightening isolation is a familiar and terrifying one, that has quickly replaced the 'friendly' perception of outback Australia that existed in the days of Crocodile Dundee.
There's also something innately haunting about Australia's vast landscape. In many areas in central Australia, there's no mobile phone service, no petrol stations, and no towns for huge distances. There's also extreme heat, and dangerous wildlife - two factors that feature as additional threats to the characters in season two of Wolf Creek.
It's the franchise that keeps on giving, because Wolf Creek plays on an innate human fear: feeling hauntingly alone, when you might not be.