Moonshine deaths rock town

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: When three members of an Indigenous community in outback New South Wales died within a few months of each other, their deaths were suspected to all be linked to cheap homemade alcohol.

A coroner's now pointed the finger at the apparent seller of the moonshine.

Tonight, a community is speaking out for the first time about what happened.

Sarah Whyte travelled to Collarenebri to hear the story and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers should know that this story contains names and images of people who have died.

SARAH WHYTE, REPORTER: It's Saturday morning at Walli Reserve in the outback town of Collarenebri and the locals are angry.

COLLARENEBRI COMMUNITY MEMBER: I guess what we want to talk about is how Mary came into our community and how she targeted everybody really, like, especially this community.

SARAH WHYTE: It's almost two years since Sandra Boney, Norman Boney and Roger Adams died after drinking homemade alcohol.

Their friends and family want the woman responsible for selling it, Mary Miller, to be held accountable.

MAX BONEY, SANDRA'S NEPHEW: For it to keep going and making a business off the Aboriginal community, it's not right.

SARAH WHYTE: Mary Miller is still living just a few kilometres away.

Hello? Today, she's not home.

Mary Miller sold the moonshine at her antique shop and there was no shortage of willing customers.

Margaret Boney was a regular.

She would take your card?

MARGARET BONEY: She would hold a key card until our pay date, and when it come to our pay date, we walk, go goes up there. And then she gives, take her money out for the grog what we buy off her.

Yeah. She used to do that all the time. To me, my sister and my brother, Norman and Sandra.

SARAH WHYTE: The group would drink almost every day. Among them was Sandra Boney.

ELLIOT BONEY, SANDRA'S DAUGHTER: She was happy, she enjoyed spending time with her first two grand kids, and she's just a happy person.

SARAH WHYTE: But Sandra was also a chronic alcoholic.

ELLIOT BONEY: Like, everyone knew that she was an alcoholic. She's been drinking since she was 16, and, now she's, I don't know, about 40 something. She's been drinking all of her life and like, Mary just come to town suddenly and she had drinks, grog and now she's now gone.

SARAH WHYTE: Elliot Boney began to see her mother's health deteriorate the more moonshine she drank.

What were her symptoms?

ELLIOT BONEY: Well, wasn't the usual hangover. It was like something different, like, she just didn't feel right and she didn't look like to me.

Her skin was getting darker, lost a lot of weight, couldn't walk. Couldn't get up and chase her grandkids around. It was just, yeah. She just real pale looking.

SARAH WHYTE: Sandra Boney died in January 2015.

ELLIOT BONEY: And now me and my two sisters have got no mother. My baby has got no grandmother. And my uncle, uncle Norman, he reared me up and I called him dad and now he's not here to see my babies grow up.

SARAH WHYTE: Uncle Norman was Sandra's brother, he too was drinking the moonshine.

MAX BONEY: Similar symptoms. Coughing up blood, sometime uncle Norman had blood in the urine when they go to the toilet.

But before they used to drink the moonshine, cause they were alcoholics, a hangover, like a normal hangover, just normal hangover, you know, but after consuming the moonshine, it sort of just everything changed.

SARAH WHYTE: Norman Boney died in February followed by Sandra's partner, Roger Adams, who died a month later.

A coroner found the three had compromised immunity and the methanol in the moonshine contributed to their deaths.

She also found Mary Miller supplied the moonshine and either made or assisted in making it.

EXTRACT FROM THE REPORT BY HELEN BARRY, NSW DEPUTY STATE CORONER: Mary Miller was considered by many persons at Walli Reserve to be a friend, that is simply not the case.

Mary Miller sold for profit contaminated alcohol to vulnerable members of the community.

HIRAM LAMB, SANDRA'S SON-IN-LAW: She was making grog, she got no liquor license, she's got none of it. That shouldn't give her rights to take advantage of people that drinks a lot and bring poison over to us.

MAX BONEY: She targeted vulnerable people because she knew that people with alcoholic in Collarenebri. She knew who to ask. She knew who to offer.

SARAH WHYTE: Mary Miller eventually texted us denying ever selling the moonshine.

TEXT FROM SARAH WHYTE: Did you know the alcohol you were making was contaminated?

TEXT FROM MARY MILLER: I didn't make any I told you. I only game some to Margret. I drank the same wine what they added later on made them sick. Probably metho, they were sealed bottles.

TEXT FROM SARAH WHYTE: They said you sold them home brew. Is this true?

TEXT FROM MARY MILLER: No.

SARAH WHYTE: Police are still investigating. The laws around moonshine are complex.

No licence is needed to own a distiller under five litres which means the manufacturing of alcohol can easily go undetected.

The problem of methanol-laced moonshine is not just restricted to this community.

Since 2013, there have been more than 10 deaths associated with the toxic home brew in Australia.

ASHLEE DONOHUE, COMMUNITY EDUCATOR: You've got people who are alcoholics, who, anyone with any addiction knows they'll buy whatever they need to buy to fulfil that addiction and so it was cheap.

It got them where they wanted to go and so they were buying it.

SARAH WHYTE: Ashley Donohue has spent years in working in remote communities as an educator and knows Collarenebri well.

ASHLEE DONOHUE: The Walli community is a really close-knit family, you know, there's about four or five families that live over there and they have been there for generations.

So when three members of that community die within a space of two to three months, it causes a real ripple effect of despair.

MARK BONEY, SANDRA'S NEPHEW: The death of my uncle and aunty, that sort of made me realise a lot too that alcohol is just not the way to go.

I grew up around a lot of alcohol and all that and I just got to the stage where I'm sick of that kind of life and I just want to make life better for myself, that's why I give the alcohol up and I'm trying to be here now for my family.

LEIGH SALES: Sarah Whyte reporting.