Drifter gets life for backpackers’ hostel blaze

A drifter who started a blaze that ripped through an Australian backpackers’ hostel, killing 15 young holidaymakers, including a Limerick woman, was today sentenced to life imprisonment.

Robert Long, 38, was convicted on Friday of murdering two of the backpackers who perished in the inferno that engulfed the Palace Backpackers Hostel in Childers, a farming community 190 miles north of Brisbane, on June 23, 2000.