Backpacker fire tragedy hostel reopens

A hostel where 15 backpackers, including Irish woman Julie O'Keeffe, were killed in a deliberately lit fire reopened in Childers, Australia, today, nearly four years after the deadly inferno.

Late on the night of June 23, 2000, a fire ripped through the Palace Backpackers Hostel killing Julie, six British backpackers, four from Australia, two Dutch, one Japanese and one South Korean.

Itinerant fruit picker Robert Paul Long, 40, is serving a life sentence after being found guilty of murder and arson charges in March 2002.

The new hostel, built on the site of the destroyed one, has already taken more than 100 bookings for the next month, mainly from foreign visitors, owner John Thurtell said.

“My heart goes to the families, but the community has been fantastic,” Thurtell said. “The council here has worked very hard and we have been able to come up with a facility here that is first class.”

Childers, a community of 1,500 about 200 miles north of Brisbane, attracts large groups of young travellers who pick fruit and vegetables in the surrounding fields to earn money to finance their backpacking trips around Australia.

The €1m building has a tourist information centre on the ground floor, with a large staircase leading visitors to the second floor, where there is an art gallery and memorial to the dead.

Most of the 15 victims died on the second floor, many of them from smoke inhalation.

“It’s a new beginning,” manager Trevor Greaves said. He said staff would “always remember the tragedy”.