‘Bad bush tucker man’ Malcolm Naden captured after seven years

The NSW Police Commissioner, Andrew Scipione, who had claimed in December
after an officer was shot that Naden would be captured by nightfall,
defended the length of the search.

“This man is a master bushman,” he said. “He has been in this
area for a number of years. He knows it better than the back of his hand.
The conditions that we encountered were atrocious, and the terrain was
second to none when it came to difficulty.”

The capture brought relief to local residents, who believed he was responsible
for a number of break-ins.

Lyn Steghs said her home was broken into several times and she had been
sleeping with a gun under her pillow.

“We’ve had the tactical force out there, the dogs, the helicopters,”
she told ABC Radio. “It was kind of living with a bit of pressure,
pressures we shouldn’t normally have.”

However, another local, Gary Daley, a publican, said Naden’s presence had
brought in visitors – both tourists and police – and added to beer sales by
15 to 20 per cent.

(Reuters)

For at least the past two years, Naden has lived in the dense, forbidding
bushland around Barrington Tops – a remote national parkland about 120 miles
north of Sydney. He allegedly emerged to steal items from surrounding
houses, including rifles, miners’ hats, torches, food, beer, sleeping bags
and – reportedly – fourteen pairs of binoculars. But these apparent
break-ins were neat, with claims that the burglar returned to replace stolen
items and washed up after eating.

Naden, known as a quiet recluse, was a martial arts expert and avid reader of
the Bible, crime books and survival manuals. He is believed to have lived
off wild nuts, berries and peaches as well as prey such as wallabies and
wombats.

During his years at large across the state, he was spotted in a pub, seen
scrounging for opals and was believed to have lived for a time on the roof
of a cabin at an outback zoo, where he lived off rotting fruit and meat left
for the animals.

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