NOBODY knows why Neil Gordon Wilson, 49, wanted to be a fish. When Wilson was found dead in a meticulously-made fish suit near his family’s Toolondo holiday home, 390 kilometres west of Melbourne, it opened a case which police say remains one of the most baffling on record.
The Coroner, Graeme Johnstone, officially closed the file with a one and a half page report that could not get close to finding why a respectable, middle-aged bachelor chose to hop about in a vinyl fish suit in a deserted paddock.
Police believe Wilson spent at least four years developing prototypes of fish suit before he finally died wearing one. He even photographed himself in one of the early versions on the banks of the local lake, a year before his death.
Wilson was a quiet, gentle man, who suffered brain damage after a motorbike accident in the 1970s. He was placed on medication to control epilepsy but, according to his family, he would often fail to take it.
The people of Toolondo knew their neighbor was different, but they also knew he was harmless. They grew used to his strange ways and were rarely shocked by his behaviour.
He was often sighted in the area in the most bizarre circumstances but locals knew it was ‘just Neil’ and went about their business unconcerned.
He lived in a world populated by one. He was always appeared busy, but no-one knew exactly what he was doing. He foraged in the local tip, hanging many of the items he found in the tree at the front of his family’s holiday house, where he had more-or-less taken up permanent residence.
One local, Graham Bedford, told police he remembered seeing Wilson near long grass in Toolondo swamplands in 1991. ‘He was totally naked except for a number of Coke cans tied to a piece of hayband around his chest like a bandolier. He said good-day to me and then started to get dressed.
‘Most of the people who lived in Toolondo knew what he was like, but after so many years of strange behaviour, Neil was accepted. There was never any incident where Neil posed a danger to anyone else that I know of,’ he said.
A few months after Neil had been spotted in the swamplands, Bedford went duck hunting with some friends at the Toolondo lake. They found a strange, homemade body suit made of a green plastic material. ‘We knew it was Neil’s because it was in one of his spots he used to go regularly and there were items of clothing around it,’ Bedford said.
‘I have never seen Neil with the body suit actually on but when I first moved to Toolondo I remember an occasion when I first spotted a strange coloured object moving backwards in the rushes at the edge of the water in Toolondo Lake.
‘I remember that we found a brightly coloured sleeping bag in that area shortly after. I didn’t know Neil at this time, but looking back, his behaviour is entirely consistent with this incident. This incident was actually in the water,’ he said.
‘It was not usual to see items of Neil’s clothing and other unrelated objects lying around areas of the lake where Neil frequented.’
Bedford lived four doors from the Wilson holiday house and knew Wilson better than most. ‘It was impossible to hold any rational conversation with Neil. He would string unconnected ideas and sentences together for a short time, then he would break off and walk away. Over the years I formed the impression that Neil was harmless to others, but had a serious mental disorder.’
‘Neil seemed to avoid people and go about his business. It was not uncommon for Neil to run and hide on the approach of anyone,’ he said.
‘I know that he didn’t have any close friends. In general he was a loner who kept to himself.
‘Another strange thing I saw him do regularly was sit in a chair inside a tank on its side at the rear of the property. He would do this for hours for no apparent reason.
‘From what I know of Neil, I would be unable to say whether he suffered from depression as he was usually active and enthusiastic. I could not say whether he was capable of suicide or even forming that idea in his mind.
‘He would often do things without any apparent explanation or reason. We all just accepted it as part of his strange behaviour.
‘There were often signs that Neil was or had been about. I often saw glimpses of him heading somewhere unknown and I often suspected he was hiding behind a tree or similar as often he appeared that he didn’t want to be seen.’
In 1974 a tourist told local police he had found Wilson in the Toolondo channel attached to a bridge railing by a rope. The amazed tourist had pulled him, naked, from the water, only to be told that the he was pretending to be ‘a fish at the end of the line.’
In November, 1995, Wilson was driven from his parent’s Melbourne home to Toolondo where he expected to stay three weeks. He was reported missing on 27 November. Police found his medication in the house and from the number of pills left police were able to deduce that he had stopped taking them ten days earlier.
Just after 4 pm on 27 November the police helicopter spotted a body in a green fish suit in an open paddock about a kilometre from the lake.
Senior Constable Kerry Allen from nearby Natimuk pieced together what he thought had happened.
He believed Wilson had spent hours in the garage of the holiday house painstakingly fashioning together versions of the fish suit using plastic he recovered from a local tip, including a green vinyl waterbed mattress and a brown vinyl mattress protector.
Police found a sewing machine and plastic offcuts from the fish suit in the double garage of the home as well as an identical spare fish suit.
‘On or after Monday 20 November, 1995, Wilson placed a bodysuit together with other items into a wheelbarrow and walked over 100 metres north into the paddock opposite the holiday house.
‘He then stripped naked, placed a red flag marking his belongings, then pushed the wheelbarrow north for several hundred metres.’
Wilson covered himself with soap and water from a container in the wheelbarrow so that he could fit into the tight fitting fish suit.
He then used a padlock and wire to pull up the back zip of suit. ‘It would seem that Wilson has then hopped 52 metres back south, where for some reason he collapsed,’ the policeman said in a statement to the coroner.
The suits contained two separate vinyl layers separated by carpet underlay for insulation, four zips, a padlock, mittens, a headpiece with eyeholes, no mouth hole and mermaid type leggings made of an inner tube. It was carefully double stitched and waterproof.
Detective Sergeant Graeme Arthur, who oversaw the investigation for the homicide squad, said: ‘It was probably the most bizarre case we have ever seen.’
Senior Constable Allen put forward two likely causes of death. The combination of lack of medication and the exertion of hopping about in the suit brought on a seizure and the subsequent lack of consciousness. Caught in an open paddock with the temperature in the low 30s the airtight fish suit would have turned into a death-sauna. He would have been killed by the heat.
‘Alternatively, the design of the hood of the garment may have brought about suffocation,’ he said.
The Coroner found there was no evidence that Wilson took his own life. But while no cause of death could be established, there were no signs of foul play. Strange as Neil Wilson’s life was, there was nothing fishy about his death. Apart from the suit.