Judith Mackay would have been 36 by now. Her sister Susan would have been 34. If they still lived in Townsville, they probably would have been among the thousands of people who have celebrated the opening of the north Queensland city's Strand redevelopment during the past two weeks with a hectic round of beach parties, water sport events and firework displays.
But Judith did not make it past seven and Susan was only five when the two girls were brutally murdered in a dry creek bed 29 years ago.
Many Townsville residents during the past fortnight have been preoccupied with an event they consider far more significant then the Strand opening: the trial of Arthur Stanley Brown, 87, the retired carpenter charged with the murder of the Mackay sisters.
They had hoped the trial would be cathartic, finally bringing to an end one of the darkest chapters in the city's history. But it was not to be. In the Townsville Supreme Court yesterday, a jury was dismissed after failing to reach a verdict.
Brown, who pleaded not guilty to charges of abducting Susan and Judith Mackay, sexually assaulting them and murdering them on August 26, 1970, will face a retrial next year.
The Mackay sisters' last day on earth began in an atmosphere of cosy domesticity, with their father William Mackay kissing them goodbye at their home in the Townsville suburb of Aitkenvale before heading off to work.
Before the day was over, their short lives would be terminated in an orgy of depraved lust and brutality in the dry bed of Antill Creek, a desolate place 25km south-west of Townsville, just off the highway to Mt Isa.
Susan was wearing only her panties when her body was found two days later by Richard Tough, 40, an itinerant worker from New Zealand who had arrived in Townsville the previous day looking for work but had instead joined a search for the missing girls.
A post-mortem revealed that Susan had been raped and stangled to death. She had also been stabbed three times in the chest, possibly after she had died.
Judith's body was found completely naked, 70m away.
She was also raped and stabbed three times in the chest, but the cause of death was found to be asphyxiation by sand.
The Mackay sister disappeared after leaving their home just after 8am on August 26 to catch a bus to school. Witnesses saw them waiting at a bus stop to Ross River Road. One witness, now dead, told police she saw them talking to a man who had pulled up his car near the bus stop.
Brown, who was 58 at the time of the murders, lived a life of obscurity until his arrest in December last year. He was born in the small town of Merinda, near Bowen in north Queensland, and moved to Townsville with his parents when he was four. As a meatworker in Townsville during World War II, he was excused from military service as his job was listed as a "reserved occupation", vital to the war effort.
After the war, he started working as a carpenter with the Queensland Public Works Department and remained in that job until he retired at 65.
He was a roving maintenance man, doing repair work at a variety of government buildings in Townsville including Aitkenvale State School, the school the Mackay sisters attended.
A polite, immaculately dressed man, who ironed knife-edge creases in the sleeves of his work shirts, Brown was known to his workmates as "the Scarlet Pimpernel".
Neil Doherty, who worked with Brown in 1970, said he earned the nickname because he worked his own hours and workmates would never know where he would be at any given time.
Fellow workers, in a popular joke at Mr Brown's expense, would say: "They seek him here, they seek him there, they seek him everywhere."
After the Mackay sisters' bodies were found, the biggest criminal investigation in Townsville's history was launched and reports that a man had been seen driving across town with two schoolgirls began trickling in.
Just after 11am in August 26, 1970, a car pulled into the Shell Service Station at Ayr, 85km south of Townsville.
Jean Thwaite, who ran the service station with her husband, said the man at the wheel, who was grumpy and seemed preoccupied, gruffly demanded $3 worth of petrol. As she filled the tank, she saw a little girl with a tear-stained face in the back seat.
Thwaite said the girl rubbed her eyes and asked the man, "Are we there yet?"
In the front seat was a slightly older girl who said: "When are you taking us to mummy? You promised to take us to mummy."
Thwaite was among several witnesses who saw two schoolgirls being driven by a man that day. And at least two witnesses reported seeing a man walking towards a car from the direction of Antill Creek, the murder scene, about 1pm that day.
But most of the witnesses, if they could remember the make of the car they saw, said it was a Holden. None of them said it was a 1964 Vauxhall Victor, the make Brown owned at the time.
Further articles from The Australian and The Weekend Australian: