2.6 Seconds: Death in the Outback documentary review, Digi Mart USA News (Yuendumu, Northern Territory, Australia): The first half of the title of Darren Dale’s four-part documentary series refers to the gap between the first and second of three shots that police officer Zachary Rolfe fired at 19-year-old Kumanjayi Walker, fatally wounding him, in the remote Northern Territory community of Yuendumu in 2019.
Three years later, after a five-week trial, Rolfe was found not guilty of murder and cleared of two other charges. Three years after that, a coroner found Rolfe to be racist and said the coroner could not rule out that his attitude played a role in Walker’s death.
In the documentary, journalist and author Kate Wild describes the case as “emblematic of the rest of the country and of Australian history.” The reviewer writes that those 2.6 seconds crystallized two centuries of pain for Indigenous Australians and reflected the ongoing tragedy of Indigenous deaths in custody, as well as the broader global history of police killing Black civilians.
Dale’s approach does not simplify the narrative or narratives surrounding the event. The reviewer says the series is engaging and often deeply alarming, though it sometimes struggles to turn its wealth of information into clear through-lines or conclusions.
It is described as a work of journalistic rigor.
One argument made in the series is that systems failed both Walker and Rolfe, in different ways and for different reasons. Walker had cognitive and health problems, and one interviewee estimated his emotional age was between six and nine.
He had a difficult childhood, escaped from youth detention several times, and threatened police officers with an axe during a failed arrest attempt five months before his death.
Rolfe served in the army, including a deployment to Afghanistan, before undertaking advanced weapons training with a private company in the United States and applying to various Australian police forces. He was hired by Northern Territory police to work in Alice Springs, about 300km from Yuendumu.
Guardian Australia journalist Nino Bucci, interviewed in the documentary, says Walker’s death was avoidable. “Zach Rolfe shouldn’t have even been a copper,” he says, and “Kumanjayi Walker shouldn’t have even been out of custody.”
The series suggests Rolfe may have been drawn to the chaotic aspects of life in Alice Springs, which several interviewees, many of them police, describe as something of a wild west. Northern Territory police commissioner Martin Dole calls policing there “extremely challenging,” and police commander James Gray-Spence describes a “wave of crime” that was “unprecedented” in the town.
Former senior constable Carey Joy says new recruits face situations “college can’t prepare them for.”
The reviewer says the sheer detail in the series is both a strength and a weakness. It covers cycles of poverty and oppression, intergenerational trauma and institutional racism, each of which could warrant a documentary of its own, and the rapid succession of interviews can make the material feel crammed.
The second episode, focused on Walker’s death and its immediate aftermath, is described as well arranged and shockingly intense, while episodes three and four become tangled again.
Among the most prominent interviewees are barrister Andrew Boe, also credited as series writer, and Samara Nangala Fernandez Brown, one of Walker’s cousins, whom the reviewer describes as an inspiring presence pursuing justice with dignity and determination.
2.6 Seconds: Death in the Outback airs on SBS and NITV on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 8.30pm and is available to stream on SBS On Demand in Australia. It will stream on Netflix worldwide in 2027.
