THIS IS HANDS DOWN THE VERY BEST SELFIE EVER TAKEN.
this article explains why its the most bizarre/incredible/awesome/scary selfie of all time:
T͟H͟E͟ T͟R͟A͟G͟I͟C͟ T͟A͟L͟E͟ O͟F͟ A͟ M͟A͟N͟ W͟H͟O͟ W͟A͟N͟T͟E͟D͟ T͟O͟ B͟E͟ A͟ F͟I͟S͟H͟
The Sunday Age, May 18, 1996
NOBODY knows why Neil Gordon Wilson, 49, liked to pretend to be a fish.
When Mr 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 that police say remains one of the most baffling.
It has also become a case study of the life of an eccentric personality in a small country town, and the ability of its residents to show sympathy and understanding of his plight.
The coroner, Mr Graeme Johnstone, has now officially closed the file without getting close to finding why Mr Wilson chose to hop about in a vinyl fish-suit in a deserted paddock near his home.
Police believe he spent at least four years developing prototypes of fish-suits before he finally died wearing one. He photographed himself in an early version on the banks of the local lake a year before his death.
Mr 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 Mr Wilson was different, but they also knew he was harmless. They grew used to his strange ways and were rarely shocked by his behavior.
Mr Wilson lived in a world populated by one. He foraged in the local tip, hanging items he found in a tree in front of his holiday house.
Local resident Mr Graham Bedford told police he remembered seeing Mr 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 bandido.
He said good day to me and then started to get dressed,” he said.
“Most of the people who lived in Toolondo knew what he was like, but after so many years of strange behavior, Neil was accepted. There was never any incident where Neil posed a danger to anyone else that I know of.”
Around the same time, duck hunters found a green plastic bodysuit on the edge of the Toolondo Lake. “We knew it was Neil’s because it was in one of the spots he used to go regularly and there were items of clothing around it,” Mr Bedford said.
“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 1974, a tourist told local police he had found Mr Wilson in the Toolondo Channel attached by a rope to a bridge railing.
After the tourist pulled him naked from the water, Mr Wilson explained he “was playing (pretending to be) a fish at the end of the line”.
In November 1995 Mr Wilson was driven from Melbourne 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, were able to deduce that he had stopped taking his tablets 10 days earlier.
Just after 4pm on 27 November, the police helicopter spotted the body of Mr Wilson in a green fish-suit in an open paddock about a kilometre from the lake.
Senior Constable Kerry Allen from Natimuk pieced together what he thought had happened.
He believed that Mr Wilson spent hours in the garage of the holiday house fashioning versions of the fish-suit using plastic recovered from a local tip, including a vinyl, queen-sized water-bed 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.
Senior Constable Allen said that on about 20 November Wilson placed a bodysuit and other items into a wheelbarrow and walked more than 100 metres north into the paddock opposite the holiday house.
He said Mr Wilson covered himself with soap and water from a container so that he could slip into the tight-fitting 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,” Senior Constable Allen said in a statement to the coroner.
The suit contained two vinyl layers separated by carpet underlay to act as insulation, four zips, a padlock, mittens, a headpiece with eyeholes and a mermaid-type tail made of a tyre 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 a likely cause of death.
The combination of lack of food, lack of medication and the exertion of hopping about in the suit brought on a seizure and subsequent loss of consciousness. Caught in an open paddock and unable to move he would have been killed by the heat.
The coroner, Mr Johnstone, found there was no evidence that Mr Wilson took his own life but, while a cause of death could not be found, there were no signs of foul play.
