Until they heard the gunshots, locals say they had no idea the 56-year-old fugitive had been hiding out next door

In Thologolong, a small mark on the map in the Victorian high country, the sky is clear, the Murray River is up and Australia’s longest manhunt has come to an end.

Standing among the dried leaves and eucalyptus bark, the Victorian police chief commissioner, Mike Bush, is addressing reporters. Fugitive Dezi Freeman died here on Monday morning, Bush says, after a three-hour standoff in which “multiple” shots were fired – although investigators are yet to determine whether any of them were shot by Freeman.

He was hiding out in a converted shipping container at a property on Murray River Road, less than 1km from the New South Wales border and about 100km from the property near Porepunkah where he was last seen, on 26 August, running into the bush after allegedly shooting dead two police officers.

Until the shots rang out at 8.30am Monday, Murray River Road was just a picturesque bit of bitumen that weaved through remote cattle country, used only by locals and an occasional caravan looking for a quiet spot along the bank of Lake Hume. The nearest large town, Albury-Wodonga, is over an hour’s drive away.

By mid-morning, it was busy with police cars. A large media throng was gathering at the gates of the property, which backs into Mount Lawson state park.

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Murray River Road is a picturesque drive on the Victoria-NSW border. Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian

Thologolong is named for a heritage cattle station where Murray Grey cattle were first bred and most of the valley is still owned by the same farming family which founded it: the Sutherlands.

The property where Freeman was hiding out belonged to Richard Sutherland. He has been in Tasmania for the past four months, his family say, and had no idea Freeman was there. He’d never met him, they say, and had no sympathies to the sovereign citizen movement associated with Freeman.

Rocky Sutherland, a cousin of Richard, runs cattle on a neighbouring farm. He told Guardian Australia he had not seen anything suspicious in the months the property had been believed to be vacant. He was stunned to hear what had happened up the road.

“I heard it on the news this morning,” he says. “I was surprised that he was here. Like, fuck – it’s a bit of a shock.”

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Thologolong is best known for Murray grey cattle. Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian

Police and forensic investigators at the shipping containers where Dezi Freeman was found. Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian

Richard had been away for months and people in the community knew he was travelling, Sutherland said.

“He is in Tasmania with his grandkids and he’s got relatives down there,” Sutherland said. “He sort of lives [at the property] on his own but he’s been down there all summer.

“If [Freeman’s] come on foot, I reckon he’s just staked it out to see if there was anyone there. There’s obviously no one living there.”

Sutherland says he checked on his cousin’s property after he heard the news and found it covered with police, including the highly trained tactical Special Operations Group. Helicopters had been going overhead all day.

“I just assumed he [Freeman] was in Buffalo Park, dead, or hiding somewhere. There’s a lot of mine shafts up there,” he says

Dezi Freeman death map – loop

Neil Sutherland, Richard Sutherland’s younger brother who also farms at Thologolong, told ABC radio that he had heard a gunshot and helicopters circling overhead at about 5am on Monday but had “no idea” the locality had been on the radar of police, nor had he seen detectives in the area during the seven-month manhunt for Freeman.

“I didn’t know what was going on because it was still dark,” he told the ABC.

“It was definitely not regular because there were helicopters … circling the area and I heard a loudspeaker and a siren, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying on the loudspeaker because of the helicopter.”

Later, he told Albury-Wodonga newspaper the Border Mail on Monday that his family was “in shock”.

“He’s never even met Dezi,” he told the paper. “I’m very surprised, I thought he would have perished … He’s a very good bushman if he’s walked all this way.”

January bushfires

It’s the second time in two months the property has been crawling with first responders. In January, the Walwa-Mount Lawson state park fire ripped through the area, spreading through 120,000ha before it was contained over a month later. Rocky Sutherland says it had started right behind the property and, after it broke out, the Country Fire Authority built a firebreak on the forest’s edge, using the property as a thoroughfare.

“The fire started almost near where he was, right behind there,” he says.

“There were a lot of trucks in there, going in and out because they put a firebreak behind the hills here. So they had a lot of machinery in there, bulldozers, heaps of fire trucks.”

The fire took off in “fairly benign conditions”, the Victorian state control centre told reporters on 6 January, but spread rapidly under extreme fire conditions the next day. It burned through 120,914ha before being declared under control 11 February.

Features of the landscape that make fires hard to control – the remote, rugged hills, small winding roads and patchy-to-nonexistent mobile phone service – may have made it an attractive place to hide out. The converted shipping container, from which police say Freeman emerged on Monday morning, is so far back from the road that it’s difficult to see. An occupant could go unnoticed.

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The Victoria police chief commissioner, Mike Bush, addresses the media in Thologolong. Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian

On Monday afternoon, for the 23 members of the media waiting at the property’s gates – edging out the region’s 22 residents – there were more questions than answers.

How did Freeman evade 450 police officers from every Australian jurisdiction, and members of the Australian defence force, aided by paramilitary vehicles, helicopters and searches on horseback, for seven months?

How did he travel 100km and, crucially, did he have help?

Speaking to reporters at the property, Bush said he had seen footage of Freeman allegedly “presenting a firearm at our officers”.

“Everything I know at this moment tells me the shooting was justified,” he says.

No one other than Freeman was at the property when police arrived but Bush says it “would be very difficult” for Freeman to have travelled to the property – let alone survived the seven months since his last official sighting – without assistance.

“We will track backwards from here to work out how long he’s been here and who helped him to be here,” Bush says.

“If anyone was complicit, they will be held to account.”