Hostel arson suspect seen with blazing bin

Fifteen people died in the blaze at the hostel

A court in Australia has been told that a man resembling Robert Long - accused of starting a fire which killed 15 backpackers - was seen using the hostel's internet computer shortly before the blaze.

Fruitpicker Robert Long, 37, is charged with setting fire to the Palace Backpackers Hostel at Childers, Queensland, and with murdering two of the victims, Australian twins, Stacey and Kelly Slarke, 22.

Two women from south Wales - Natalie Morris, 28, from Cefn Coed near Merthyr, and 22-year-old Sarah Williams from Aberfan - were among the victims

Five Britons, two more Australians, two Dutch, a South Korean and a Japanese traveller also died.

Robert Long is accused of starting the fire

British backpacker Neil Griffith told the committal hearing in Brisbane that about an hour before the fire, he found a burning waste paper bin in the hostel's television room.

"I shouted across to him there was a fire in the lounge," Griffith said.

"He (Robert Long) grabbed the bin and walked off to the rear of the building. I believed him to have dealt with the fire."

"I walked back up the stairs to go to bed."

"The next thing I remember was being woken up by some banging... and crackling like fireworks going off right next to the room."

Sarah Williams: Died in the blaze

"One of the guys opened the door. It was a wall of black (smoke)."

The court heard Griffith chose two photographs when interviewed by police as resembling the man he saw that night.

One of them was of Long.

"I remember his eyes, something about his eyes," Griffith said.

He described the man at the computer as being about 40 years old with a "big, scruffy beard".

Magistrate Michael Halliday - who is presiding over Long's committal hearing - must rule if sufficient evidence exists to put him on trial.

Earlier another British survivor of the blaze, 27-year-old Lisa Duffy, told the court via a telephone hook-up that on the night of the fire she spoke with Long about 2300 GMT when he told her he had lung cancer and had only two months to live.

"At the beginning of the week he said that he wanted to blow his head off," she said.

But she said when she spoke to him on the night of the fire, Long told her he had decided to make the most of his time left in Childers.

As she walked up the stairs of the hostel with her boyfriend to go to bed two hours before the fire she said Long "told me to leave the back fire escape door open."

The hearing continues.