Backpacker hostel fire was 'deliberate'

Firefighters clear the debris of the 90-bed hostel

A blaze in a backpackers' hostel which killed 15 people was started deliberately, an independent fire expert has told an Australian court.

Engineer Terry Casey - who examined the gutted Backpackers' Palace in Childers, Queensland, in June last year - told Brisbane magistrates that the speed of the inferno suggested it was not accidental.

Robert Long is accused of starting the fire

Two friends from the south Wales Valleys - Natalie Morris, 28, from Cefn Coed, and Sarah Williams, 22, from Aberfan - were killed in the blaze.

Four other Britons, an Irish national, four Australians, two Dutch, a South Korean, and a Japanese traveller also died.

"The very rapid development throughout the lounge and TV room can't be explained by an accidental fire in any one piece of furniture," Mr Casey said.

"In my view it was caused by some deliberate human action or intervention."

But earlier, a police forensic officer told the court that through tests he had carried out, he had been unable to determine the cause.

'Coming to get you'

The committal hearing of 37-year-old itinerant fruit picker Robert Long - accused of starting the hostel fire - has heard how he had written a suicide note weeks before and had threatened "to blow his head off".

And hostel guest John Lundgren, 27, said hours before the fire he looked out of his bedroom window to see Mr Long standing on a hostel balcony pouring an unidentified liquid into a waste paper bin.

"He looked like he was pouring something into the bin, he had a smile on his face," Mr Lundgren said.

"He saw me and got very angry at me.

"As he walked down the stairs he snarled at me and said, 'Shut your window'.

Natalie Morris died in the blaze

"Then he said, 'I'm coming to get you'."

Australian-born Mr Long is charged with two counts of murder and one of arson.

The committal hearing will determine whether he should face trial for the murders of twins Kelly and Stacey Slarke, from Western Australia state, and for arson.

He has not yet been required to enter a plea.

The hearing continues.