Dezi Freeman dominated news headlines for shooting two police officers and then disappearing into rugged bushland in north-east Victoria in 2025. Freeman was an anti-vaxxer, an aggressive sovereign citizen and a prepper who believed the End Times were at hand. His escape triggered the largest tactical police operation in Australian history, and ended in his death in March 2026.
In The Ballad of Dezi Freeman, Don Watson returns to the bush to trace the forces that made Freeman and the wreckage he left in his wake, finding that, for all Freeman's madness, his violent rebellion cannot be disentangled from the widespread political disenchantment and anger of regional Australia.