An RAAF fighter jet shattered windows in a small Queensland town. Two years later, the air force still hasn’t helped fix them

Dinka Marovic at employee at the Three Rivers hotel, was at work when she heard the ‘massive noise, blast, boom-type thing’. Photograph: Brian Cassey/The Guardian

Greenvale, population 192, is best known for a Slim Dusty song about the local pub, the Three Rivers hotel. Located about 250km west of Townsville, the median age of residents is 20 years older and $1,000 poorer each week than the state median; it could be fairly characterised as a quiet, sleepy retirement community.

At 10.37am on 26 June 2023, that quiet was shattered by a gigantic blast in the sky.