Tales From a West Australian Cop

By Bob MacDonald

The following manuscript, identified as Volume 4, is a carry-on from my earlier publications of police-related anecdotal incidents, as appearing in Books 1 & 2 of 'Tales From a West Australian Cop.' My previous account outlining my experiences in the West Australian Police Force involved 180 chapters. At the time of completion, I titled Chapter 180 as 'The Final Chapter.' However, for an unknown reason, I sat down and penned a further sixty chapters; such now being the subject matter of this publication. Two hundred and forty chapters now make up my total recollection of events in which I became involved. The final chapter, No. 240, bears the title, 'Finally, the Final Chapter!' But, this time the 'final chapter' actually does mean the 'final chapter'.  
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bob MacDonald
• Release date: Apr 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393726654

Bob MacDonald

Bob MacDonald is a retired West Australian Police officer of thirty years experience. Bob's last day at school was his 14th birthday - commencing work, the very next day, in a timber mill in his home town of Pemberton, West Australia.He later self-educated and enlisted in the West Australian police force, retiring as a superintendent in the Internal Investigations Branch of the Professional Standards portfolio.Since retirement Bob has been working at remote aboriginal communities in Central Australia, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. He also did a tour of duty on the island nation of Cyprus with the United Nations Blue Beret Peacekeepers.Bob, a keen sportsman continues with various sporting activities; which also includes fishing and camping trips. Writing articles for various magazines and now venturing into anecdotal short story compilations and fictional manuscripts ensures Bob leads a busy life.

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1. Up, Up & Away

The year was 1995, which fell during my time as a commissioned officer based at the Kalgoorlie Police Regional Office. West Australian police provide service throughout the state, an area of 2.53 million square kilometres thus being the world’s largest non-federated region of jurisdiction.

The Kalgoorlie Esperance Region is the largest police beat in the world. It consists of an area the size of France! Duties assigned to me included the supervision of regional police stations, both in Kalgoorlie-Boulder itself and stations located north and north-east of the city.

Due to the distances involved it often became necessary that I travelled to the outlying stations by air. Two police Airwing officers were based at Kalgoorlie, along with a single-engine plane. I utilised such means of travel at times of expediency when far-flung locations required visitations by me.

One such occasion arose when we received a complaint from the Aboriginal Legal Aid (ALS) lawyer of the region. This person produced a written report of complaint naming several police officers of the outlying police station of Laverton. The complaint alleged a number of officers were guilty of assaulting an aboriginal male, at Laverton, when affecting an arrest. The allegations were damning, and the lawyer made the most of his vocal cords when demanding that the police officers responsible be identified and punished accordingly.

The chief-superintendent in charge of the region passed on the inquiry to me and directed I deal with the matter, forthwith. This suited me fine because I always enjoyed getting out of the hustle and bustle of the city and spending some time in the outback. I contacted one of the Air-wing pilots and made arrangements to take off for Laverton the next day.

I arrived early in town and in company with one of the station’s aboriginal police aides set about trying to track down witnesses to interview. I possessed a list of deponents as long as my arm but by midafternoon, I’d failed to locate a single one. As most were of no fixed place of abode I took for granted I’d more than likely find them scattered about in outback communities in the region and I needed to trust to luck in locating them.

I spoke with the officers accused of the assault and directed they each submit a report outlining their involvement in the arrest, subject to the ALS complaint. I spent the night at the local pub and organized to head off to aboriginal communities, north of the town, in search of the elusive witnesses.

The pub, previously known as the Palace Hotel, had recently been the recipient of a name change (to the Desert Inn Hotel) and I don’t know of any other hotel less worthy to be called a palace. Yes, Laverton being located on the edge of the desert may well lay claim to having a drinking hole bearing an appropriate name for the location. But I think the new owners tired of hearing all the ‘palace’ jokes by patrons frequenting their establishment and decided a new name may be the way to go.

I set off the next morning, the pilot and I with the aboriginal community of Cosmo Newberry (Ngaanyatjarra) being our first port of call. Once on the ground, I wandered about asking questions as to the whereabouts of one of the witnesses on my list. The person, so sought, may have been listed as a resident of the settlement but locals told me he seldom frequented the area and could best be found at Warburton settlement.

However, while learning of such information and talking to a couple of local aborigines, I found I was speaking with another of my list. This person happened to be one I had expected to find at Warburton. So, after obtaining a statement from my Cosmo Newberry based Warburton resident, I went away well satisfied with the day’s events. I may have missed my intended target but gained a consolation prize by stumbling upon the Warburton visitor.

I knew my task of tracking down my list of witnesses would be a hit and miss affair as most of those I sought were nomadic and moved about from town to town and community to community. However, I enjoyed the challenge and felt under no pressure; mainly because I was in my element in traversing the desert wastelands and savouring the majestic scenery on the way.

We left Cosmo Newberry and headed for Warburton (Milyirrtjarra). A Laverton police patrol to that community coincided with our visit and we caught up with them at their police post. The ‘police post’ comprised a small outstation only manned periodically by Laverton police during their monthly patrols of the region (Laverton being 555 kilometres away).

I did manage to locate another witness from my list and obtained a statement from him. Further inquiries proved negative, and I decided on remaining in Warburton as the day was drawing to a close. We (the pilot and I) joined the Laverton crew for an evening meal, but did not indulge in sitting around with a cold beer or a glass of wine as the community was classified as ‘dry.’

‘Dry’ meant alcohol was banned at the settlement and anyone caught drinking, or in possession, of alcohol (whether black or white) faced prosecution. Our accommodation for the night consisted of a bed in a donger located at the rear of the roadhouse and surrounded by a barbed wire-topped security fence.

The next day saw us take off, further north-east for the community of Jameson (Mantamaru). At this commune, the fuel bowser in front of the general store tickled my fancy. It resembled a World War 2 Sherman tank with all its protective metal plates. In an endeavour to lessen the instances of petrol sniffing by local aborigines, authorities had encompassed the bowsers with a heavy steel plate covering. Damage to the metal bulwark of the bowsers showed where would be petrol sniffers had, at some stage, used an axe in an attempt to obtain the fuel for inhaling the fumes.

We also visited the centre of Blackstone (Papulankutja), followed by the Giles Weather Station and the Warakurna Community. This location is on the extreme eastern border of the Kalgoorlie police region and near the South Australia border. I made a point of walking, for a distance of several hundred metres, along the world-renowned Gun Barrel Highway ..... just to say I’d done that!

At Warakurna I received a guided foot tour of the establishment by the white resident manager. He showed me a fully enclosed twenty-five-metre swimming pool which was not being used at that current time. In explanation, my guide told me the reason for the non-use, stemmed from no-one at the settlement knowing how to administer the required chemicals or operate the pumps and so forth.

He also pointed out a fully grassed, floodlit and reticulated football oval, which also was not in use. The non-use of the football playing field resulted from the community not having a football team to bring into service. I was told that, even if they did manage to come up with enough players to form a side, they had no-one to play against. This type of wastage (of government grants and financial payments to aboriginal communities) was not restricted to Warakurna.

My level of success in tracking down witnesses on my list surpassed my wildest hopes. I located all except one person. The time came for me to head back to Laverton but in doing so I decided on sidetracking and taking in some of the wonderful scenery. I considered it would be naïve of me not to take advantage of the use of the plane and pilot, of which I held control. Had the area, travelled by me, not been so remote I’m sure it would have been a tourist’s haven. Rocky outcrops, sweeping ranges abounded in the vast desert region were a sight to behold.

On our arrival back at Laverton, my first priority involved calling at the police station and collecting the reports, submitted by officers named in the ALS complaint. I wanted to get that all out of the way to enable me to concentrate on booking into the pub and getting cleaned up. I must have looked a bit of a grot after my days roughing it amongst the red dirt and dust of the outback.

Yes, we had roughed it a bit during our visits to the various communities, so once at my hotel quarters; I indulged in a leisurely, lengthy, enjoyable shower. I shaved under the shower, swamped myself in aftershave and deodorant, dressed in my glad rags and retired to the front barroom of the pub.

I settled in to enjoy a beer (or two) in company with the pilot, a couple of the young constables and some local miners. And being a Friday evening the hotel buzzed with life. Many locals and those of varying vocations had arrived at the bar, direct from their place of work, for the end of the working week’s happy hour. I positioned myself away from the main activity of the barroom, and finding a quiet spot towards the back of the main bar, sat back with a cold beer and watched proceedings.

One of the bar staff, an exceptionally pretty young girl of about twenty years of age, approached and stood opposite me at the bar. She told me she hailed from the metro area and was on a six-month work contract at the hotel. While speaking with her, she asked me I was wearing the Yves St Laurent deodorant, Jazz.

When I nodded to the affirmative, she advised me of how much she favoured that deodorant when worn by a male. We indulged in a friendly chat and she ended up by asking me whether she could come back and talk to me from time to time during the evening. She said that the combined odour of unwashed bodies and sweat, in the bar, sometimes came a bit unbearable.

She advised that by having a break and being able to smell the Jazz deodorant would be a welcome change from the mixture of body odours. I readily agreed and viewed her request in the light manner in which it had been intended. I told her I’d be happy for her to seek me out, every now and again and I would exchange my Yves St Laurent Jazz odours for the Elizabeth Arden Red Door perfume of which I noted her to be wearing.

Both the barmaid and I treated our little agreement with some light-hearted antics and our behaviour intrigued my fellow drinkers and even others in the barroom. They couldn’t understand how such a pretty girl was singling me out for her attention. I didn’t let on the true nature of my association with the young lady and continued to claim the interest heaped upon me was solely due to my charm and good looks. But in truth, I think that being less than half my age, she felt safer with me than with most of the others who patronised the bar that night.

I wound up my inquiries at Laverton early the next morning and took off, on our way back to Kalgoorlie. We did more sight-seeing and exploring en route and arrived at our destination mid-afternoon. Before departing Laverton I’d learnt that the sole witness I’d not been able to locate was safely behind bars in the Kalgoorlie Regional Prison.

I fronted up at the gaol, and with a Prisons Department welfare officer present, I obtained a signed statement from the inmate. The witness so being interviewed happened to be the subject of the ALS complaint. He according to the ALS solicitor had been viciously assaulted by three Laverton police officers.

However, when the witnessed dictated, to me, a full account of his version as to what occurred at the time of his arrest, it differed markedly from the statement he’d signed in the presence of an ALS field officer. I held a copy of the witnesses previous statement in the file I possessed and referred to. In response, the witness confirmed his account, as told to me, was a true version as to what took place.

He further informed that he, being illiterate, had not been able to read what the ALS officer wrote down in his statement. He said the officer penned the testimony and told him to sign it, with him having no idea what the statement entailed. To save any confusion at a later date, I included this information in the witness’s later affidavit, which he duly signed by way of an ‘X’ and witnessed by both me and the welfare officer.

From what I managed to gather, the ALS office, on hearing third hand of the arrest of the aboriginal male at Laverton, had gone off half-cocked and with malice aforethought. It appeared as though his sole aim centred on big-noting himself by scoring the scalps of the arresting officers. His attempt at doctoring up evidence had backfired badly on him.

At the completion of the inquiry, the file dossier totalled in excess of one hundred pages and included the original complaint, police reports, witness statements, copy Ombudsman letter, and duplicate station records, topped off by my lengthy report.

The chief superintendent in charge of the region called in the senior ALS lawyer and produced the complete file, thus allowing him to see the extent to which we had dealt with the matter. The lawyer showed surprise at what he read, especially the contrasting statements obtained from the arrested person and other witnesses.

At best, it could be said that the inquiry field officer had been somewhat over-enthusiastic but I can imagine the reaction if police had been responsible for the doctoring of the witness's statement, and not the ALS officer. The file, when completed, passed through the hands of my chief superintendent, the offices of an assistant commissioner of police and the ombudsman. Nothing happened, to my knowledge, regarding the behaviour of the ALS field officer concerning him falsifying the facts in his statement obtained from the prime witness.

2. Punishment

From early 1982 until 1985 I held the position of sergeant-in-charge of the Leonora police station. Leonora is a mining town some 240 kilometres northeast of Kalgoorlie. It is located on the edge of the Great Victoria Desert and has a significant aboriginal population.

Many of these people regularly camped in makeshift accommodation on the outskirts of the town, at an area known as Tanky Hill. It was so named, by the town’s aboriginal population due to being the location of the town’s Water Authority water supply.

When out on patrol we frequently visited this site, mainly to check on the health and welfare of elder members of the community. Over time, I developed a good relationship with many of the elders, brought on by my habit of joining them at their campfires and discussing local issues and concerns.

On one of my early visits, the topic of tribal punishment arose, and the elders expressed their concern for the well-being of those likely to be the subject of the tribal disciplinary procedure. Aborigines of the Leonora district belonged to the Wongi tribe and still practised the payback system when dealing with issues of a punitive nature. And, I might add, the tribal payback system only applied to aborigines when they had committed an offence against another tribal member. The rule was not brought to bear for offences against those of non-aboriginal origin.

Most elements of the police department, along with other government bodies, did not support or agree with the tribal manner of meting out punishment to wrongdoers. They directed the administration of ‘white man’s’ law in such cases.

What those, of such a view, failed to understand (or refused to understand) was that, after an aboriginal offender had been dealt with in, ‘a white man’s court under white man’s law,’ that person would still be subject to tribal pay-back punishment. An aboriginal person may receive a lengthy prison sentence through the courts but on his release would still receive tribal punishment. White man’s court penalties were irrelevant, as far as tribal culture was concerned.

An arrangement had been made between me and the Kalgoorlie Regional Prison regarding the release of aboriginal prisoners after they had served their term of imprisonment. The agreement provided for the prisoner to be escorted, in the prison van, to Leonora and signed over into my custody.

Such transfers generally took place a week or so prior to his/her official release. He or she would spend the remainder of the gaol term in the police lockup, intermingling with other prisoners and visitors. This was done to allow the prisoner to be released, to ‘feel his way back into the community’ rather than just being released from the back of a prison van out onto the street.

In cases where the escorted prisoner had committed an offence under circumstances where he would be subject to tribal punishment, responsible elders would discuss the matter with me and ask that I monitor the situation. My presence as overseer of the retribution ritual was deemed necessary in case those meting out the punishment overstepped the mark and endangered the life of a fellow tribal member.

In nearly all instances, when a male submitted himself for payback punishment, the procedure to follow included spearing to the thigh with a special spear. The spear or spears, used were of wood, barbless and tipped with a slight tapering flanged spearhead. Not having a metal spear tip, the weapons fell well short of passing the ‘pub test.’

The method carried out to inflict the payback punishment involved the subject being jabbed, with the spear, to one of his thighs. Those dishing out the punishment were skin relatives of the person aggrieved. The accepted level of the spearing saw the spear stabbed into the flesh to a depth between two and six centimetres. However, I witnessed occasions where the bluntness of the weapon caused more pain and injury by bruising and forced entry to a shallow wound, than a much deeper incision by a sharper blade.

Be that as it may, there were several recorded instances of this type of retribution going horribly wrong. I have spoken to aborigines who had witnessed tribal spearing punishment where the spear has passed right through the leg of the person subject of the penance.

The femoral artery in the leg had been severed, resulting in death due to loss of blood. It was events such as these which saw me called upon by the elders to monitor the spearing ceremonies. One incident, of which the elders called on my services, took place at a bush area on the town’s outskirts. A male prisoner who had just been discharged from my lockup submitted himself for payback punishment.

His offence had been to kill an aboriginal woman while drunk and driving a motor vehicle. He had completed a gaol term for the wrongdoing and now wished to fulfil his cultural commitments by offering himself for retribution by tribal relatives. The elders expressed their concern that the ritual possessed all the hallmarks of an event likely to spiral out of control and asked that I oversee the procedure.

The payback practice may be seen as a formality but that did not stop the subject from trembling like a jelly when he submitted himself for the ordeal. Firstly a number of women set upon him and beat him about the head and body with bush sticks. The items used by the females to flay the man were of no significant size, being just small branches broken from nearby mulga trees.

They caused no serious injury as the target of their fury covered his head and body, best he could, with his hands and arms and suffered only minor bruising and abrasions. However, things turned much more serious when the male relatives stepped in with their spears. Several of the assailants were affected by alcohol and ignored the directions of the supervising elders; and continued to inflict deep wounds to the legs of their victim.

To put a stop to the carnage, I intervened and arrested two of the spear-wielding men for disorderly conduct. I only took that drastic action because I feared those offending would not cease their spearing and death may be the final outcome.

During the ritual, the person on the receiving end of the spearing suffered eight deep wounds to his legs. Those wounds proved to be far more serious than any I had witnessed at similar proceedings in the past. He spent some days in hospital where his wounds were treated; though seen walking about a few days later, albeit with a noticeable limp.

The sitting Justice of the Peace were made aware of the circumstances that brought about the disorderly conduct charges for the two arrested assailants and they were dealt with leniently. They had only been taken into custody to bring an end to the punishment ordeal. The whole situation highlighted the reason why such happenings needed to be monitored by police.

It never ceased to amaze me how, once the payback ritual had been dealt with, no grudges were continued with. Apart from punishing others of their tribe, the Wongi people displayed no hesitation in inflicting punishment upon themselves; and by this, I am referring to the women.

Whenever a death occurred within the community, the females would go about their mourning in a most unusual way. Many a time I witnessed them, seated on the ground near their bush camps, wailing. They would wail non-stop for hours. A common practice involved them taking their upper clothing off, sitting and throwing handfuls of red pindan dirt, up into the air, to fall on their head and upper body.

When no longer able to cry and wail they would strike themselves on the head, with a large stone. They did this in order to bring about more crying. They could be seen sitting, wailing with streams of blood running down their faces, intermingling with the dust and dirt they’d thrown onto themselves.

I have heard the story that if the woman didn’t cry and wail long and loud enough, her man would whack her with a rock, to ensure she mourned in an acceptable manner. Whether this ever did happen, I don’t know. I never witnessed such behaviour and put it down to just another urban myth. I used to hear so many, ‘Yes, it’s true. It really did happen’ stories during my police career but never managed to track down the creator of such tales. Such anecdotes always seem to have been relayed by someone who had been told by a friend of a friend!

One very disturbing practice often carried out by mourning tribal aboriginal women involved self-harm by inflicting cuts to their arms. I spoke to several of those who inflicted such wounds and they told me it was their way of showing their grief. They explained that to demonstrate they felt grief for the loss of a loved one, the best way to go about it was to suffer pain themselves.

On one of my patrols, I came across a tribal aboriginal woman, sitting on the ground in bushland, slicing her arms with a shard of broken glass. She had inflicted dozens and dozens of cuts. Some being so deep they caused much bleeding and loss of blood. Her injuries were the worst example of self-harm that I’d ever witnessed and she was in dire need of medical treatment. I bundled her into the back of the van and conveyed her to the local hospital.

On arrival at that establishment, a wheelchair was required to transfer her from my vehicle to the emergency section, due to her having lapsed into a state of near unconsciousness. When I saw her in the streets, sometime later, I could not help but notice the numerous criss-cross scars she then bore on her arms.

Different people ..... different cultures. That’s what I found with aboriginal people who I had dealings with over time. The Wongi people of the Eastern Goldfields region were quite aggressive with their pay-back punishment system and emotional with the way they mourned. Whereas the Bunuba people of the Fitzroy Crossing region differed greatly. I never witnessed or had reported to me, any instances of the payback system being used in that region during my stay.

If any such punishment rituals did occur, they were done so in a very low key or secretive manner. As to mourning, some methods were similar, to that of the Wongi people and some differed.

One strange form of bereavement practised only by the men, involved restrictions in respect of what a grieving tribesman could, or could not eat. When mourning the loss of a skin relative, the warrior abstained from eating meat of any type and his diet was restricted to fish. And, being tribal people of the Fitzroy River Valley, fish figured prominently in their Dreamtime stories handed down through the ages.

Therefore it came as no surprise to me that fish played a part in the Bunuba people’s mourning process. The person showing sorrow would not eat meat until tribal elders decreed that the period of grieving had passed and the diet restrictions lifted. Tribal culture dictated that the person so mourning remained on the meat-free diet for eternity unless having the fasting period broken by a forceful act.

And that ‘forceful act’ entailed tribal elders over-powering the grieving person and forcing some form of meat, or animal fat, into his mouth. Tribal culture proclaimed that those doing the fasting should resist having their fast broken and were expected to defy and try to escape the clutches of the elders. An old elder once told me that even at his age he had no trouble in running down those, a quarter of his age when it came to catching mourners to break the fasting. They would make a show of trying to run away but always (purposefully) managed to get caught.

Part of my duties as lockup-keeper at the police station included the feeding of the inmates. I soon found it necessary to store a stock of canned fish in order to supply prisoners going through the tribal grieving ritual. Plus my regular fishing trips to the Jubilee Downs Station billabong provided a plentiful supply of catfish for the lockup inmates.

Full blood aboriginal people become very emotional whenever a death occurs and they mourn not only family members in a moving and noisy manner but also fellow tribe’s people in the same way. At Fitzroy Crossing a serious traffic accident took place, in which five aborigines from a local community were killed and another eight received severe injuries. That night, the whole town was encompassed by the mournful sound of loud wailing; emitting from local residents of the townsite and surrounding bush camps.

The wailing continued, non-stop for hours and sounded similar to that of an alarm siren. Two young white school teachers, who shared a house together in town, became very unnerved by all the eerie noise. They drove to the police station and told of how they’d become too scared to remain alone in their house. My wife, also a chalkie, knew and worked with both girls so, taking pity on the pair invited them to spend the night, with us, in our private quarters.

3. Get Lost!

Excuse me, can you tell me where I can find some gold? I don’t know how many times I had been asked that question, but I was being asked again; this time by a well-dressed gentleman standing at the front counter. I was the sergeant-in-charge of the Leonora police station between 1982 and 1985.

Leonora is located in the Eastern Goldfields region of Western Australia and a favourite spot for many an amateur prospector. Gold prices were soaring and gold mines were being developed in the area by both large and small companies. And with the development and improvement of metal detectors, many prospectors, both novice and professional, were working the area seeking alluvial gold.

Hardly a day passed without some displaying a recently located gold nugget, in one of the bars. The practice of showing off recent finds and the boasting that went with it made me realize how the much publicised ‘gold rushes’ of yesteryear came to be. I used to think to myself that I wouldn’t tell a soul until I’d worked the site bare if ever I succeeded in discovering a good find.

Not the case though as I never found any gold during my stay, mainly because work commitments prevented me from having the time to give the vocation the attention it needed. I did come away from Leonora with some lovely small gold nuggets. I completed the deal of selling an evaporative air-conditioner to a local prospector. The transaction took place in the front bar of the White House hotel over a couple of beers. That pub deal saw me walk away with the equivalent of $500.00 in small nuggets at the current gold price. I came out well on top as the nuggets were considered jewellery pieces and more valuable, as individual items, than by weight alone, en masse.

My wife, my daughter, and my sister-in-law all scored neck pendants and ear-studs utilising some of the nuggets. My sister-in-law had her pieces valued, for insurance purposes and was amazed at the value placed on them by the assessor. She resides in England and natural gold nugget jewellery pieces were less common in that country and therefore valued at a higher level.

But really, I think her amazement stemmed from her surprise that her brother-in-law had presented her with something which turned out to be other than a piece of cheap costume jewellery. I am full of surprises at times.

As to the gentleman asking for directions to a likely place where he might find some gold, I did what I always did when the Mining Registrar’s Office (next door) happened to be open for business and passed the buck! I got on really well with the Registrar/Clerk of Courts so I directed the inquiring tourist, come gold digger, to go see him. I advised he would be able to obtain all the information he needed from that office. I omitted to tell him that if I knew where to find some gold, the last things I’d do would be to tell someone else.

A large unpegged area existed some kilometres from town, which the locals referred to as the ‘Specking Patch’. It is of a broad expanse and open to the public for the prospecting of gold, with tourists, weekend prospectors, locals and anyone with a metal detector, welcome to try their luck.

Unauthorised gold-seeking on land pegged as mining leases, by companies and individuals, regularly led to conflict and quite often police needed to intervene to keep the peace. This did not happen on the ‘Patch,’ so new chums were mostly directed to that site to try their luck.

The mining registrar ran true to form and pointed the budding Paddy Hannan in that direction. Several days later, at about mid-day on a Saturday, as the result of a call taken at the police station, two of the centre’s constables attended at the Specking Patch, to inquire into a missing child report.

Soon after, I received a message from the officers on my home-based two-way radio asking for my assistance. They explained they were calling from the Patch and they held concerns for the welfare of the missing child who was subject to the earlier phone call.

I knew the Patch area well, so had no trouble in locating the constables and their vehicle, in an off-road bush section. From there, the officers directed me to a caravan campsite from where the boy had gone missing. Once there, I discovered the camp to be that of the tourist who’d called at the police station some days earlier.

He was there with his wife, a school-aged daughter and his five-year-old son; with the boy being the subject of the missing child report. On my arrival, I found it useless to try to interview the father, due to his hysterical behaviour and his shouting out of, Get a plane. Hire a plane. I will pay for it, and Get a helicopter. Get a helicopter. I will pay for it.

I tried explaining to the man that I would organise a search but first needed to gather some information as to the missing boy. He refused to listen to me and continually shouted me down with his demands for a plane and helicopter to be added to the search procedure. From experience, I knew a plane would not be of any use to search for the missing boy. The area, of fairly dense mulga tree growth, from the air, displayed a thick carpet of foliage; and proved to be a screen to anyone looking down from above. Plus, I wasn’t aware of any helicopter being available to me; not that the boss in Kalgoorlie would authorise such expenditure.

The father gave me away as a bad loss and took off in his four-wheel-drive vehicle, thus allowing me to speak with his wife without interruption. And while talking to the woman we were distracted by the sound of continued tooting of a motor vehicle’s horn. My immediate thoughts centred on the boy having been found and the sounding of the car horn was being done to attract our attention.

But no, on leaving the caravan’s annexe and investigating the noise, I discovered it to be the father driving about the bush tracks, yelling his head off in a frantic attempt to gain the attention of his missing son. His wife told me that the hysterical man, her husband, had been very excited about spending their summer holiday break at Leonora. He had hired a four-wheel-drive vehicle, a caravan, and a chemical toilet. He also splashed out on top of the range electronic metal detectors, along with every other prospecting tool he could lay his hands on.

She further informed that he’d been as keen as mustard for the first two days in relation to his gold detecting. But on not finding a trace of gold had soon become very disillusioned and moody. He resorted to spending most of the past day or so cooped up in the caravan. Bad weather had been forecast and it could be seen approaching, with dark rain-bearing clouds advancing from the horizon.

The constables and a couple of volunteers (fellow prospectors who just happened to be in the area at the time) were searching for the boy but without any luck to that stage. I returned to the station as mobile phones didn’t exist in those days and our vehicle radios provided a reception of not much more than shouting distance (maybe that observation is of some exaggeration but they only served for local use). After talking to the boss in Kalgoorlie, arrangements were made for a police dog handler and his dog to set off from that centre to assist with the search.

The weather was deteriorating rapidly and racking my brains on what to do next I came up with the idea of asking some of the town’s younger brigade to help out. I was aware that several young lads owned motorcycles. I knew that from the number of complaints we received at the police station regarding the noise they often made on their machines.

I got on particularly well with one of the young blokes and luckily located him at his home. I explained the situation of the missing boy and asked whether he and some of his mates would be willing to assist me with the search. Yes, he readily agreed to help out and took off like a shot. I smiled to myself as I saw him scooting down the road on his unlicensed trail bike.

He wasted no time in rounding up some helpers and before long they had taken control of the search and could be seen and heard buzzing about the bush area where we considered the boy most likely to be found. The boys impressed me with the manner in which they conducted the search. By working to a grid pattern they covered all sections of the search area and able to access parts of the terrain inaccessible to the larger four-wheel-drive vehicles.

With half an hour of commencing the search, the trail bike riders located the boy safe and sound. Their grid-pattern searching had proved very successful and I, in my admiration of their achievements, made a promise to myself that I would stop referring to them in the derogatory manner in which I had done so in the past; when responding to a call-out involving their unlicensed and noisy antics.

Okay, the boy had been found. So now for the father; I directed the constables to go find him, stop him from the continual tooting of his bloody car horn and tell him his son awaited him back at camp. During the father’s absence, I took the opportunity to have a talk with the boy, in the presence of the mother. I wondered whether the ordeal had affected the lad in any adverse way, and bearing those thoughts in mind, I asked him to tell me about his experience.

He didn’t appear to be fazed at all and showed no signs of being scared or upset. He told me he’d heard his father searching for him and he’d also seen others looking and calling for him. What? If that being the case, I asked, why didn’t he call out or make himself seen?

Because he replied, my dad told me to get lost. On hearing that answer the mother took over the questioning her son. The little boy told how he had approached his father, who had been lying down inside the caravan, to talk to him. The father had pushed the boy away and yelled at him to, ‘Get lost.’ The boy, in following his dad’s shouted order, had walked from the van and into the bush ..... to ‘get lost.’

After hearing what her little boy had to say, mum could best be described as being ‘not a happy camper.’ She informed me of her husband’s sooking and sulking moods from the disillusionment of not being able to find any gold. He’d become extremely disillusioned, especially after spending a small fortune on setting up and preparing the trip. She also advised he missed having the newspaper delivered and was having withdrawal symptoms from not having