OUTBACK LIFE
Outback patrol
With vast beats and lonely patrols, Queensland outback police officers often
maintain law and order single-handedly. But most relish the experience
and return to ‘civilisation’ enriched by it.
Story and photos Peter Flanders
“Out here you soon learn to compromise, where normally you wouldn’t. And, depending on the size of the bloke you’re trying to lock up, is the degree to which you are prepared to compromise,” laughs John ‘JJ’ Moran, formerly a senior constable at Bedourie Police Station in outback Queensland.
JJ is one of a small band of police who have lived and worked in Queensland’s
far-flung police divisions near the Northern Territory border. The one and
two-officer stations of Birdsville, Bedourie, Boulia, Camooweal and Dajarra
each cover between 40 and 60 thousand square kilometres of harsh country
and desert. It’s not unusual for these cops to drive 250 kilometres in one
direction just to take a crime report or rescue a stranded motorist.
Make no mistake, these men and women are tough, resourceful and highly self-reliant.
It doesn’t matter what the situation, they are required to attend and deal
with it from start to finish. If that means walking into the middle of a drunken
brawl and dragging the ring-leaders away, then that is what they do. They don’t
bother looking behind for back-up, because they know full-well that, for at
least two hours, there is none.
“When the phone rings at three o’clock in the morning there is no
use waiting for someone else to answer it,” says senior constable Ben Palmer,
after a stint relieving as sole officer at Birdsville. “Nine times out of
10 it is a tourist ringing to find out about road conditions, but regardless
of what it is, you’re it, seven days a week. There is no one else. That gets
to you more than anything.” 
Full story OUTBACK Issue 37 October/November 2004
