lllllllllllllllllllllllll!/lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll 3 4067 02569 8258 l�i v �Z-�0 ·A� w {)!; .-.. .. .'' f! HEF�RE ..... \)� I SlEEP ... ...... RayWhitrod was born in Adelaide in 1915. He matriculated fromhigh school dur ing the Depression. While cycling around South Australian Riverlands in a vain attempt to find work as a fruit-picker he learnt of a scheme to recruit teenagers as police cadets. Thus began a police career- interrupted by war service and a stint with ASIO- that led to his appointments as the Conunissioner of the Commonwealth, Papua New Guinea, and, subsequently, the Commissioner of Queensland Police Force. After seven hard years trying to eliminate mal­ practice in the Queensland force, Ray Whitrod was forcibly presented by the Bjelke-Petersen government with a deputy conunissioner, whom he knew to be deeply corrupt. Whitrod resigned in protest in 1976� Ray Whitrod was active in the establishment of the South Australian Victims of Crime Service. He has had a lifelong involvement with Scouting and has been awarded many hon­ ours, including appointment as Companion of the Order of Australia and a doctorate from the Australian National Uni­ versity. But once, when asked on ABC Radio what he person­ ally regarded as his finest achievement, he replied, "Marrying Mavis." RAY· BEF�RE WHITR�ll I SlEEP Memoirs of a Modern Police Commissioner University of Queensland Press SS&H .o1296644 [Man o gt"'aph s J 2001 Received on : 12-02-02 First published 2001 by University of Queensland Press Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia www.uqp.uq.edu.au © Ray Whitrod This book is copyright.Ex cept for private study, research, criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher. Typeset by University of Queensland Press Printed in Australia by McPherson's Printing Group Distributed in the USA and Canada by Internati onal Specialized Book Services, Inc., 5824 N.E. Hassalo Street, Portland, Oregon 97213-3640 Sponsored by the Queensland Office Queensland of Arts and Cultural Development. Government Art1Queensland Cataloguing in Publication Data National Library ofAustralia Whitrod, Ray, 1 915- Before I sleep: memoirs of a modern police inspector Includes index 1. Whitrod, Ray, 1915- . 2. Police- Australia- Biography. 3. Police- Queensland- History. I. Title. 363.2092 ISBN 0 7022 3252 1 For Mavis But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. Robert Frost 'Stopping in the Woods on a Snowy Evening' Contents 1 Where I come in (1915-1925) 1 2 Finding the future (1925-1934) 24 3 The South Australian Police Force (1934-1940) 3 7 4 Lessons from the war (1940-1944) 56 5 Homecoming (1944-1953) 68 6 Canberra, first time (1953-1969) 80 7 Papua New Guinea (1969-1970) 120 8 In need of reform: Queensland (1970-1976) 138 9 A losing battle (1970-1976) 166 10 Retracing our steps (1976-1993) 192 11 But presently . 201 12 The new millennium: Obsolescence approaches 211 .. Vll 1 Where I con1e in (1915-1925) N the early years of the last century, the smell from Burfords Ifactory in Sturt Street, Adelaide, was so strong that tenants in the surrounding cottages were charged lower than normal rents. My grandmother, Clara Haylock, and her two unmarried daughters took advantage of this economy, renting a three-roomed cottage in nearby Russell Street. Burfords produced long yellow sticks of soap from the fat of boiled down animal carcasses. In those days, few people were able to afford the more expensive toilet soaps, even for personal washing, and I remember that, for many years, my mother shaved pieces of bar soap into the outside copper in which we boiled our weekly clothes wash. Burfords eventually burnt down in one of Adelaide's more spectacular fires - one that rivalled even the conflagration that destroyed Charles Moore's in Victoria Square. I was born in my grandmother's cottage on 16 April 1915. The Russell Street address is also shown on my birth certificate as my mother's place of residence. I doubt that my parents normally lived with Clara Haylock and her two other daughters. My mother, Alice Olive, had probably moved back to her mother's house for the confinement. Clara was an experienced midwife, so I was probably delivered by my own grandmother. Clara had learnt the midwife's art on the lonely cattle stations around Birdsville in far west Queensland. Indeed, the demands of midwifery so shaped my 1 BEFORE I SLEEP mother's early years that it is worth starting this story not in the Adelaide of my birth, but in my mother's native Birdsville. When they arrived in Birdsville in September 1890, Clara and William Haylock had been married for ten years and already had a family of fiveboys, although four of these were from Clara's previous marriage to a Mr Finlay. The Haylocks had travelled from Tibooburra, in central New South Wa les, with a view to taking up a land grant at Charleville in Queensland. However, by the time the family reached Birdsville, Clara was about to give birth to Alice. On her ninety-sixth birthday, Alice told a reporter from the Adelaide Advertiser, "A doctor in the town talked my father into staying for a few days, because my mother was quite pregnant. It's a good job they did, because it was a difficult birth and I don't think I would have made it without the doctor." The enforced stay in Birdsville cost William Haylock his grant of land in Charleville. In those colonial days, Birdsville was a major staging post on the droving route from north Queensland to the rail head at Marree. It boasted a police station, three pubs and a customs house. There has been little change in the surrounding country from that day to this. The flatness is broken by sand dunes that run in long, jumbled lines to the north west. Between the sandhills are broad flats on which cattle can find enough pasture to keep themselves alive, although the casual visitor may often doubt that this could possibly be true. The watercourses are usually dry; when they are not, they are in flood. In times of flood, the Diamantina can be many miles wide. Clara and her family stayed in Birdsville for fourteen years. With the meagre resources available to him, William set himself up as a carrier along the Tr ack. When Alice was eight, William's team of twenty horses was stolen, and while he was tracking them on foot he perished - perhaps he drowned in the endless Diamantina which was then in flood. (My brother Frank's version of this story is that William simply got fed up and left. At this distance it is impossible to tell what really happened - William's body was never found.) Clara )>attled on, working as a midwife, attending to the needs of pregnant women on station homesteads. 2 WHERE I COME IN To be present at a birth, Clara had to arrive at the station well before the baby was due, and she would not leave until both the baby and mother were doing well. As a result, she was often absent from her own home for weeks at a time. These days it is almost impossible to imagine leaving a nine- or ten-year-old girl on her own to run a household which consists of herself and four younger . children. Yet outback life at the turn of the century was like this and Alice, my mother, routinely became the acting head of the house­ hold. She also had the responsibility of providing the town with its supply of fresh goats' milk. This required not only daily milkings, but also driving the herd of twenty goats to and from the town common every day because of the danger of dingo attacks at night. Her elder brother and her four older stepbrothers were by now working as station hands elsewhere and were not in touch with the family - perhaps because they were illiterate, perhaps due to lack of interest, or perhaps because of distance. Years later, when my mother used to tell me stories about her life in Birdsville as she was tucking me into bed, she would recall how, if any of the children got sick while she was in charge, she would go across to the police station to seek advice. She well remembered the kindness of the sergeant who would take down a big book on home remedies, and the two of them- the big, old policeman and the little girlunable to read- would work out how best to use the limited medication available: castor oil, Bates' Salve, bread poultices, and the like. On other occasions there would be rowdy, drunken brawls at the nearest pub, which was only a short distance from their home. Alice would try to comfort the other children while she waited for the sergeant to restore order. Sounds magnify at night in the desert, and these violent encounters and bad language must have been terrifying to a small girl. My mother would often tell me how she would look across the intervening paddock at night and see a light in the police residence - something which helped calm her anxieties. She described how she would take her sisters and brother out to the sandhills to play with Aboriginal children, or walk down to the Chinaman's garden by the lagoon to buy fresh vegetables.