Outback Cop by Evan McHugh

Author:Evan McHugh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9781760142865
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia

The following day, 25 August 2010, we had three people stuck on the Birdsville Track at Clifton Hills, 140 kilometres south of town. Water was coming down everywhere.

In my notes from that time, I described the Birdsville Track as slippery and wet. I was slipping all over the place when I went to pick them up. The problem was, I knew heavy rain was coming so I had to go then, before it got much wetter.

Normally, I’m used to driving over sand dunes and in dusty conditions. Every now and then you have the same road but it’s totally different because it’s soaking wet. It’s a real effort to keep the car on the road. You can slide and be going sideways down the road for hundreds of metres. Then you go sliding down the road for hundreds of metres the other way.

The trick is to stay on the road. That’s where the hard road surface is. And you’ve just got to keep the vehicle going because once you stop, you’ll sink. If there’s water over the road, you use the guidemarkers because they’re 900mm high. If you can see three-quarters of them, you know you’re right. If the water is up round the top, don’t go through it.

I went down to get them. It turned out they’d gone through a creek and the car just stopped. They were down near Clifton Hills Station for about three days. I got some guys from Clifton Hills to pick them up and drive up the track to meet me coming down. The travellers were actually police from Victoria, ­including an assistant commissioner. I brought them to Birdsville, they stayed at the courthouse, then Tom the mailman flew them down to Adelaide the next day. We got them to do another search on the way down, too.

A family had been reported missing on 26 August so I got Tom to fly down the Birdsville Track on his way to Adelaide to see if he could spot them. He did, and they weren’t there. They were missing for a while and we ended up starting a major search. Turns out they were bogged out past Windorah, down near Cooper Creek. They’d been there for a week or so. Windorah is hundreds of kilometres away from Birdsville. This family had changed their itinerary without telling anyone. Instead of being down the Birdsville Track, where they were expected to be, they went in a completely different direction. When they were reported missing and hadn’t called in, they weren’t anywhere near where they said they’d be. They were actually in the Windorah police officer’s patch so he took care of that one. Eventually someone came along and got them out, which was lucky.

In the midst of all that, in August 2010, a special bike ride was organised by a fellow named Jim Cairns for three ­paraplegics, including himself, and one quadriplegic. All four injured guys were revisiting the places they had suffered their injuries and making a documentary about it.

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