I have never told this story to anyone so here goes.
I was a copper for over 31 years and reckon I have seen and experienced more than the average person can ever want to or imagine, 25 of those years I was on the road which means I was general duties and dealt with a lot of peoples heartache. But that's me, that my qualifications. A normal copper who believed and liked to help people, but also arrest everyone that deserved it and give people a second chance when they deserved it. Here is my story.
Back in the day I was working with a partner for the shift who told me a story. It goes like this; he was in Sydney with his wife and family visiting the sights and his car clapped out. As he was desperate for another vehicle to get back home interstate, he just went and basically bought the first car his wife liked and paid way too much for it, but he was stuck so he bought it. Turned out to be a good 2nd hand car, anyway.
Several months later he applied for an overseas posting and got it. (unbeknown to him I had applied for the same posting, but missed out, so I was always a bit dirty on him, but he had a rep for being a good copper, so it was OK). Anyway, as he then had to go overseas for several years, he sold his vehicle at a massive loss to a mate of one of his friends. He was a bit dirty about it, but had no choice. He lost thousands for his dream posting.
End of story or so I thought an hour or so later we were driving down an isolated road in the bush and he suddenly shouts out, there it is, there it is. I said, What. He said, My car, I told you about. Naturally I was thinking, this bloke is not the full quid. Out of millions of cars he tells me a story about a car and an hour later he sees it after 6 -7 years of selling it. Impossible. We were out of radio contact and we didnt have phones in those days. The vehicle was parked off the road in a small dirt carpark all by its lonesome, but the carpark led to a distant lookout overlooking a valley.
As we were checking the locked vehicle out, I noticed a note on the floor of the vehicle. I could just make out some words on it it turned out to be a suicide note. What do we do, go looking in the bush? Head towards the lookout which was 5-7 kilometres away, drive some distance, get radio contact and when the troops arrive start a massive search in dense & mountainous bush. Time was running out or was it too late. We didn't know. We chose the lookout and ran along the dirt track to the lookout. We got there as the bloke was sitting on a rock ledge outside of the chained area dangling over at least a 100 foot drop contemplating his navel or whatever. Two big coppers over 6 foot and weighing well over 100 kilos each, out of breath not happy cause we have just run a marathon, exhausted and needing a beer. I think he was too scared to do anything after seeing us or either quietly smiling to himself as it was a sight to behold, well I was anyway.
We grabbed hold of him and walked him back to his car & later admitted him to hospital. All good. It was just another job. We didn't tell the sergeant about the circumstances of what was behind taking this bloke to hospital as we thought we would be in trouble for going bush & out of radio contact.
End of story, well sort of. The next day I was at MacDonalds and I was telling this story to another officer whom I hadnt seen for a while. A short time later we started talking about another acquaintance we both hadnt seen for 12 months or so and who had retired. As soon as Id finished talking and was ordering, in walks old mate. It had me rattled, these strange coincidences. Later that day I bought a lottery ticket didnt win anything.
My first partner kept in contact with the bloke who wanted to end it all for a while to make sure he was OK and to show him that someone cared, they had something in common, they both liked cars.
