Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective see aside of life the average person is never
Speaker 1: exposed to. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
Speaker 1: For twenty five of those years, I was catching killers.
Speaker 1: That's what I did for a living. I was a
Speaker 1: homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
Speaker 1: I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
Speaker 1: The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
Speaker 1: from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
Speaker 1: and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
Speaker 1: of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
Speaker 1: no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Speaker 1: Join me now as I take you into this world.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to part two of my chat with former
Speaker 1: tactical police officer John Taylor. In part one, we covered shootings, sieges,
Speaker 1: and the high risk situations special operations officers confront. Now
Speaker 1: add bomb to that list, because in part two, John
Speaker 1: tells me what it's like to put on a forty
Speaker 1: kilogram bomb suit and walk up to a suspicious package,
Speaker 1: knowing if you make a mistake, it will literally be
Speaker 1: the last mistake you ever make. John also talks about
Speaker 1: what he does to unwind by climbing Mount Everest. He
Speaker 1: also runs boot camps for elite professional sportsmen. Have a
Speaker 1: listened to what John has to say. He certainly lived
Speaker 1: a life of adventure. Well. I thoroughly enjoyed part one
Speaker 1: hearing stories of tactical policing and all the things that
Speaker 1: you've done. And that was really just scratching the surface
Speaker 1: of some of the things you've done. But I think
Speaker 1: it gave listeners a sense of what that type of
Speaker 1: work involves. We're going to talk about then you are
Speaker 1: going into the world of the bomb response unit and
Speaker 1: how you got into that, but before we do, and
Speaker 1: I think it'll save us getting into trouble or get
Speaker 1: you in the good books. Anyway. I think one of
Speaker 1: the things you're most proud of in what you've done
Speaker 1: through your life is the fact that you've kept your
Speaker 1: family together. You've raised some raised the kids, happily married
Speaker 1: and in the world that you operated that doesn't always
Speaker 1: play out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great. I've had a you know, my wife's
Speaker 2: been very good, probably very patient in a way, considering
Speaker 2: one year I missed her sixteenth, eighteenth and twenty first birthday.
Speaker 1: You did the big three.
Speaker 2: I missed the big three that goes with work. One
Speaker 2: was a personal challenge too, but that's just the way
Speaker 2: it happened. But yeah, you know, we missed a lot
Speaker 2: of functions and things like, Oh, she went to a
Speaker 2: lot of functions by herself. You know, I wasn't around
Speaker 2: And that was just part of the cause. In the
Speaker 2: early days, very hard on the family life. No mobile
Speaker 2: phones and things like that. Senior sergeant would ring jan
Speaker 2: and just say he probably went be home for a week.
Speaker 2: He's got out to do his task and that was it,
Speaker 2: you know. And she always trusted the guys, the boys,
Speaker 2: the bosses and stuff like that. Had no qualms with that.
Speaker 2: But Dad was a vionman for a lot of years
Speaker 2: sort of understood the ship work, which help.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you need that to be able to do
Speaker 1: the things that you've done. You need that type of support.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure that having that stability and knowing that
Speaker 1: the home is safe, that your wife is looking after
Speaker 1: things things there make it easier for you to concentrate
Speaker 1: on doing what you're doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, she read the household really when it
Speaker 2: comes down to it, Yeah, it would have been hard.
Speaker 2: She's self employed us for dietriss, so basically eating starting off,
Speaker 2: she'd get home visits, you know, have all the equipment
Speaker 2: and probably a baby in toe capsule. And yeah, she worked.
Speaker 1: Hard while you're off flying around in helicopters and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're getting paid to do this stuff and.
Speaker 1: Living the boy's own adventure. Okay, let's talk about diffusing bombs. Now.
Speaker 1: It's a very specialist field of policing. There's only a
Speaker 1: small number of people that do it. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: suggested there's be any a small number of people that
Speaker 1: want to do it, and then you've got to have
Speaker 1: the aptitude for it. What threw you into becoming a
Speaker 1: member of the Bomb Response Unit?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, so you get into the SOG. You're all
Speaker 2: tactical members. Everybody's a tactical member. It does house raids
Speaker 2: and what we've discussed before, and then you can start
Speaker 2: going to a special s fields, like some can be
Speaker 2: a sniper, some can be a bomb tech, you know,
Speaker 2: depending what comes up. And it was nineteen ninety so
Speaker 2: I hadn't been in the group that long, and I
Speaker 2: had shown an interest, you know, been to a few
Speaker 2: scenes where I'll help get the equipment out but not
Speaker 2: involved and a course was coming up and I saw
Speaker 2: you wanted to become a bomb tech also to that
Speaker 2: kind of field, so I was going to remain tactical,
Speaker 2: but it was just an extra skill. And so in
Speaker 2: ninety ninety I headed off to a place called Bandiana,
Speaker 2: which is on the quarter of Victoria and New South Wales.
Speaker 2: It's an army base and basically started my course there,
Speaker 2: a four week course which was run by police jurisdiction
Speaker 2: throughout Australia. So they have two police officers from each
Speaker 2: state and territory there and we're using a military base,
Speaker 2: so we had some of their instructors. Plus we also
Speaker 2: had previous bomb texts, experienced bomb texts from various states
Speaker 2: who would be a director, assistant director and instructors and
Speaker 2: things like that. So you do your four week course
Speaker 2: there to start your bomb and like four week course
Speaker 2: is not long, you know, it's an apprenticeship.
Speaker 1: It would be a course that I'd be paying particular
Speaker 1: attention to because.
Speaker 2: You don't want to miss any lessons, that's for sure,
Speaker 2: and it's passed failed. You know. In the early days,
Speaker 2: you know, there's nothing about compe season resetting things as
Speaker 2: you know, you know it was you know, you either
Speaker 2: passed or you failed, and you know the pressure. I
Speaker 2: just got into the group, but you mean the group
Speaker 2: probably a year and maagine going back to first Victorian
Speaker 2: to fail a bomb course.
Speaker 1: You know when it came down to it, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: don't want to carry that. Well, it might got rid
Speaker 1: of your name as Calvin, you might have Calvin, Yeah,
Speaker 1: got rid of that. But want to do that work
Speaker 1: like that's you know that we talket the pressure of
Speaker 1: being in the tactical terms, the sag and responding to incidents,
Speaker 1: but there's I think I'm just looking at there's another
Speaker 1: level of pressure when you're okay, there's a package over there,
Speaker 1: and it happens so many times in police and I
Speaker 1: don't think people fully appreciate how much effort then things
Speaker 1: have to be done when there's a suspicious package. So
Speaker 1: you're going to you're putting your hand up to be
Speaker 1: the person that walks in and determines whether that's going
Speaker 1: to blow you up. If you make a mistake in
Speaker 1: this line of work, it's the last mistake you make.
Speaker 1: Literally it is.
Speaker 2: And I had a good mate, see sergeant, and basically
Speaker 2: We used to say every met matters, so if you
Speaker 2: could be a further meter away, that could be the
Speaker 2: difference between your life or serious injury. So yeah, you're
Speaker 2: trained basically to assess the situation, which with the equipment
Speaker 2: you had in the early days, if you had a
Speaker 2: suspicious band, you walk up with your X ray equipment,
Speaker 2: you'd take an X ray of it, and like the
Speaker 2: xtra equipment those days wasn't great and like, oh geez,
Speaker 2: it is a bomb, now go and put the bombsuit on.
Speaker 2: So we've changed now that you know, over the fifteen
Speaker 2: years ago, we decided like, if we get caught the job,
Speaker 2: it's a bomb until we determine it's not. So full equipment, equipment,
Speaker 2: full bomb suit, it's required and use everything before we
Speaker 2: actually try and put a member over the top of it.
Speaker 2: And robots have got better these days, so you know,
Speaker 2: it makes your job a lot easier. It just bends
Speaker 2: the location where it is.
Speaker 1: So what sort of appt you do you feel that
Speaker 1: you need to be a bomb technician.
Speaker 2: I think stick to the procedures that you've been taught.
Speaker 2: You know, there's no shortcuts, and I've had people, I've
Speaker 2: filed people on courses that have done the wrong thing.
Speaker 2: You know, I've had one guy removed from our unit
Speaker 2: that made a bad mistake and make it it is lucky.
Speaker 2: It was lucky. Basically nothing happened, but he made a
Speaker 2: bad decision. And as the upgraded senior stage in that time,
Speaker 2: you know, I thought, advice this person. I think it's
Speaker 2: just time that you move to another location. And he
Speaker 2: understood the consequences, you know. So you know, I don't
Speaker 2: want to be going to someone's family and saying you
Speaker 2: made a mistake. With training now and all the equipment,
Speaker 2: you don't take a risk, you know, and maybe this
Speaker 2: will happen. Now you know what's going to happen. If
Speaker 2: you're going to go up there and cut the red
Speaker 2: wire or whatever that's going to disarm it, that's not
Speaker 2: the way to go. But there's other ways of dealing
Speaker 2: with it that you've been able.
Speaker 1: We hold this could be great. Are you telling us
Speaker 1: all those Hollywood films, do we cut the red or
Speaker 1: the blue wire? Is bullshit?
Speaker 2: Only on Fridays, right If you.
Speaker 1: Want to knock off because you've got to get out,
Speaker 1: let's just.
Speaker 2: You just hope you're not color blind or something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but yeah, the skill sets. So a four
Speaker 1: week four week course and I take on board each
Speaker 1: meter matters that that's logical in its process, the way
Speaker 1: that you've shifted assess of the situation that's a bomb
Speaker 1: until you can improve otherwise. That all makes sense, But
Speaker 1: it gets down to the point where you've got to approach.
Speaker 2: At some stage, no matter what, some stage you have
Speaker 2: to approach it and declear it's safe, and we run
Speaker 2: our own course. Now in Victoria, things changed within the
Speaker 2: government and basically every state turgory was to deal with
Speaker 2: their own bomb techs and train their own bombics. Our
Speaker 2: course is now five weeks long and it's only an
Speaker 2: initial course. Really. The first week is actually getting your
Speaker 2: explosive license. Originally you didn't have to have a license,
Speaker 2: so under the work Safe and all that we had permission,
Speaker 2: really good work safe that we could run our own
Speaker 2: explosive course and give people their exposes licenses. Even as
Speaker 2: a bomb tech, if you're driving around exploses, you've got
Speaker 2: to have a license to do that. So everything's done
Speaker 2: within the legislation and things like that. It's just important
Speaker 2: that the first week's a good understanding the effect of
Speaker 2: an explosive blast. Then you start putting fragmentation and all
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff that have a good understanding.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that's probably a good idea because if
Speaker 1: it's not a fire cracker going off invariably, it can
Speaker 1: be devastating, and so they give you an appreciation of that,
Speaker 1: probably wake you up to make sure you're concentrating in
Speaker 1: what you're being taught.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know when I did my course where
Speaker 2: we had jelly knite, basically they don't have jelly knite
Speaker 2: these days, which is really nitru It's base based, so
Speaker 2: instink that heat, shock and friction, you know, has like
Speaker 2: even a residue on it. You know, if you get
Speaker 2: it on your hands you sort of scrape your forehead,
Speaker 2: you'll come down with a terrible migraine. So it gets
Speaker 2: into the poresy your skin. And basically when you get
Speaker 2: jelly knife for the first time, you got to poke
Speaker 2: a hole in it, and poke another hole and put
Speaker 2: a detonator in it, you know, and make sure you
Speaker 2: don't hit the little steel clip on the top and
Speaker 2: correct friction and stuff like that. Different kind of level. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you were nervous doing it, but it was exciting in
Speaker 2: a way if you like fireworks exposure a lot better.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, look it's a bigger bank. Yeah, how like
Speaker 1: you've got to you've got to be calm, and that
Speaker 1: is that something you had or something that you trained
Speaker 1: yourself for, because you really need to be focused, calm,
Speaker 1: making informed, correct decisions.
Speaker 2: Now, as a sergeant, you'd come up with a plan
Speaker 2: how are you going to deal with a situation? And
Speaker 2: my bomb techs, you know, the bontics I had. When
Speaker 2: we're dressing them, you know I would have put a
Speaker 2: plan together. This is what you're going to do, bang
Speaker 2: bang bang bang bang abc D right through. Unless they
Speaker 2: can think of themselves, you know, when they get out there,
Speaker 2: it's changed the environment or whatever. But whilst we're dressing
Speaker 2: and we're putting their overall pants on and then we're
Speaker 2: putting their browin protection on them, they're thinking about the
Speaker 2: tasks they have to do. Then we put the helmet
Speaker 2: on and then basically then we put the big coat on,
Speaker 2: we put gloves on so DNA fingerprints we don't contaminate
Speaker 2: what we're dealing with. And then I'll say to him
Speaker 2: before I drop that visor, what are you going to do?
Speaker 2: And you'll go through a whole process of what he's.
Speaker 1: Going to do.
Speaker 2: And then he's in lay maybe your forty kilo bomb
Speaker 2: suit with that big helmet on, and he might have
Speaker 2: to carry a few sandbags a twenty kilo shambag in
Speaker 2: each hand. So they had to be extremely fit to
Speaker 2: actually do that and think of what they have to
Speaker 2: do when they get up there.
Speaker 1: How did you feel the first time you put on
Speaker 1: that bomb suit, Because I know, if you're wearing like
Speaker 1: a gas maskt you're very You're sort of focus, you're
Speaker 1: contained and all that. And I watch I've seen blokes
Speaker 1: putting on the bomb suit and I'm thinking, okay, you're
Speaker 1: part of a term. Everyone's with you at this stage.
Speaker 1: But once that vice goes down, you are very.
Speaker 2: Much You wipe your hands and yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah we're with your John. We're just stand back here.
Speaker 2: Well, the vis that you start perspiring, basically the breather
Speaker 2: unit or the blower unit it's not working properly. Your
Speaker 2: buys will start the fog up, and so you have
Speaker 2: all these things and when you're walking up to the
Speaker 2: first time, it may seem silly. You just had a habit.
Speaker 2: I used to fold the fingers up, you know, into
Speaker 2: the sleeve as I'm walking up, just pull the fingers in.
Speaker 2: I don't know what we're just have it, have a look,
Speaker 2: you know, don't lose the pinkies or whatever, and go
Speaker 2: from there, never concerned. If it was I thought that
Speaker 2: it was going to go up, I wouldn't be walking up,
Speaker 2: simple as that. And if I was going to make
Speaker 2: a move, I have comms with the other guys back,
Speaker 2: even though I may be a sergeant and I can
Speaker 2: see your sergeant at the time. I come up with
Speaker 2: a plane and say, guys, can we do this better
Speaker 2: than what I've just come up with? And sometimes they
Speaker 2: come up with another plan which I hadn't even thought of,
Speaker 2: and we'd go down that direction. That's the type of
Speaker 2: person we look for. It doesn't matter what rank. You're
Speaker 2: a team. You're looking after each other and someone comes up,
Speaker 2: so could we do it this way? And go why
Speaker 2: didn't I think of that? Yeah? It makes sense. It
Speaker 2: goes from.
Speaker 1: There without giving away any methodology, just for the lame
Speaker 1: and how do you diffuse a bomb? When there's a
Speaker 1: bomb there? What's the processes to diffuse it?
Speaker 2: With the robots? Basically, it just makes common sense these
Speaker 2: days that when you get to a location, you're not
Speaker 2: going to walk up and have a look. You can
Speaker 2: be sure that the police that are on site looks
Speaker 2: So we did questioning first. Then we'll send a robot up.
Speaker 2: The robot can go up and have a look, and
Speaker 2: sometimes with the attachments on a robot, the actual robot
Speaker 2: can actually open it for ourselves and we can have
Speaker 2: a good look at what we're dealing with. If not,
Speaker 2: we can use diagnostics equipment, extra equipment, and we've all
Speaker 2: fairly experienced in reading what X rays are and what
Speaker 2: we're looking for. I won't go through the various components,
Speaker 2: but what we're looking for, and sometimes we can say, no,
Speaker 2: it's not a device, it's just a mistake someone's done,
Speaker 2: a delivery of whatever. If we're really concerned about it,
Speaker 2: we won't get up there to cut it open, or
Speaker 2: basically we'll use what we call a disruptor, which is
Speaker 2: like a counter charge. We'll get rid of it that way.
Speaker 2: Then the detectives can gather all the evidence. Forensic arson squad,
Speaker 2: we'll gather all the evidence that's remaining.
Speaker 1: The world of bombs just by the nature of them too,
Speaker 1: Like you can walk up there, and you're saying you
Speaker 1: wouldn't walk up there if you thought there was concerns.
Speaker 1: But there's so many duvious ways bombs can be activated
Speaker 1: and what bombs are used for. And yeah, we just
Speaker 1: look at today's day and age. It doesn't surprise when
Speaker 1: bombs go off left, right and center, and it can
Speaker 1: be such a powerful tool. It's constantly evolving. I would imagine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd be learning things from something that's happened overseas. You
Speaker 1: take on board, Okay, this situation happened. We've got to
Speaker 1: look out for.
Speaker 2: That now, liaison with groups overseas and certainly in the State.
Speaker 2: We do case histories and things like that, how they
Speaker 2: approached a particular device. You know, it's getting always getting
Speaker 2: that information a lot on the internet. You know, a
Speaker 2: lot of the stories are on the internet. We read
Speaker 2: what's happened overseas. You know, there's a lot of mistakes
Speaker 2: that the made overseas too. I'm sure it's mistakes made
Speaker 2: in Australia, but yeah, you just can't afford to make
Speaker 2: that mistake.
Speaker 1: No, Well, you saw I think you saw the consequences
Speaker 1: of someone wearing a bombsuit where the bomb went off
Speaker 1: and it wasn't too pretty.
Speaker 2: No, it wasn't. It's probably it would be one. Probably
Speaker 2: one of the largest bombs was not the bomb suit
Speaker 2: side of it, but that severa gone off in Australia
Speaker 2: that probably no one heard about it. There's a township
Speaker 2: in Victory called daryn Allam and we had a person
Speaker 2: called Glen Sanders and he had mental health issues again
Speaker 2: drug effect, had probably been on the marijuana. Now he's
Speaker 2: on ice, very paranoid for whatever reason, he got things
Speaker 2: rolling and he'd been wearing a suicide vest explosive best
Speaker 2: probably for a year that some people knew about and
Speaker 2: thought it was just a joke. Don't worry about it's
Speaker 2: not real anyway. He had a property at Darren Allam
Speaker 2: and his property was one hundred acres on the Helmston Highway,
Speaker 2: at least another eighty acres on the other side of
Speaker 2: the highway. He was visiting his mum in Balarat Hospital
Speaker 2: and prior to that, the day before it had someone
Speaker 2: come over to his farm and help him in the
Speaker 2: mechanic shed and he had an inspection pick where you
Speaker 2: get under the vegle and you have look what's going
Speaker 2: on underneath, and he had this plumber friend come over
Speaker 2: and he said, I had to get out and some tools.
Speaker 2: So he got out a gate on the inspection pit
Speaker 2: and then got a whole od of gas bottles LPG
Speaker 2: gas wetson opened it up and the guy couldn't get out,
Speaker 2: and he just let him walk away and left him anyway,
Speaker 2: His plumber mate took me about half an hour to
Speaker 2: get out, and he got out and then confronted Glenn
Speaker 2: what's going on, and Glenn showed him his best he
Speaker 2: was wearing and sort of brushed him down, said sorry
Speaker 2: about all that. So it sort of triggered the game,
Speaker 2: I think to get the police involved. So then the
Speaker 2: investigators were notified, and then the next day we were
Speaker 2: notified and we're on our way and he had gone
Speaker 2: to ballaratte Hospital where his mum was in the hospital.
Speaker 2: She had cancer at the time, so he is visiting.
Speaker 2: So we had this person now walking around in Ballerrette
Speaker 2: Hospital with a possible explosive suitside vest on. So naturally
Speaker 2: the SOG theyre coming out formulating a plan. I've got
Speaker 2: the bomb side of it. I've got the robots fready,
Speaker 2: they're in the truck. We haven't got him out. We
Speaker 2: haven't been compromised during like that. I've got the suit
Speaker 2: laying out on the floor of one of the trucks
Speaker 2: for to put someone on. What are the sag you're
Speaker 2: going to do? The investigated and this was not unusual
Speaker 2: for his normal habit to visit his mum, so they
Speaker 2: let it run and he would have been notified that
Speaker 2: he had seen his brother he hadn't seen for some
Speaker 2: time the day before also, and he showed him this vest,
Speaker 2: and he had buttons on each shoulder and a button
Speaker 2: on his chest, and that was if the police should
Speaker 2: arrest him, he could just use his head to push
Speaker 2: one of the buttons or push the button on his
Speaker 2: chest and things would go off. This is his interpretation.
Speaker 2: So he ended up backing his property at durren Ellum. Basically,
Speaker 2: the police arrived here, sog Wright in the armored vehicle
Speaker 2: went up. They triggered the warning alarms on his driveway.
Speaker 2: Thatt senses in the trees, so they he knew they
Speaker 2: were coming. And it's about nine o'clock at night, freezing
Speaker 2: cold up there, and he came out and he had
Speaker 2: a sort of shirt on, showed him the vest sort
Speaker 2: of disappeared back inside, came back a minute later, and
Speaker 2: the negotiations went on for three hours and he was
Speaker 2: in and out. He must have been freezing. He didn't
Speaker 2: ask about the time, probably asked how long have it
Speaker 2: been here? Maybe two or three times. I did a
Speaker 2: delivery of meals to all the out accordance. I wasn't
Speaker 2: sog now, but they knew that I could deliver the
Speaker 2: meals and stuff like that through my experience, and I
Speaker 2: could see him standing in the driveway and all that
Speaker 2: kind of stuff talking through the negotiators. In the end,
Speaker 2: I closed our guys down and said, we'll go find
Speaker 2: some accommodation. We're not going to search a house for
Speaker 2: exposers at night just doesn't make sense, dangerous dark. You
Speaker 2: want to use daylight. So basically we found a local
Speaker 2: motel some I think Morton Lake, some distance away. About
Speaker 2: caught the five five o'clock in the morning. I'll get
Speaker 2: a phone. My phone goes and senior sergeant says, I
Speaker 2: hope you wake The place is just blowing up and
Speaker 2: Sanders is dead. And I thought it was just typically sog.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm sleeping. He's not wake me up, And
Speaker 2: he says, no, I'm serious and three of us have
Speaker 2: been hurt. So you're getting me to get here, get
Speaker 2: the boys here and take over because we all have
Speaker 2: to be interviewed by the homicide quite death in police custody.
Speaker 2: So we get there and it's just getting things sort
Speaker 2: of blocked the handles in the highway completely, this fragmentation
Speaker 2: all over the highway and things like that. And to
Speaker 2: cut a long story short, I suppose during the negotiation
Speaker 2: period one of the guys had his head outside the
Speaker 2: armored beagle just talking to him, negotiating, and there was
Speaker 2: just a loud explosion. If you're closer, it was just
Speaker 2: one explosion. His interpretation, he got a fright when this
Speaker 2: explosure off, and he hit his shoulder and banged right.
Speaker 2: He went off. Yeah. So he had debt cord detonating
Speaker 2: cord which wrapped around his body, and detonating cords are
Speaker 2: high explosive for those people that know, travels eighty four
Speaker 2: hundred meters per second. That's over eight and a half
Speaker 2: nearly eight and a half plombs per second. That's how
Speaker 2: fast his cord will travel. So that basically cutting him half.
Speaker 2: Upper torso was from the lower torso was seven meters separated. Basically,
Speaker 2: the guy in the arm of beagle had over pressure
Speaker 2: damage from the blast, and if you were some distance away,
Speaker 2: they said they heard something like six or seven explosions
Speaker 2: going off. So who basically had seven devices planted around
Speaker 2: the property, all interconnected to each other, and they all
Speaker 2: went off at the same time, but distance a way
Speaker 2: you could hear the bang, bang, bing bang, but close
Speaker 2: up just hand like one large explosion. So his house
Speaker 2: was totally destroyed. His engineering shed had plasma colors and
Speaker 2: stuff like that, totally destroyed. Mum's house was on the
Speaker 2: same property. Her house wasn't destroyed. The ceiling dropped from
Speaker 2: the overpression the fragmentation through it. And he had a
Speaker 2: device basically a bomb near the front door, one near
Speaker 2: the back door. He had two in the engineering shed
Speaker 2: and one had one in a hidden shipping container. Were
Speaker 2: there for the next three weeks making the property safe.
Speaker 1: Just a couple of things to unpack that. And I
Speaker 1: saw the photo of the damage. It's unbelievable. I saw
Speaker 1: foto in your book, But just unpacking that, the consequences
Speaker 1: could have been devastating, like three members injured. The person
Speaker 1: that created the bomb, blowing him blowing himself up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if people went in there the wrong way or didn't
Speaker 1: cold and off the era and going there, it could
Speaker 1: be mass casualties.
Speaker 2: If if the police had done a raid or something
Speaker 2: like that at night. You know, once we're dealing the bomb,
Speaker 2: were trying to to come up with planets to our advantage. Yeah.
Speaker 2: One SG member received trapped onto his head, went through
Speaker 2: his falistic helmet. He has recovered from his injuries. And
Speaker 2: the other one, fortunately, they were behind a chimney of
Speaker 2: the house, the main house of brick chimney, so the
Speaker 2: overpressure in the blast bay sort of win a ran
Speaker 2: but it collapsed it. Yeah, the fortunate they weren't killed.
Speaker 2: Lucky they won't killed.
Speaker 1: Now to attend the scene like that, which clearly I
Speaker 1: call him a nutter, It's not probably the technical term,
Speaker 1: but yeah, an intelligent nher that can cause some damage
Speaker 1: and set bombs up like that. You'd be going through
Speaker 1: a scene like that that could be booby trapped. You
Speaker 1: wouldn't know what you're going to uncover there. How how
Speaker 1: long did it take before you could clear that scene?
Speaker 2: We were there for three weeks and even arriving there,
Speaker 2: putting the cords in place blocking the Hamilton Highway, which
Speaker 2: is the main highway. I was getting a bit of grief.
Speaker 2: Will that be for a day? I said, no, it'll
Speaker 2: open when it opened, simple to that. So it was
Speaker 2: three weeks that was closed for sort of the command structure.
Speaker 2: Some of them work. Sorrying to put pressure on. It
Speaker 2: doesn't work with me for pressure. Don't care. This is
Speaker 2: what's going to happen. Take as long as it's going
Speaker 2: to take. Protect my members and protect other people. So
Speaker 2: we had to start basically from the front door. He
Speaker 2: had explosives in milk churns and large LPG tanks. You
Speaker 2: know everybody knows about strapnel like nails and things like that.
Speaker 2: He had welded railway iron onto the side of these churns,
Speaker 2: chunks of railway iron, and it gales the Hamilton Highway
Speaker 2: over four hundred meters away. One of those chunks had
Speaker 2: gone right, Yeah, I've got a fart of it. I
Speaker 2: saw when I was setting up everything, got this gouge
Speaker 2: in the highway and I could see the indentations in
Speaker 2: the plowed field. So I found the railway on. You know,
Speaker 2: they didn't know what was whizzing pass that night. So
Speaker 2: we basically started at the front. His letterbox was actually
Speaker 2: looked like a bomb. It was a large aerial bomb.
Speaker 2: That was his letterbox, and like I had like a
Speaker 2: shotgune cartage in the front of it, and basically all
Speaker 2: the neighbors were coming out. He said, oh, you always
Speaker 2: used to say if anyone touch his letterbox, that'd be
Speaker 2: last thing they'll do. So you know, we had to
Speaker 2: take that has been a possible bomb. And I had
Speaker 2: a haystack in the front yard. We had to empty
Speaker 2: every bale of hay because they rumors coming he had
Speaker 2: exposes hidden in the hay.
Speaker 1: And what the painstaking task. How many of you were
Speaker 1: working on that.
Speaker 2: We had at least eight on site. And then we
Speaker 2: had the rest of Victoria to respond to too, so
Speaker 2: we had our limbits were really stretched for Victoria. We
Speaker 2: had teams, a team in the city. I sort of
Speaker 2: stayed there once I sort of started. My senior sergeant
Speaker 2: came back three days later after being interviewed and all
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. It was just a long process,
Speaker 2: very slow. His body was in the driveway, you know,
Speaker 2: he separbarated by seven meters up and lower. That had
Speaker 2: to be covered. On the first day we had rumors
Speaker 2: that he was wearing a bra that had a number
Speaker 2: of detonators in it. People don't know what a detonated.
Speaker 2: You stand on a detonator, good chance to lose half
Speaker 2: a foot, that's what they're like. They look very small,
Speaker 2: but very dangerous. So I had clean path there. I
Speaker 2: had to cover the body, so you hadn't been cleared
Speaker 2: deceased by the pathologists till two and a half days later,
Speaker 2: when again I had to go back uncover the body.
Speaker 2: They came into photos they moved out and then had
Speaker 2: to roll those parts over, checked the pockets and his clothing,
Speaker 2: make sure nothing was in them. They came in toil
Speaker 2: more photus and cleared and deceased.
Speaker 1: What a painstaking task that would have been, and that
Speaker 1: would have been high alert the whole time, like any
Speaker 1: step could have been your last one on that literally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, watching where you put your feet. And that's why
Speaker 2: we stopped the other investigators coming on. They wanted to
Speaker 2: come on, but we just couldn't guarantee the safety. So
Speaker 2: we cleared a path down the driveway, which driveways would
Speaker 2: have been about two and a half two point five
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty meters long. It was a long driveway. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was painstaking. And then you've got a biological hazard,
Speaker 2: know you're bomb techer and like we call a knuckle
Speaker 2: drag or whatever. You've got all these things running through
Speaker 2: your mind. That's when your mind you're going to work mode,
Speaker 2: you know, and health and well being of the members.
Speaker 2: His house was made out of asbestos, so we had
Speaker 2: to have basically appropriate ASBESTO suits. We had to get swabbed,
Speaker 2: swabbed every day for fibers again, breathing apparatus and working
Speaker 2: some days in boiling heat the other days in the range.
Speaker 2: The guys are really really professional. The guys I work
Speaker 2: with big worry though as a sergeant giving a task
Speaker 2: and sending them in, you want to do it yourself
Speaker 2: because you don't want them getting hurt. It's just human nature.
Speaker 2: But you trust them. And we did twenty two counter
Speaker 2: chargers in the end for things that we found IEDs.
Speaker 2: We found the time device that made everything go off.
Speaker 2: And yeah, so busy, perod, very busy.
Speaker 1: I could imagine, and I imagine I understand what you're
Speaker 1: saying too, Like sending people in that you know you're
Speaker 1: putting them at risk, but that is the job. That's
Speaker 1: the way that plays out, isn't it. People have got
Speaker 1: to get Yeah, it is got their experience. And I'm
Speaker 1: glad you stood up to the detectives. I know you.
Speaker 1: I know you've done a couple of things. I just
Speaker 1: reference you know when you're back in your s O
Speaker 1: G days when you had an operation on your knee
Speaker 1: and you were told directly by your boss not to
Speaker 1: get out of the car no matter what, when you
Speaker 1: had to fill in for a raid and you got
Speaker 1: out not once, but you did it again, and so
Speaker 1: you disobeyed that. I'll tell you a funny story and
Speaker 1: you probably won't laugh at me. You'll say what the
Speaker 1: bomb guys from New South Wales said about me I
Speaker 1: was doing. It was a high profile cot high profile
Speaker 1: in the magnitude of the job. We had an informant
Speaker 1: that I've been dealing with covertly for a very long time.
Speaker 1: And this informant was paranoid and he was a bit
Speaker 1: of a tech that liked to make bombs and into
Speaker 1: his firearms and all that, and he handed me We've
Speaker 1: gone to see the informant and he's handed me what
Speaker 1: I described as a pipe bomb. It was a fair
Speaker 1: sized pipe bomb, probably you know, thirty centimeters or more
Speaker 1: length wires coming out of screwed at both both ends,
Speaker 1: thick pipe. Handed it to me when I went to
Speaker 1: his place, and he's put it in my hands before
Speaker 1: I move, and thinking I've got it in my hands
Speaker 1: and he's gone, I've said, mate, what's that? He's gone.
Speaker 1: It's a bomb. I set it up that if anyone
Speaker 1: tried to break in here, they were going to that
Speaker 1: would be the last thing they do. Blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: But it's all right, mate, because I've diffused it. It's disconnected.
Speaker 1: I've got it in my hands and covert. It is
Speaker 1: year years, years long operation. I couldn't blow it. And
Speaker 1: I know if I called the bomb squad guys, the
Speaker 1: whole place would be cordered off and it would be
Speaker 1: no be no covert anymore. So I said to the
Speaker 1: bloke I was working with, Luke, if you're stupid, I'm stupid.
Speaker 1: How about we just carry this to the car, We'll
Speaker 1: drive it to an oval and then we'll call the
Speaker 1: bomb squad. So where we're walking out, I've got my
Speaker 1: head tilt of the way. I don't know how that
Speaker 1: was going to save me. It was just Oh, that
Speaker 1: make a difference. It was a inner city, like a
Speaker 1: Friday afternoon that would have been shut down city type thing.
Speaker 1: I've put it in the put in the boot of
Speaker 1: the car. Luke press the bonnet because I've watched Hollywood.
Speaker 1: I see every time the buttons pressed, the bomb goes off.
Speaker 1: I'm looking away. We put it in the boot and
Speaker 1: we drove and parked the car in the middle of
Speaker 1: the oval, and I called the bomb squad and basically
Speaker 1: relay what they were saying. Your fucking what you They
Speaker 1: abused me for about ten or fifteen minutes, and every
Speaker 1: single thing they said was one hundred percent right. And
Speaker 1: I've said, I get it, I'm stupid. I promise I'll
Speaker 1: never do it again, but can you come and help
Speaker 1: me and get this bomb? And they came and took
Speaker 1: the bomb away, dedonated and did what they should have
Speaker 1: done at the place. So that was my one experience
Speaker 1: with handling handling bombs, and I don't think I did
Speaker 1: very well on that.
Speaker 2: But sometimes you put in a position that that's what
Speaker 2: you've got.
Speaker 1: To do, you know. Yeah, Well, I only told you
Speaker 1: that story because I've picked up enough in speaking to
Speaker 1: you and reading reading through the book. Sometimes things have
Speaker 1: just got to be done, and we did it. We
Speaker 1: got got away of it. But yeah, they abused me,
Speaker 1: and then I got dragged in the boss's office the
Speaker 1: next day. He abused me. Everyone abused me. They had
Speaker 1: nothing to come back with. The only thing after a
Speaker 1: length of time, I said, yeah, but look I'm still here.
Speaker 1: Didn't blow up anyway. That was a funny side story overseas.
Speaker 1: You've done a lot of study overseas in the bomb
Speaker 1: technician side of the things. Tell us some of the
Speaker 1: things and things that you did there.
Speaker 2: Well, fortunate enough, I've got a scholarship. You know when
Speaker 2: we talk about the bomb course and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: You become a director basically once you've done an overseas
Speaker 2: trip that's being sponsored. So that's what I was loing
Speaker 2: up to do. So I went to basically the America. First,
Speaker 2: I went to a conference over there in Sacramento for
Speaker 2: a week. Visited the FBI and Washington and all that
Speaker 2: kind of stuff. Spoke to all their bomb techs, look
Speaker 2: at the techniques that that using, shown a lot of
Speaker 2: case histories and stuff like that. Did a number of
Speaker 2: training days from there. Then I went to South Africa.
Speaker 2: In the same trip, I spent a month in South Africa.
Speaker 2: It was just after a partay and things were still
Speaker 2: pretty yeah, pretty wide over there. You're sitting at the
Speaker 2: motel and I just listening to gunshots going off, you know,
Speaker 2: just unbelievable. But worked with their bomb techs and you know,
Speaker 2: I went out with their tactic guys. One night was
Speaker 2: a secure location and that night one of the guys
Speaker 2: got shot. On the way I am bushed and shot,
Speaker 2: you know, And that's what it was like over there.
Speaker 2: Was I don't know if they had known that, they
Speaker 2: would have sent me over there. And on the way back,
Speaker 2: I went to the UK England, saw their bomb went
Speaker 2: to Scotland Yard and did a bit of training with
Speaker 2: some of their bomb people. And what you do is
Speaker 2: generating a lot of information that you can bring back
Speaker 2: to the next course as the director. I'd already been
Speaker 2: an assistant director. Now I was going to be a director.
Speaker 2: And we ran two courses that year, so I was
Speaker 2: directed twice, so I was getting a lot of experience.
Speaker 2: I had a lot of knowledge, I supposed by then,
Speaker 2: and you just convey that information onto everybody else. You know,
Speaker 2: you've just taken in I've been fortunate that I was
Speaker 2: sponsored by the CESG Community Security Group. It's a Jewish
Speaker 2: community group down in Melbourne. They have a lot of
Speaker 2: functions and do searches before they have big function We
Speaker 2: would help them with those searcheres, but we'd train them
Speaker 2: to help us also, And they sponsored me to go
Speaker 2: to Israel for a conference over there, and I spent
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks over in Israel. It was a
Speaker 2: suicide bombers conference, so you're learning all the time and
Speaker 2: you bring that information back to Australia. That was open
Speaker 2: to all. And then I went to Spain and trained
Speaker 2: with Europol, and that was open to all bomb techs
Speaker 2: in Australia. And I heard about it and I heard
Speaker 2: someone was going. I thought, I think I should go
Speaker 2: and do that. And there was no hesitation for me
Speaker 2: going straight away. They said you can go, and I
Speaker 2: did a week's training with Europol, which is actually we're
Speaker 2: not part of Europol, but were. It was a guest
Speaker 2: and it's good to train with deponteics of all the
Speaker 2: various countries. It just shows that our language. They speak
Speaker 2: three or four different languages and I speak Australia.
Speaker 1: It's embarrassing, isn't it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I had to do I did a presentation
Speaker 2: on the Durhan Allum at the conference and the guy
Speaker 2: stands up and introduces me, and he apologizes for me
Speaker 2: before I ever starts speaking, how strains speak too fast.
Speaker 2: And I think that's a great start. Thanks for that confidence.
Speaker 2: So I had to do it through an interpret on
Speaker 2: the all of the various languages. It was interesting experience. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we did. They set up the scenarios, a couple of
Speaker 2: scenarios and yeah, once dage, no one stood forward and
Speaker 2: I put my hand up, and I'm happy in our
Speaker 2: skill level and what we have is very good. I
Speaker 2: was really pressed, not by myself, but when I came back,
Speaker 2: we're pretty good.
Speaker 1: That's not the type of thing you want to lag behind.
Speaker 2: No, definitely not.
Speaker 1: And sadly, I think in today's day and age, it's
Speaker 1: a skill set that will probably be needed more and more.
Speaker 2: It is like, on average, we're probably doing one and
Speaker 2: a half to two jobs a week now. People don't
Speaker 2: hear about them. We're very much. We get in there,
Speaker 2: do the job and we're out and we're gone, you know,
Speaker 2: and the media pick it up and they're good basically
Speaker 2: with the information they give.
Speaker 1: Out of the callouts, how many are legitimate call Well,
Speaker 1: they're all legitimate callouts because there's a concern there, but
Speaker 1: how many are actually turn out to be bombs?
Speaker 2: I would say maybe fifteen percent either bombs through it
Speaker 2: could be misadventured kids mucking around making something and it's
Speaker 2: been left behind. They've improvised something. It might not have
Speaker 2: an explosive compound involved, but it's made to look like
Speaker 2: a bomb. Not a bomb, but it looks like a bomb.
Speaker 2: So you've got to take that on board criminal activity. Certainly,
Speaker 2: they're still finding pipe bombs as far as I know.
Speaker 2: It was on the news this week actually in Victoria
Speaker 2: they found a number of pipe bombs and that was
Speaker 2: on Channel seven telecasts. A number of counter charges were
Speaker 2: done and where they were rendered safe. Where it rendered
Speaker 2: safe basically means that disarmed made safe. So it happens
Speaker 2: quite regularly and been on call. You know, in my career,
Speaker 2: I had my own personal phone, I'd have my sergeant's phone,
Speaker 2: and then i'd had the senior sergeant's phone at times.
Speaker 2: So if I went to the pictures with jan I'd
Speaker 2: be sitting there in the picture theater with three mobile
Speaker 2: phanes and you probably done it yourself. You had turn
Speaker 2: them over so the screen doesn't come on. But you're
Speaker 2: sitting there watching me, waiting for the glow which phone's
Speaker 2: going to go off? So you know it's a it's
Speaker 2: a life and a half as you've experienced yourself.
Speaker 1: Don't you feel like the dickhead that's so important that
Speaker 1: he's got to keep the phone on wherever you are
Speaker 1: and everyone's just looking at you know the feeling. There's
Speaker 1: an image of you looking very lonely walking down down
Speaker 1: the street in your book, in your bomb suit. Tell
Speaker 1: us what's going through your mind as you're walking walking
Speaker 1: towards it. Are you in communications with someone about what
Speaker 1: you're seeing and what you're doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have communications through the bomb suits and stuff
Speaker 2: like that, so we had comms, but it's a secure
Speaker 2: comms channel. They say don't use a radio over a bomb,
Speaker 2: but we're basically our radio, so right the way we
Speaker 2: do it, And I know exactly what that job was.
Speaker 2: It's a hot summer's day walking down and you're thinking
Speaker 2: of what you're required to do. We had the robot
Speaker 2: app that had done observations. I think that's in the picture,
Speaker 2: but it was a difficult location where it was, so
Speaker 2: it's going to have to be hands on. And I
Speaker 2: know it's silly, but after so many years as a
Speaker 2: bomb tick sometimes I can pretty well pick what we're
Speaker 2: going to deal with and what it actually is before
Speaker 2: I even see it. And it was I know that
Speaker 2: job was a geotag. So people was a container and
Speaker 2: inside the container has a piece of paper and it
Speaker 2: has a pin in it, and people have got there
Speaker 2: a website. You're going to find these where these things
Speaker 2: are hidden throughout the city, and we've done a number
Speaker 2: of them, so we don't take them for granted. But
Speaker 2: I think this will be a goo tag or something
Speaker 2: like that, and have a look. Yeah, yeah, I might
Speaker 2: use a manual means of removing it, but every meter matters.
Speaker 2: I won't be pulling it out with my hands. I'll
Speaker 2: attach something to it and pull it out from the distance.
Speaker 2: So it's going through your minds. You know, there's no
Speaker 2: time to think about fun or aing like that. You're
Speaker 2: focusing on what you're doing, and surely I'm focusing that
Speaker 2: the media. You're a filming this too. Now it's not
Speaker 2: a good time to trip over my feet and land
Speaker 2: like a turtle on the back, because that's the shot.
Speaker 1: Like you're laughing, but in I could only imagine how
Speaker 1: uncomfortable that suit would be. And what forty kilos were.
Speaker 2: Yeah, forty kilos were sweats dripping down the back of
Speaker 2: your you just your T shirt and your uniform. It's
Speaker 2: just ringing wet and normally carry a spare one and
Speaker 2: just get changed after a job because you drop on
Speaker 2: the grounds, just like a wet pile on the ground,
Speaker 2: se you lose a few kilos, probably just a fluid.
Speaker 2: You know, it's very hot in those days.
Speaker 1: What's is there a job that you've got to that
Speaker 1: really schedule what you're at the you're thinking, okay, this
Speaker 1: is this is where all the training everything needs to
Speaker 1: kick in. You have to be your sharpest that okay,
Speaker 1: this is a difficult one.
Speaker 2: Probably I think Gary Allen more than anything that was
Speaker 2: a thing more scared for other people. The boys would
Speaker 2: to a particular zone area clear it and then they
Speaker 2: come back and say they come back with a photo
Speaker 2: and say this is what we found. And it was
Speaker 2: an ied had an arming switch and everything attached to it.
Speaker 2: And I said, we have defenders deceased. We not looked
Speaker 2: for any other offenders. We don't need that evidence. Just
Speaker 2: don't touch it, just destroy it where it is. You know,
Speaker 2: it was probably that kind of operation that they're turning
Speaker 2: over at the end. After three weeks. We had a
Speaker 2: pile of timber, we had a pile of metal, we
Speaker 2: had a pile of clothing. We're going through clothing and
Speaker 2: find sticks of powergell like explosies in coats and pockets
Speaker 2: and things like that. It's not just rummaging through. Everything
Speaker 2: had to be checked.
Speaker 1: The threat. The threat was everywhere everywhere you look.
Speaker 2: Everywhere you looked out. Once he parked his car in
Speaker 2: the drive in the garage and he actually parked the
Speaker 2: front passenger wheel on one of the devices and like
Speaker 2: that blew the car onto its roof. So he had
Speaker 2: everything planned out. And when we rolled that car back over,
Speaker 2: we found another twenty detonators just laying on the ground
Speaker 2: that come out of the car. You know, and like
Speaker 2: as I said, you stand on a detonator, you will
Speaker 2: lose half foot, simple as that.
Speaker 1: With the bomb suit, what saw the protection does that
Speaker 1: give you? Like I've seen guys put them on, and
Speaker 1: you know, you say you pull your hands in, I'm looking, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's covered, that's covered. They lose their feet, they lose
Speaker 1: their hands, Like, what sort of protection is it that
Speaker 1: provides you.
Speaker 2: The heat, shock and basically fragmentation when you look at
Speaker 2: the heat from the blast, the shock wave and basically
Speaker 2: fragmentation that comes with it. But when we said before,
Speaker 2: every meter matters. If I'm going to be another met
Speaker 2: back back, back back, the risk becomes less, But it
Speaker 2: depends on the size of the device. I think. Now
Speaker 2: I've got photos of a guy in the Philippines that
Speaker 2: was wearing a bomb suit and all it basically did
Speaker 2: is keep body parts together a tour pieces. Basically, when we.
Speaker 1: Come down to it, you've explained why you applied. Do
Speaker 1: you have an abundance of applicants for this type of
Speaker 1: type of work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have quite a few that apply for it.
Speaker 2: Normally you get about twenty five might advertise every three years.
Speaker 2: You know, our staff stayed for some time to become
Speaker 2: proficient and takes you two or three years. You know,
Speaker 2: we had some new bomb techs on the duran Ellum
Speaker 2: and that was like two years of work for that
Speaker 2: three weeks. You know, they learn a lot they just
Speaker 2: which is great experience. So we get a lot of applicants,
Speaker 2: some old SG mentality. You know, I hear reputations and
Speaker 2: stuff like that. Are they in for the right reason
Speaker 2: or reason? They do a big evaluation.
Speaker 1: Like a psychometric test.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and basically spoken to and we look at that
Speaker 2: very carefully. The group is getting bigger than the AU,
Speaker 2: but you want to make sure you've got people that
Speaker 2: are going to working with the family, with your family
Speaker 2: that you don't want someone that's going to upset everybody.
Speaker 2: You know, you can't have a square peg in a
Speaker 2: round a hole or something like that. So personalities are
Speaker 2: really important.
Speaker 1: There's always workplace conflict in any group that operates in
Speaker 1: pressure situations, but I would imagine that's the last thing
Speaker 1: you need in the bomb response group. But internal dramas
Speaker 1: and different.
Speaker 2: Things, well, we do three days of assessments. It goes
Speaker 2: for three days, and you know, we'd like to do
Speaker 2: it into overtime period, but that's a problem with budget.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't be allowed when people get tight. You know, when
Speaker 2: I did the Frankston shooting, two bomb jobs and one
Speaker 2: shooting in one night. That's what it's all about. But
Speaker 2: at the end of those three days, whoever's remaining there, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'd ask them who you would like to work with
Speaker 2: from one to twenty. I'll put people in a list,
Speaker 2: and at times we're being happy with someone and we
Speaker 2: suddenly look at all these lists and their names down
Speaker 2: the bottom, and they're playing the game and they've been
Speaker 2: doing things that we haven't seen. And that's where I
Speaker 2: might decide to do another evaluation and find out what's
Speaker 2: going on here because other people aren't happy with this person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it. Like they can put on
Speaker 1: the facade in that they know what you guys are
Speaker 1: looking for or assume, but they get caught out when
Speaker 1: the other members identified because I would imagine you said
Speaker 1: with over time and you can't put them through that.
Speaker 1: You want to see how they react when they're tired
Speaker 1: and under pressure, because I know in policing sometimes you
Speaker 1: go in twenty four hours straight or longer, and it
Speaker 1: amazes me. Some people that are the good operators literally
Speaker 1: fall apart where they go past bedtime and they can't function.
Speaker 2: Well. We had one guy couldn't function without too you know,
Speaker 2: like I can go about to for twenty four hours,
Speaker 2: I don't care, but yeah, he's going to be fed
Speaker 2: every hour or so.
Speaker 1: John, You've just sit on a bugbear of mine doing
Speaker 1: an early morning raid or an operation or something that
Speaker 1: is based on time, and someone I need my coffee
Speaker 1: and fuck your coffee. Why are we waiting? I just
Speaker 1: had to get a coffee or something like that. But
Speaker 1: it's interesting and interesting field. No, I would imagine what
Speaker 1: sort of satisfaction do you get from it, like going
Speaker 1: in and doing the job. Is there a satisfaction you
Speaker 1: get or.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's a reward at the end if
Speaker 2: everything goes well, the equipment all works, you know where
Speaker 2: you have so much electronic equipment now and you sometimes
Speaker 2: can get interference and things like that. Very much with
Speaker 2: bomb side of it, you do have to have a
Speaker 2: plan A, B and C, you know, and A doesn't work,
Speaker 2: do you go to B. But you do get a
Speaker 2: satisfaction if you've done a good job. Everything's worked, everybody's
Speaker 2: gone on well, and yeah, no issues. You know, equipment
Speaker 2: was always a bit of an issue. There's always some
Speaker 2: kind of technical problem that and we improvise. We've become
Speaker 2: quite good at it. Actually.
Speaker 1: Is there a lot of liaison with all the other
Speaker 1: police forces in the country and military that you'll keep
Speaker 1: in contact so you're all on the same page.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if there's military ordinance, we basically get the army
Speaker 2: to deal with it. So if we come across something
Speaker 2: and there was a job last week, I know the
Speaker 2: boys the army surned up. They've had military ordinance and
Speaker 2: then they saw a couple of pipe bombs, so they
Speaker 2: said that's for the bomb response unit to deal with.
Speaker 2: So it sort of it goes from there. So we
Speaker 2: have a lot of the liaison. We work well together,
Speaker 2: always have good Yeah, it's always good. You always want
Speaker 2: that expertise. I've done jobs where grenades have been involved
Speaker 2: and that's military ordinance. We might be searching them for
Speaker 2: a warrant, but I'll have the military there with us
Speaker 2: to say this is the way you should handle it,
Speaker 2: and I'm quite happy to listen to that.
Speaker 1: You're downtime, like what thirty four years in the police
Speaker 1: pretty much? Yeah, thirty two of those years in the
Speaker 1: s og or bomb response. You know, what do you
Speaker 1: do for your downtime? And this is a loaded question
Speaker 1: because I know what you do, and I think people
Speaker 1: are just.
Speaker 2: Going to go, what the hell, Well, basic things. I
Speaker 2: like exercising and do a lot of cycling. Used to
Speaker 2: do a lot of running before I had two new
Speaker 2: needs put in. Then I like other challenges. I've climbed
Speaker 2: quite a few mounts with Greg Lincell and a guy
Speaker 2: called Paul Carr, who were both in the sog Okay
Speaker 2: good friends because I had this passion that they basically
Speaker 2: took me along and taught me how to climb, and
Speaker 2: then we got into mountaineering. So and I like a
Speaker 2: challenge basically in Greg Keith, Greg Linz, I keeps on
Speaker 2: coming up with stupid ideas. I'll blame it on In,
Speaker 2: but we're as bad as each other.
Speaker 1: So we've like you climbed Everest. Now people, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a true crime podcast, but I'm just fascinated by the
Speaker 1: mentality and the drive to achieve that, like very few
Speaker 1: people do it, and there's a home mortality, the rate
Speaker 1: of people that try talk us through that experience of
Speaker 1: what drove you before I do. I should just clarify
Speaker 1: it's just another aspect of your police And we haven't
Speaker 1: talked about a lot of repelling. You were very efficient
Speaker 1: in that and we're training a lot of people in
Speaker 1: repelling down the side of the building.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with Paul Greg. Paul Greg were very much into
Speaker 2: climbing all that. When I did the SOG course that
Speaker 2: week at a mount of Rapilis, I just loved the
Speaker 2: best week of the course. Can get the smile off
Speaker 2: my face. Then when I got into the unit, into
Speaker 2: the group, we go away for weekends up to Aunt
Speaker 2: of Rapilids, even with our families and things like that,
Speaker 2: do rock climbing. And then we started improvising you ways
Speaker 2: to do urban climbing, climb buildings, you know. I became
Speaker 2: a senior instructor in the end for rock and urban climbing,
Speaker 2: AB sailing fast raping, which is from a helicopter you
Speaker 2: drop a rope out thirty meters long about forty millimeters
Speaker 2: into light diameter and just slide down it. And we
Speaker 2: came up with that procedure and sort of went from there.
Speaker 2: And then basically he's sort of ever a bit SOG motivated.
Speaker 2: Is that Paul Carr was training for it. I won't
Speaker 2: go into full story, but on the fourteenth of May
Speaker 2: he suffered a coronary inclusion on a mountain called Chao Yu,
Speaker 2: which is basically in China, to bet so he had
Speaker 2: a massive heart attack as a result of that. That
Speaker 2: was in the plan to do Everest. Greg and I
Speaker 2: were ready to do Everest with this at that particular period,
Speaker 2: so we didn't go to Chao Yu. He went with
Speaker 2: three other people as a result of that. Probably as
Speaker 2: a police officer, the worst thing you've have to do,
Speaker 2: as you know, would be a death notification knocking on
Speaker 2: someone's store. And I've been in the police force a
Speaker 2: number of years now and known Paul for probably fourteen
Speaker 2: fifteen years. We've been away with his first wife and
Speaker 2: kids Misco absently, and we're really good friends with the
Speaker 2: second wife, and basically both ex and current wife were
Speaker 2: good because they had children involved. Was quite a happy family.
Speaker 2: So my first death message was knocking on Julie, his
Speaker 2: current wife's door, and informing her with another guy of
Speaker 2: his death, and then having to go to his ex
Speaker 2: wife and go and tell her, and then go to
Speaker 2: the school with Julie with Liz to tell the kids
Speaker 2: that what had happened. And we had to do this
Speaker 2: because Paul was in charge of the Special Operations Group
Speaker 2: at the time and we had to get it out
Speaker 2: there before the media got it. Out before it was known,
Speaker 2: and so yeah, terrible period. And he was sort of
Speaker 2: planning to raise the money for the Makerwish Foundation, and
Speaker 2: he was sharing a tent with a guy called Nick
Speaker 2: Farr who was a police officer. So once we Greg
Speaker 2: and I went over to Paul, we helped the logistics
Speaker 2: of bringing Paul back and the other climbers. So basically
Speaker 2: a guy called Kaye C. Mcdan, he did the highest
Speaker 2: helicopter rescue on Everes a number of years inter Thinney
Speaker 2: John Cracker if you ever read that book. Anyway, he
Speaker 2: flew with the mission a China, gave permission for Nepoli's
Speaker 2: helicopter to go in, brought the timber is out the
Speaker 2: next day that went back Paul's body being brought down
Speaker 2: to a reasonable altitude and his body was walked back
Speaker 2: to Nepal. We arrived the same day and we did
Speaker 2: a week of logistics of everything having to be done
Speaker 2: to keep bringing back to his family. And so we
Speaker 2: let it sit for about a year. But it was
Speaker 2: like a bit of an sog thing. Sog sort of
Speaker 2: started it. Greg and I wanted to climb every don't
Speaker 2: get us wrong there, So we continued the journey and
Speaker 2: basically a documentary is done Unfinished Business by a person
Speaker 2: called Jennifer Adams who came with us. It was a
Speaker 2: great experience to go and do it. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: We're doing for a number of reasons, for ourselves, for
Speaker 2: Paul's family, for the group definitely, we just wanted to finish,
Speaker 2: and for the Makers Foundation. We raised I think something
Speaker 2: like nearly two hundred thousand dollars in the end.
Speaker 1: Amazing what drives you, But it's not something that you
Speaker 1: wake up and say, this is what I've got to do.
Speaker 1: The training, the preparation, the risk assessment, the whole thing,
Speaker 1: the time in, costs, every think come into play. Like
Speaker 1: I'm just fascinated. I'm just curious about it. Where you
Speaker 1: hear people, you know, we're four hundred meters from but
Speaker 1: we had to turn around and couldn't make that four
Speaker 1: hundred movers that type of thing. It's life on the
Speaker 1: edge because you're in that zone they call the death zone.
Speaker 1: What does it feel like when you actually stood on
Speaker 1: the top of Everest.
Speaker 2: Just released that I'd made it, But I haven't really
Speaker 2: made it till you actually get back down. But I
Speaker 2: always want to look at the curvature of the earth.
Speaker 2: I always heard that you could actually see the curvature
Speaker 2: of the earth standing up there, you can. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: was blowing a gale and like I've got footage in
Speaker 2: the documentary that Jen made, the shows the camera icing up.
Speaker 2: You know, that's how cold it is, but surreal to
Speaker 2: be looking at it. And I had my Shirka with me, Pemma,
Speaker 2: and we just shared that moment together. Nepalese people just
Speaker 2: love them. It just fantastic, hard working and you know
Speaker 2: what they had, they just appreciate. Just beautiful people. To
Speaker 2: share that moment, and then for Greg Nick and myself
Speaker 2: to be on the mountain at the same time as
Speaker 2: a team, it was fantastic. Although we didn't get a
Speaker 2: photo of all three of us together because someone had
Speaker 2: to take the photo, but you know, it was it
Speaker 2: was good and we Greg had been given a book
Speaker 2: by Paul's daughters to lead up on the top of Everest,
Speaker 2: little book with poems and stuff like that, and he'd
Speaker 2: been given also a ribbon that Paul's parents had given
Speaker 2: to us to leave on the top of the mountain,
Speaker 2: which we did, you know, and we took photos of
Speaker 2: that and all that kind of stuff. And the hard
Speaker 2: part now was getting down. Most people die going down
Speaker 2: the coming up. Heard that, Yeah, it's like walking up
Speaker 2: a flight of stairs. If you're walking up flight of
Speaker 2: stairs and you fall, you can put your hands out
Speaker 2: and just arrest. But if you're walking down a flight
Speaker 2: of stairs, you know, not connected to the safety line.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you're downtime between diffusing bombs, arresting high risk
Speaker 1: of fenders, climbing Mount Everest, you also paddle a kayak
Speaker 1: across the bast strait. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was two thousand fourteen, Greg, and I was saying, Oh,
Speaker 2: we need to do something, and I'll play.
Speaker 1: I agree. You guys have got to live and up
Speaker 1: a little bit, do something with your lives.
Speaker 2: And I'm telling him about this girl down the road
Speaker 2: that actually paddled from Tasmania to Victoria with her brother
Speaker 2: and another group of people. And I said, you know,
Speaker 2: I'd done a bit of kayaking called Mark Weather Challenges.
Speaker 2: I know Mark Webber, the f one guy, and he
Speaker 2: did a couple of charity things. I was fortunate enough
Speaker 2: to be involved in those and did a bit of kayaking,
Speaker 2: and so I thought, yeah, we can do this one
Speaker 2: and need four months training, look fine, and first thing
Speaker 2: is going to find a kayak and all that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. And I sort of went from there. So Greg,
Speaker 2: myself and three other police officers. You know, we had
Speaker 2: a few personalities on that trip. We didn't kill each
Speaker 2: other any like that, but it was it was interesting,
Speaker 2: and I'll tell the story a week about a month beforehand,
Speaker 2: I wanted to do the first League, you know, just
Speaker 2: by myself as a copper, prepared and all that. I
Speaker 2: had all the water, all the fuel, all the food
Speaker 2: as if I was going to go to Tasy. So
Speaker 2: I left from a place called Port welsh Ball to
Speaker 2: refuge Cove, which is Wilson's Prime, so still the mainland.
Speaker 2: Forty two k's did that. I was coming back the
Speaker 2: next day, told Jan only way for a couple of
Speaker 2: days anyway coming back, and I was leaving, thought, oh Jesus,
Speaker 2: waves are up a bit today in Bastraight soon enough,
Speaker 2: about twenty k's into it, hit by a rogue wave
Speaker 2: and ended up in the I had to detach from
Speaker 2: the kayak. I had a leg rape on and detached
Speaker 2: and ended up on a beach, on a bit of
Speaker 2: a sandy beach, and I was stuck there for five days.
Speaker 2: I managed to get to manage the message to Jan
Speaker 2: and I might be a few days later.
Speaker 1: Life full of Adventure. There's another aspect of your life
Speaker 1: and it was in the in the ford of your book.
Speaker 1: That's running boot camp for one of a better word
Speaker 1: with elite athletes. And Craig Bellamy did the ford in
Speaker 1: your book because that's with the Melbourne Storm. Like this
Speaker 1: is where I'm Sydney base. We all understand Melbourne Storm
Speaker 1: and they have a reputation of being the go to
Speaker 1: club in the way of the culture that they creating
Speaker 1: the club. And you were heavily involved in the sort
Speaker 1: of preseason training camps and that what was that all about.
Speaker 2: We've been doing Melbourn Stone for about twenty three years, myself,
Speaker 2: Craig Walsh, Andrew mctrustee and another person who's still working
Speaker 2: son his day. Originally we did the Western Bulldogs. It's
Speaker 2: an AFL side under Christine Nixon, our chief commissioner. Basically,
Speaker 2: if we could help the Western Bulldogs do a boot camp,
Speaker 2: Bulldogs would help the local community use troubles and things
Speaker 2: like that. We met a guy called Andrew mctrusty. He
Speaker 2: said Oh, she said that was a really good program.
Speaker 2: We should do it privately. We started a company called IDQ.
Speaker 2: It's referred to as I Don't Quit. We started with
Speaker 2: a number of AFL sides and the Melbourne Storm in
Speaker 2: the very early days and it's just great. It's just professional.
Speaker 2: The players are there to basically it's like a writer
Speaker 2: passage now to do this camp. We're not there to
Speaker 2: make them fit. We're probably there to make them discover
Speaker 2: about themselves, whether they're an individual where they can act
Speaker 2: as a team, who can make decisions. We look at
Speaker 2: fatigue and things like that. You get tired playing a game,
Speaker 2: so we can sort of replicate that a bit with
Speaker 2: the camp that we give. It is physical. We're not
Speaker 2: there to break anybody. The idea is those players that
Speaker 2: are coming to get the opportunity to discover each other
Speaker 2: and they can basically form a more bonding friendship. If
Speaker 2: they've got issues, they've got someone to discuss those issues
Speaker 2: with now. So a lot of these stuff's done very private.
Speaker 2: We don't talk about it. It's done professionally and melm Storm,
Speaker 2: Craig and Frank they're just so professional and I find
Speaker 2: it great to work with professional athletes. You know, I
Speaker 2: feel privileged to be able to do that.
Speaker 1: There's in the ford I just I'll read it out
Speaker 1: because it's pretty impressive coming from Craig Bellamy, but this
Speaker 1: is how he talks about those camps that you run.
Speaker 1: For me, those camps are about more than just building
Speaker 1: a successful team. They're about helping the players grow as individuals,
Speaker 1: about preparing them for challenges they'd face both on and
Speaker 1: off the field. And for that, I will always be
Speaker 1: grateful to JT and mister Wolsh. Their contributions went far
Speaker 1: beyond what I would have imagined and their legacy will
Speaker 1: always be part of what makes Melbourne Storm special. That's
Speaker 1: pretty cool.
Speaker 2: I feel stated, you know, I just don't sort of
Speaker 2: I feel embarrassed in that kind of praise. But you
Speaker 2: see how well they've done and the structure they have
Speaker 2: there just shows that they've got a great culture, you know,
Speaker 2: and we've done with a lot of sides over the
Speaker 2: years and we've seen various cultures and stuff like that,
Speaker 2: but they're just impressive. You know, the Storm. They look
Speaker 2: after the place too. You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's abundantly clear. You hear that. That's the narrative
Speaker 1: that comes out of the club. But it makes me
Speaker 1: reflect like you seem so calm and zen like and peaceful,
Speaker 1: and you know, just you've got your shit together basically,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting that people have put themselves been You've
Speaker 1: been testing yourself basically your whole career and even on
Speaker 1: your downtime, testing yourself, and it seems to you've got
Speaker 1: a good outlook on life, on what's in.
Speaker 2: Yep, very much live life every day like this. Your
Speaker 2: last life goes too fast, you know, there's so many
Speaker 2: exciting things and challenges out there. You know, I'm probably
Speaker 2: slowing down a little bit, but you know, I'm really
Speaker 2: in the cycling now with Greg is a bad influence again.
Speaker 1: I'm laughing that. Yeah, you live like your life it
Speaker 1: could be the last day. Well, the way you have
Speaker 1: lived your life every day could have been the last
Speaker 1: last night. Reflections on policing. We're having to chat the
Speaker 1: other day, and that saddens both of us that police
Speaker 1: forces across the country are struggling to get people to
Speaker 1: sign up and too old fools like us look back
Speaker 1: and go, jeez, they paid us for that time in
Speaker 1: the cops. What would you say the people that were
Speaker 1: might have an inkling to join the police are in
Speaker 1: two minds whether they join the police. What opportunities are
Speaker 1: there for people?
Speaker 2: Look, you know, I was there for thirty four years.
Speaker 2: I thoroughly enjoyed it. I found my niche, I found
Speaker 2: my spot, and there's lots of areas in the police
Speaker 2: force that you can go to. You're going to have
Speaker 2: to do your probationary period, no matter what need go
Speaker 2: mount of branch, go traffic or whatever. You want to
Speaker 2: come and detective. You're the one that's got to make
Speaker 2: the most. You know, no one's going to give it
Speaker 2: to you. It's a great career, you know, and it
Speaker 2: has rules and regulations and police are needed. When you
Speaker 2: look at what's having to society these days, I think
Speaker 2: the public that when they mentioned the word cop up
Speaker 2: on that sometimes a bit derogratyve and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: They're the person that's the person going to call when
Speaker 2: you need help. I don't think they sometimes get the
Speaker 2: support or the respect. They're not all angels. I'm not
Speaker 2: saying they are, but you know, I think there's a
Speaker 2: lot of respect that's been lost. It's not a great
Speaker 2: way that society is heaving. But you know, you'll meet
Speaker 2: some great friends and be able to share some experiences together.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I'd certainly go as the police force. You know,
Speaker 2: I tried as an eighteen year old and I was
Speaker 2: too short. So I tried ten years later and I
Speaker 2: got in, and then one year later, eighteen months later,
Speaker 2: I'm in the Special Operations Group where I spent something
Speaker 2: like thirty two years.
Speaker 1: Now I like stories like that, John, because I agree
Speaker 1: with policing that just opens up doors and expect spearances
Speaker 1: that you don't get in normal life. And now it
Speaker 1: comes to the price. You pay a price in different
Speaker 1: different ways. But I certainly think the good overways the
Speaker 1: negatives of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, Well i've become police officers. Yeah, i'd
Speaker 2: come again. I've done my time. I had no regrets leaving.
Speaker 2: I haven't missed it at all because I feel like Geez,
Speaker 2: I hit an exciting period when everything was happening. You know,
Speaker 2: I went through a number of generations when we got
Speaker 2: that pages to mobile phones now and technology with robots
Speaker 2: and stuff like that. You know, I've been to me,
Speaker 2: I've been fortunate and I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: Well, I might wrap it up here before I do
Speaker 1: I'd just like to think not just you, but also
Speaker 1: Jan and the rest of your family for lending you
Speaker 1: to the Victorian Police for so long, for the services
Speaker 1: you're done to the community. And this is I hope
Speaker 1: people listening to that when they see the news clips
Speaker 1: of the guys in their black overalls and balaclavas on
Speaker 1: just doing what they do and then then taking off
Speaker 1: their human it's behind it, and you get a sense
Speaker 1: of someone that's lived at that sharp edge for a
Speaker 1: long time. And I know, in speaking to you say
Speaker 1: it's part of a team and it's not just about you,
Speaker 1: it's everyone that you work with. But full credit to
Speaker 1: doing what you do or did.
Speaker 2: Thanks very much, Garry. Bye.