Sharks, dead bodies & black water - the life of a police diver: Luke McCulloch Pt. 2

In this continuation of their deep dive, Gary Jubelin speaks with former Western Australian police diver Luke McCulloch about the harrowing reality of underwater investigations. Luke details the psychological and physical demands of searching for evidence and recovering bodies in "deep, dark, and dirty" conditions—from murky riverbeds to the open ocean. Luke shares the terrifying experience of working in shark-infested waters and explains why the "touch and feel" of a recovery operation never truly leaves you. They explore the professionalism required to operate in high-stakes environments and the emotional toll of a career spent finding what no one else wants to find. In this episode: The reality of body recovery in zero-visibility environments. The dangers of diving with Great White sharks. The intense selection process and resilience required to be a police diver. The lifelong impact of "deep, dark, and dirty" operations. Subscribe to our new Youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/@ICatchKillers-Podcast Follow I Catch Killers: Instagram:@icatchkillers https://www.instagram.com/icatchkillers/?hl=enTiktok:@icatchkillerspodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@icatchkillerspodcastFacebook:@icatchkillers https://www.facebook.com/icatchkillers/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  The public has had a long-held fascination with detectives. Detectives see a side of life the average person is never exposed to. I spent 34 years as a cop. For 25 of those years, I was catching killers. That's what I did for a living. I was a homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated. The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some of the content and language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into this world.

• 0:46Speaker 00

  What's it like to reach down into dark water and pull up a body? It's a job former WA police diver Luke McCulloch has done many times. In part two of my chat with Luke, we go deeper into his time as a police diver. The best jobs, the worst jobs, the ones that broke his heart and the ones that kept him going. We also talk about the very real threat sharks pose when you're working beneath the surface. The emotional toll of a career built largely around recovering the dead. And his honest thoughts on policing as a career.

• 1:21Speaker 00

  Luke McCulloch, welcome back to part two of I Catch Killers.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  Hey Gary, how are you?

• 1:25Speaker 00

  Good. Now, I did tell you at the end of part one, we're talking police diving and we hadn't mentioned sharks. I just got a couple of questions I've got to ask you. Do you know what a shark is?

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Yes, yep.

• 1:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're big scary animals with sharp teeth.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:41Speaker 00

  And they eat people.

• 1:46Speaker 00

  The thought didn't cross your mind that as a police diver, you might be in the water with these things we call sharks?

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, again, I think it came down to just being young, dumb and feeling bulletproof again, Gary. I definitely considered it. There was a couple of jobs where I, especially in, you know, open ocean waters. Trying to search for like sunken vessels and, and areas where we had really good visibility. We had a diving technique which was called manta boarding. Where you're towed off the back of a vessel going at three, four knots. And there's just a big plank of wood that you're hanging on to. And you're just angling down and up depending on how your vis is.

• 2:28Speaker 00

  Like being used as a big lure.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Giant human lure, that's, that's the, that's the way that we used to call it.

• 2:33Speaker 00

  That's good. Yeah, no, that, that sounds, uh, sounds good.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, so yeah, there was definitely times where I'm doing that and I was, I was looking over my shoulder. I won't lie, especially down south, which, which I talk about in the book, obviously. Down in Esperance, there is, um, there's some big fish down there, that's for sure. So it's a, it's a thought process. I suppose we always went into it with you've still got more chance of getting hit by a car. Is what it is.

• 2:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, I've always disputed those statistics with sharks or more chance of getting struck by lightning. But if you're diving every day or surfing every day, I think the odds, if you look at the stats, it might be dramatically reduced. And yeah, I, it would have to be a factor, like police diving in there. And I've got to say, and I don't know, this is just my perception. For some reasons, sharks in Western Australia seem scarier and especially down south in Western Australia. And I think it's the remoteness of the area. I know we talked about Exmouth and when you're swimming up around Exmouth, the amount of sea life in there.

• 3:38Speaker 00

  And sharks have to be part of that, that system.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I suppose like it's, it's the environment that you're in as well. Like, um, you know, you look up at Exmouth and stuff like that, a lot of that is, um, is not a feeding zone for them. Like you go diving in any sort of Exmouth dive company and stuff. And they'll take you to areas where there's, you know, gazillions of sharks that you can go and have a look at. But they'll take you to areas whereby they're coming, the sharks are rocking up to, to get cleaned. You know, by small fish eating all the stuff off their teeth and whatnot. It's, yeah, it's the time, place and circumstance, I suppose. Down south, they always seem to be munching on something. So that was always a thought process down there. Up north, not so much. In Perth, God, yeah, it was, it was few and far between. To be honest, towards the last part of my career in the divers, I was definitely more concerned about going in the Swan River.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Um, knowing more and more about bull sharks and stuff like that.

• 4:31Speaker 00

  Bull sharks coming in there.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  The Gelda over and over on your side of things. And we, and we dived in those rivers there with, with your mob when, um, when we were getting trained by the New South divers. So yeah, you've always got that in the back of your mind, that's for sure. But there's, I mean, there's, there's risk mitigation strategies that we have. Whether some work or not, you know, and some might just be getting you the tick of approval from the hierarchy to actually do the job. And it makes them feel a bit better.

• 4:56Speaker 00

  Okay, so how'd the power balance work there? Were the bosses going, no, you'll be right diving there, there's no sharks? Or were you guys saying, we'll go in there and the bosses are going, no, I've done a risk assessment, you're not going in? What, what were the dynamics? Surely it's left up to the diver, like.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  You'd think so, yeah. It's more the latter, um, especially when you get a new rotation of, of hierarchy or, or commissioned officers that are taking, taking control of your, your section. And yeah, I'll always say that I don't hold anything against them because they're going to err on the side of caution, aren't they? They always want their people to be safe, obviously. Then they're not going to do what you said at the start, which is get in there. I have no idea about it because I want you to search for something, but I'm not aware of the risks. It's always a thing. Sharks are massive and they're a huge political conversation. As soon as an attack happens, you know, as well as I do, it comes up front page. So yeah, more often than not, we'd actually be comfortable with going into the water.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Based on the fact that every other time we've been in the water, we have just as much chance of getting taken or bitten by a shark as a time after an attack. You know, we're, we're never going to get to an attack site within 10 minutes and jump in the water. There's, there's, you know, um, we've got to collate a team, got to get some equipment together. Like at best, we might get there 12 hours later and Bruce ain't going to be at the site going, when's the next feed coming? I'm waiting here. You're going to have the same chance. So that's what we always pushed, but there's perception, there's, you know, the, um, the view of what's, you know, the public are going to see. And, and if someone does get a bite, then it's going to go up the chain and who's going to get a smack? It's probably going to be them. So I don't blame them for doing what they did.

• 6:38Speaker 00

  I'm sure there's some flaws in that, that argument, just because someone was attacked by a shark 12 hours before. The shark's not going to be waiting around, but the fact was someone was attacked by a shark. Because that, that would, that would have been the jobs. And what a gruesome job, looking for human remains from a shark attack. Because sometimes the attacks aren't witnessed. So it's just a board washes in or someone's clothing's left on, on the beach and you guys are looking around, so.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. And like, you know, it's, we might not always find them either. And we might just find certain things to confirm that that's occurred. It's still, it's exactly the same as that job before with the West Perth rapist. It's puzzle, puzzle pieces along the way, you know, like we're a small component in a massive beast of a thing. So when there's a missing person or something like that, you know, if we search around and we find shredded clothing, that that might be something that the investigators need or the family need to get some closure.

• 7:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, that's true. Quite often you hear of a wet suit, portion of a wet suit, uh, turning up or being found. That can give the, the family some sort of, I won't say comfort, but some answers to what might have happened to their, their loved one.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely, yeah.

• 7:52Speaker 00

  Have you had any close calls with, with sharks?

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Um, so face to face, one, um, one which quietly made me shit myself. Um, I'm not a recreational diver outside of work. I never did a lot, um, but there was some, there was some avid divers within my squad. Um, and I still remember the day that I sort of came head to head with my first big shark. It was a gray nurse shark though, which if you know anything about sharks, they're basically the puppy dogs of the ocean. That's what they're referred to as. And we were doing this training drill on a shipwreck in the Coburn Sound. And I came around the corner of the cockpit of this, this wreck, looking for a dummy, a body.

• 8:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  And, um, and this thing looked at me and I absolutely shit myself. There was teeth everywhere. The thing was about two and a half metres long. Um, and I looked back at my buddy who was an avid diver. And he obviously could just tell by the white of my eyes going, oh, Luke's a bit panicky here. And he gave me the thumbs up to say, no, it's all good. And explained to me later what it was, but that definitely made me, uh, made me have a bit of a code brown moment for a second. And, um, and then the other one, which I, I wasn't in the water at the time, but it was the, uh, the Esperance shark attack that we went down for. And then subsequently went over to a secondary body that we were trying to retrieve from the water. Um, but it was my first interaction or. You know, close up view of a great white shark.

• 9:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Um, and that thing was like a mini school bus that came past the boat. I, I attempted to throw a shark shield at it on a piece of line, just to gain some experience as to what it's actually doing. And this, this thing didn't even flinch, unfortunately, when I, when I threw it at it, it um, yeah, it just tilted over to its side. I saw the whiteness from its belly just shine and its beady little black eye. And uh, yeah, it just looked at me as if to say, is that all you got? Um, yeah, so that wasn't a great feeling.

• 9:43Speaker 00

  And that, that was when you were recovering the body and, and, and the, the sharks were, were feeding on the body at the time.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, so um, very quick recap on it. We went down to Esperance for a missing person. We didn't find that missing person. When we left Esperance, we subsequently did a U-turn in the sky, um, went straight back because there was then a shark attack, separate occasion, but within Esperance still, after a number of days of searching for the shark attack victim, the first missing person that we were initially searching for had floated. And yeah, the, the two sharks were having a feed on that person, um, whilst we were trying to recover it from the water. And we, we saw it as an opportunity to go, well, if, if the shark's coming close enough to the vessel, let's see what these shark shields actually do, which we wear all the time if we're in ocean diving. That's one of the, you know, mitigation strategies, that and a few other things.

• 10:31Speaker 00

  That, that's the electronic pulse or, or something, a frequency that is supposed to uh, deter sharks?

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's like an ankle bracelet with about a metre, metre and a half long wire that comes off the back of it. Um, it emits a pulse that we essentially can't feel unless we are actually touching it. And even if we are, it just gives you a little bit of a jolt. It's, it's not like, um, like it wouldn't even be as powerful as, say, an electric fence on a farm. Um, it's a lot less than that, but when you, when you're in the water, it's a lot more conductive, obviously. Like the, the worst part was when you were searching in the river and you had one of them on and the current flipped it back over and it was sitting on your head and you could feel it in your teeth. Pulsing, um, but apparently sharks feel that a lot more than us. So they obviously, they hunt and they, their, their senses are on electronic pulses. So it's supposed to deter them. Now, there is some data to suggest that some species of shark are attracted to it and they'll come over

• 11:23Speaker 01

  until they get close enough and then they'll disappear. Some warns them off straight away. I, I now argue that because of what I've seen. Basically, if they're in a blood frenzy and they're feeding at the time, they couldn't give a shit, to be honest.

• 11:35Speaker 00

  Makes uh, makes sense. What about uh, wet suits? I, I'm hearing and it's because shark attacks are very topical at the moment. Like we've had a spate of them across the, across the country and it's, you know, it, it strikes fear. It's a primeval fear that strikes into, into people. Um, they talk about wet suits that are like a, a component that would protect you uh, against a, a shark attack. It probably, you'd still get your, the power of their jaws, you'd get your bones broken, but it mightn't be the lacerations and the, the blood.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, so two, two parts on that one. There's um, there's two wet suits out there now. So one will be like a, like a tear proof wet suit whereby, yeah, you're right. It'll, you'll essentially just receive a crushing inju- injury as opposed to, you know, getting, getting slashed and um, and, and having your limb actually missing. Although I don't know how much they could repair it anyway after. Um, but then there's the other one which actually blocks your then electrical signature. Um, so they call them hex wet suits, or that's a particular brand or model that we used to use anyway. It essentially looks like camo, like blue camo. You would wear that and it had a particular material within the wet suit that stopped your electronic pulse that we naturally emit underwater.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  And that's what sharks were believed to hunt. Now, that's all well and good when we had that. And this is again, just that perfect example of, you know, the, the um, commissioned officers doing the right thing and thinking that they're helping us out by going, right, well, these are, these are risk mitigation strategies. And we want you to use both of them, to which we would reply, well, hang on, you're making us wear a wet suit that is like an invisibility cloak. But then you're putting this, this giant beacon on our ankle to say, hey, this is where we are. They kind of don't add up. Um, but that, that was, you know, that was an example of an argument that we would constantly have.

• 13:17Speaker 00

  Yeah. Uh, look, and I'm, I'm hitting you up like you are the shark expert, but I would imagine you, you spent eight years in the divers. So there would have been a lot of conversations uh, about uh, sharks. You hear talk where surfers are attacked and they look like a seal and you look at them from underneath and there's a thought process that the colour of the surfboard might uh, might play, play into it. And uh, some people have the uh, the boards that are like that invisible quote, that, that camouflage that sort of blends into the water. What, what's your take on that? Or what's the discussions you've had on that remedies or mitigation strategies?

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Um, I, I haven't heard, I haven't heard of that one, to be honest. The, the only one on the bottom of boards and stuff that I was privy to, that we started trialling towards the end of my time were um, the shark eyes. So it's believed that, you know, a predator won't ever attack if they think they're being watched.

• 14:05Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  So a lot of surfboards and bodyboards and all that, or even fins, they would have these, this marketed eye looking at it.

• 14:13Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Um, and that, I think the data went to, you know, that there was certain fish that had certain colours on them that looked like an eye from the side. So they were never attacked by sharks. We would put them on the back of our cylinders, um, on the back of our mask if we had uh, like a half mask on. And that was supposedly, you know, supposed to be like eyes on the back of your head whereby they wouldn't then attack you from behind. Again, not a money back guarantee. Um, so it's at your own risk.

• 14:37Speaker 00

  Uh, do, do you also think, and I'm not sure if you were taught this or experienced divers or, you know, you're, you're an experienced diver yourself, that I've, I've spoken to people, ocean swimmers and all that, and there's an attitude that you, if you swim, swim with confidence. Don't swim like you, you're prey. Don't swim like you're vulnerable. Yeah, and that's why I'll paddle a surfboard sometimes where I'm hearing that theme of uh, jaws, you know, the dun dun dun dun. I was, I'm sure you would have heard a few times. Paddle, paddle with confidence that, you know, you, you don't come across as prey. Or is that just it?

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Look, I mean, I, I've always, whether it's true or not, I, I've always thought that, you know, if your heart's racing a hundred mile an hour, you're probably, you know, more attractive. You stick out a little bit more. So.

• 15:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  It like, and yeah, call it dumb, I suppose, but like if you, if you've got the opinion that it's not going to happen to you, then you're, you're not going to stick out like a sore thumb. So yeah, that, that makes sense in that sort of same realm. Um.

• 15:33Speaker 00

  Well, don't, don't, don't shatter my myth that makes me feel more comfortable anyway. I don't want to.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's funny you mentioned the jaws music though, because we actually used to, when we were um, when I subsequently started running uh, selection courses and we were making that the, the candidates do that cutting component.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  We actually got a hold of an underwater speaker at one point and throughout the nights I'd throw that in the water and start the jaws music for an hour or two. That was, that was, it's got a good laugh.

• 15:55Speaker 00

  Uh, that, you'd put the big F fail for me if I heard that, if I'm sitting in, in underwater. Well, the, the increase in shark attacks too, and yeah, uh, the evidence is out there that they're increasing. Um, is there anything that you saw spending as much time as you did on the ocean and in the water that uh, you could possibly put down to the increase in shark attacks?

• 16:18Speaker 01

  Um, I think again, twofold, like there's, there's definitely a um, an increase in what we hear and what we see now. Cause social media is so acceptable now.

• 16:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  So, you know, back in the day where it might have happened and you might not have heard about it until the news report came out, you know, a couple of weeks later, uh, especially around the country. So we're, we're finding out information quicker now. So naturally we're going to think it happens more often. Uh, are there more sharks? Yeah, fi- fisheries and DOT are saying that there are because we're not obviously culling them anymore. They're, they're not a species that you're allowed to hunt and kill. So that's naturally going to, you know, grow them, that's for sure. Um, so I think it's, it's, it's two way on that realm.

• 16:55Speaker 00

  Okay, my last question on uh, on sharks, um, and it might be a stupid question that we can always edit. Did you have a weapon with you when you're in there? Like I know a diving knife, but did you have something that at least, you know, it might be useless in the, in the extreme, but did you have something there that, okay, well, if I am attacked, at least I've got this in my hand?

• 17:18Speaker 01

  There, there was, it's funny you say that. There was actually one thing that we trialled for a little while, but we ended up. I, it just got dusty on the top of a shelf, to be honest. It was like a cattle prod and it was, it was specifically designed.

• 17:30Speaker 00

  Ah, yeah.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  For sharks and you actually wore it as like a thigh holster, um, which is why none of us wanted to wear it. We always wanted to dive with as least amount of stuff on us as possible because we were in such entrapment hazard areas. Um, so you chuck another thing on, it's just something else I can get caught on. But this thing sort of had like a three part hinge method to it. You would pull it out. Click it and it would open up essentially and just be this cattle prod of an electrical buzz. Look, if you've, if you've seen a shark, it's not the one that's attacking you. Was, you know, there's still the, still the theory. It's the one that's, you're not going to see that's the one that's going to get you. So I, I didn't see a point in it where you took it out a couple of times. It looked cool. It was a bit tactical. But yeah, like I said, it collected shit and dust on the top, top shelf after a while.

• 18:14Speaker 00

  Okay. All right. As you can see, I've got no fear of sharks whatsoever. Never given, given a second, second thought.

• 18:23Speaker 00

  Your first job as a diver, talk us through that, the first significant job and what it actually, what it involves from the start, the start to finish.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, so I suppose first, first body, um, first body job that I had, um, was probably the one that sticks out the most that was involved with diving. I'd just gotten back from New South Wales, got my qualification, uh, in that regard and, um, got into work and got told straight away that there was a, uh, there was a potential suicide at a place called, place called Blackwall Reach. I thought, right, well, here we go. This is it. Um, I may as well cut my teeth on this one and get it done and dusted with the, the dive supervisor at the time, who, a guy that I've got a lot of respect for. He, um, he hit me up and said, right, do you wanna, do you wanna, if you want, I'll put you in the water straight away. You can just get this one out of the way, done and dusted. Um, it's looking pretty confirmed and there's pretty good intel to suggest where he is

• 19:16Speaker 01

  and, and what he's done. So, yep, I said, well, that's, that's what I'm here for. So we may as well get into it. Bodies as such, you know, seven years in the police force, I, I, I dealt with a fair few at that stage. Had I dealt with one underwater? No. So that was definitely going to be different. Um, but I knew that there was going to be visibility in this one as well. So it wasn't going to be that sort of head butting moment to, to hit something underwater, which I couldn't see. We accumulated a team, teams worth four people, um, for a commercial dive. Um, so you've got your dive supervisor, your diver, your standby diver, and then an attendant. So your attendant is the person that's in charge of your line, one that's holding where you are and giving you directions. Supervisor's overarching responsibility of it all, giving you the directions of what to do through either comms or telling the attendant through the line.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  And then your standby diver in case something goes wrong. So we accumulate all the equipment, jump on the vessel. Blackwall Reach from Water Police Base was 15 minute boat ride, if that. It was a, uh, it was a usual spot for sort of young, young kids to, um, jump off, cliff jump.

• 20:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Um, so was a, was a decent height and quite dangerous, but it wasn't, it wasn't sort of high enough to, to, to end your life with, that was for sure. So at that stage, I was sort of thinking to myself like, right, how, how has he done this if he has, you know, intended to harm himself and he's been successful? How, how has this person done it with such a short distance? We got there anyway. Mored up, I geared up, got all my, got all my stuff on. It was going to be a single dive only, so standby dive was going to stay on shore. Sometimes we went in with two, depending on what the circumstances were. If it was, um, you know, a bigger area or if there was entrapment hazards or whatnot. Um, but this was just going to be a single dive. So the first thing to do is to find a, a datum of some sort.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  So what you're going to base yourself off in terms of, you know, where to go back, where's home base to come back before we head back up to the surface? So they usually put like a shot down, so a giant weight, seven or eight kilos, followed by a big line and a float, and they'll put that at the back of the vessel or they'll just hang it off the vessel so that you always come back to that before you come up.

• 21:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Just make sure that your, your topside is clear before you get to the surface. Establish that, get into the water and once you're in the water, as you would appreciate, everything, everything starts going quiet. So the only thing you can hear is your bubbles that you're blowing, your breath. And at that particular job, I had electronic communication, so I could hear my dive sergeant communicating with me and you're only saying vital stuff that you need. So made bottom, turning left, turning right, going out two metres, et cetera, et cetera. Um, so they started doing what's called an arc search. So the attendant will hold the line, dive supervisor will give me the commands of go out four metres, the attendant will give me four metres of their line. And then it's basically hold tension on that as a diver and then turn right and start,

• 22:03Speaker 01

  start swimming. Um, when they're happy with your arc that you've done, stop, go out another two metres, turn left, arc around, and you'd continue that on until the area that you needed to search was, um, was done. I was searching for maybe seven, eight minutes and straight away I saw a body off into the distance. So at that stage you can stop the search, obviously it's.

• 22:23Speaker 00

  And where was the body in terms of the depth?

• 22:26Speaker 01

  So body was on the, on the base of the, the, the reach area, the, uh, the Blackwall Reach, so probably 10, 12 metres in depth, but on the, on the floor. Um, and that's what was a little bit confusing to me because as I started going towards the body, I'd said to obviously the, um, the dive supervisor, located my item, there's certain signals and stuff that we will, we'll say for that. So the signal for that is four pulls. Um, we'll head towards the body and as I was approaching it, I remember that thinking, the guy's in a wetsuit, he's obviously lifeless at the moment, but laying onto the, on the base of the water now, uh, the, the seabed floor. Now I figured this job had come in early hours of the morning, we'd gotten there by

• 23:11Speaker 01

  maybe eight, nine AM in the morning. There wasn't anywhere near enough time for gases to start getting produced in the body for him to float or anything, but I thought, we're not deep enough for that wetsuit material to have compressed and for him to sink. Why is he, why is he on the bottom? Why hasn't he floated? I sort of paid it off. It was just a, a vague thought. Told the topside I was at the body. We have a GoPro, so evidence base, obviously you film around him completely. Anything within the area that just looks out of the ordinary, get as close to the body as possible with the GoPro so that you can see and appreciate everything before we touch it. Cause once you touch it, the, the evidence is obviously gone. So completed that sort of, that film and then I went to grab him, to bring him up.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  And it was at that stage that I felt a weight belt under his wetsuit. And I just remember going like, jeez mate, like you, you really wanted to, for this to be successful.

• 24:03Speaker 00

  Right, so threw himself in there to get weighted down?

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he's put the wetsuit over that so that he couldn't change his mind. Um, uh, the, the, just the realisation of, of that thought process was really, really, um, hard to take, I suppose. And the fella I knew at the time was the same age as me. Um, his, his letter, I suppose, to, um, to his family, which was up on the top of the cliff on folded clothes was that university was getting too hard. Um, it was all a bit much and, and he just, he wanted it, wanted it all to end. So I remember that, that moment of, of getting him and going like, jeez, this is, this is really, really sad and, and it's real now as well. Like I'm now, I've, I've cut my teeth on it, I've, I've done what I am doing as a job and, and this is what it feels like.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Um, it was probably the last one that I also learnt a little bit about as much as I could in terms of the age, a backstory of the person. I would always from then on try and learn as least amount about that person as possible.

• 25:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  And it's definitely a, a way that I, I started to compartmentalise about the work that we did because quite frankly, I don't need to know that stuff. I've, I've got a job to do and my mission is collect the body, bring it back to the loved ones. However, that kind of stuff is just going to make it more personal. And if you do that for every person, it's, it's not going to last very long before it starts affecting your mental health. So that was the last one that I remember going, I need to learn a little bit less about each person that I'm going to. And subsequently one that I learnt a bit more about later in my career, that, that affected me the most as a result.

• 25:40Speaker 00

  Okay, I'll, I'll get you to tell us about that, uh, later. A lot of times you're there, the family members are there, friends and family, when, uh, yeah, you hear the classic and you hear it quite frequently that, uh, you know, someone died, dived into a river and didn't come up and all the friends are standing there waiting, waiting for it. You got brought into that, uh, that environment. You're the, you're the ones, you and your, your team are the ones that are going to potentially provide, uh, provide answers. Are you conscious of that? Because the, all the eyes are on you the moment you, uh, rock up and start getting in your, uh, dive gear?

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. It's, um, it, it's a lot of pressure, that's for sure, because you're, again, your, your mission, your job is to successfully find this person and give these people closure, um, and an answer and have a loved one to then say goodbye to. If, if you don't, like, I would, I would hate to be that family who never gets that body back to go, where is it? What's happening to it? Like I, that's an unimaginable, um, thought. So it's a lot of pressure in that regard and, you know, did that sometimes put us to a point where we probably risked a little bit more? Yeah, definitely. Because you, you want to do your job well.

• 26:53Speaker 00

  Give answers.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Um. Does it, does it make it, you know, a little bit more impactful? Yeah, because it's even the, you know, I might start doing the things like I just mentioned in terms of not learning their name, not learning their date of birth or any, you know, particular things about them. You now got people that you're associating with that, that individual. Um, and that, that very much came relevant when we did country jobs. So country jobs, small, small towns, especially if it was a local, you didn't have to be a rocket scientist to, to find out in town, who was the, you know, the local dive team that had come in to help search for that individual. And we'd go to the local shopping centre just to get dinner for the night or something. And someone would go, oh, thanks for coming out and searching for Joe Blogs today.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  And you're like, oh, jeez, this is actually impacting the town a lot more than, than we know of. Um, quite frankly, it sometimes it made it a little bit easier if it was just a tourist, because there was no family around. So those ones definitely stick with you. Um, or if you're, if you were down south on a country job, it was technically a tourist, someone from Perth, but then the Perth family and friends all come down. And at night time, you just happen to be at the same pub or the same hotel. That, um, that one caught us out two or three times. Never ended up bad. But, um, but it puts a little bit of pressure on you. And the next day you might just use, you know, utilize that little bit more risk to, to try and find it. Cause you want to do the right thing. You want to be successful in what we're, what we're trained to do.

• 28:19Speaker 00

  Well, the majority of the work, just breaking it up roughly in, in percentage of it. Body recovery, would, would that be the, the primary, primary role as a police diver?

• 28:29Speaker 01

  With what I'd done in my time, I reckon it was about fifty percent. Um, that with, with weapons, drugs, um, car recoveries, vessel recoveries, bodies, body probably fifty percent of the time. Yeah.

• 28:40Speaker 00

  With, um, weapons, you had any, any success with, uh, helping out the detectives? When we're desperate, we're trying to find the murder weapon, we go, could be in that river. Did you have any success, uh, finding, uh, finding weapons?

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, a couple. Um, so a lot of firearms, um, even, even bullet and shells and stuff like that. Managed to find them. Um, one that, one that sticks out big time was actually the opposite. It was, um, we'd gone to a rural property where detectives had said, hey, can you come and search a pool, a swimming pool? I thought, a swimming pool? Really? Like, come on, guys. And, um,

• 29:11Speaker 00

  We're a bit, we're a bit soft, the, uh, the detectives sometimes.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  No, I, I, I don't blame it because when we got there, the thing was just sludge. Like it was just a, a, a pool that had been left for clearly, you know, a decade, I reckon.

• 29:22Speaker 00

  Oh, right.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Um, tree litter and everything in it. You couldn't see, you know, your hand in front of your face on that one. But the, the body had been found next to the pool and had, you know, su- suicidal, um, in- injuries. However, there was no, there was no weapon or, or knife that was found. So they were asking us to come and search the pool to find it so that they could basically, you know, infer that it was suicide and it wasn't a, a murder or something suspicious. And I remember searching that pool, scaled the whole thing. It was bloody thick as anything. And, um, and there was just tree leaves everywhere, like gum leaves.

• 29:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  They, they were definitely not a, a knife of any sort. But then as I was trailing back, so I went shallow end down to deep end, turned around, scaled again, came back up from the deep end back to the shallow side. And I remember getting to the staircase and going like, come on, surely if, cause the body was next to the staircase. I was like, this is our hot zone, like search this really slow and methodically. And I got to the last step and in the, in the last step, so we were talking about, you know, the sense of touch and feeling and how we, how we search. I had, um, I had very, very thin neoprene gloves on, cause needle stick injuries and stuff like that, obviously. Um, but even with that on, no vis cuts out that sense of sight.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  So your sense of touch then gets heightened. That's why I can describe it.

• 30:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  So anything with a, a machine groove or a smooth groove on it, your body just shocks all of a sudden. And my hand just skimmed over this one thing that could have felt like a normal leaf, but I just stopped all of a sudden, went back, picked up this thing that I thought was a leaf, tried to break it like the rest of them, and it was a Stanley blade. It was a thin Stanley blade outside of the actual, um, cutter that he'd used. Brought that up and the detectives couldn't have been more happy about that one. Um, to write it off, to not, to not say it was a, and you know, anything suspicious. Um, obviously sad story for the individual, but that was just a, yeah, a small example of how that, um, that sense of touch goes through the roof when you're searching in black, black water.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  Um, even to the extent where if there was jobs where I could see a little bit, and I'm talking like ten, fifteen percent, and it's just in that narrow view window, I would actually get to the point, and I started training other divers the same way. I was like, just close your eyes, because you're getting so tunnel visioned on what you're seeing there. When you've got this whole area around you, which you can be swinging your arms left, right and centre on the mud to try and search. And your forearm might come across something, your bicep might, my shin came across a golf ball during a training exercise once and my shin picked it up.

• 31:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  You know, that, I, I've got a better chance of finding it than seeing, because also you've got silt that can cover off something and you might not notice it with your eyes. So I just ended up closing my eyes most of the time.

• 32:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, it adds to the, uh, I was gonna say creepiness of it, but, uh, yeah, crawling around. Um, have you ever had to recover, you, you mentioned cars, um, uh, boats. I, I remember, uh, I, I had a job called out, it was a really sad job in, uh, Brooklyn where a freak storm came in one weekend and there was a, uh, a boat had a family on it and, uh, got caught in the middle of, uh, the waterways in Brooklyn. And, uh, the waves just picked up. That was like a mini cyclone that hit the, uh, hit the waterways. And there was a three-year-old child in the front portion of the boat and it sunk so quickly

• 32:49Speaker 00

  that the child went, uh, went down, down with the boat. It was a horrendous situation. And yeah, we were dealing with the families, uh, that after this had just happened. And then the police divers came, came along and, uh, got down there and, and recovered the, uh, recovered the body in the, uh, sunken boat. Did you have any jobs where, where that type of thing happened? Where you're recovering like cars, submerged cars, you're here in floods and different things?

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, I, I never actually had a vessel, um, with a body in it. I'd recovered vessels before, but everyone had luckily had gotten out. I've actually had, um, a car and a plane. Um, so a car, I had a, um, yeah, we, we'd arrived two, three minutes after. Um, this vehicle had taken off on the South Mole in Fremantle, believed to be an elderly couple. Old fellow was driving, the, the thought process is he's forgotten that his foot was on the accelerator instead of the brake. He's gone into, into reverse instead of drive and he's centered off, um, off the actual, uh, the, the edge there. Him and his missus were in there. His window was down at the time, so he managed to get out.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Um, we got the call and we were only up down river, a couple of hundred metres. So we scooted around as quickly as possible. This is not obviously how we would normally dive.

• 34:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  You know, commercial diving goes out the window, the rules and regulations when it's to save life. And at the time, we didn't know there was a, a window open, so figured there might be an air pocket. So my, my offside, I was driving the vessel, I chucked the emergency kit on, came around onto the South Mole, I'd launched in. And as soon as I got in, I dropped down, could see the car straight away and I could see the driver's window open. So I thought, uh, well, we've got Buckley's chance now, but while I'm here, I may as well get anybody out of there. Couldn't see a driver, but there was the, the elderly lady, yeah, floating inside the actual car. So I opened the passenger door up, got her out and then we recovered her at the same time. That was a, yeah, horrible story for, for an elderly couple and she was just, yeah, un- unable to get out quickly enough, basically.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Um, and then the plane one was, uh, on Australia Day. So we had a plane crash in the Swan River on Australia Day and where, uh, yeah, sea, a sea plane was supposed to be doing a, uh, a landing in the water and then taking off on the, um, on Riverside Drive, weren't able to land. There was a vessel that had jumped in the way. Uh, and then he banked around and it was, I think it was believed to be that the weather was so hot, he then couldn't get enough thrust to come back up and the engine just essentially stalled and his nose zived into the river. Um, so me and my colleague were first on scene for that as well, trying to root the bodies out. And then we got them, got them both out. Again, we thought it was going to be a, hopefully a rescue mission because of an air gap. And the Swan River in the middle there is at sometimes, you know, can be a metre, metre and a half deep.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  So half the plane was actually sticking out of the water when we arrived. And yeah, pulled them both out, but unfortunately that, that, that would have been dead on impact because the way that we found the bodies, it just wasn't conducive with life, that was for sure. So, yeah.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, jobs like that, you just rattling them off. They have to, uh, have to take its, its toll on you.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, again. I I look at all of them as as um as searching for objects like.

• 36:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Those two particularly, I I like, they're a little different because I did, I did truly, truly think, yeah, it was gonna be a rescue. Um, and yeah, there's always some part of you that's like, well, there's a big part of you that is like, I'm sick of, I'm sick of bloody getting dead people. Like, I wanna, I wanna actually be successful one day in it, cause we're called search and rescue divers. At at at that stage in my career, I was just a search diver, it was never a rescue.

• 36:26Speaker 00

  You wanted to get in on the rescue.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, you you want the brownie points, but um, so those, I suppose, affect you in that realm, not the getting to know the person and and and diving into that too much. But I always tried to look at bodies as as an object and and that's how I think I I survived. It wasn't relevant to me that I did that until about four or five years in, and I remember a friend going like, how you, how do you do this? How do you find bodies week after week and not think about it or not have it play on you on your mind? And I said, to be honest, I've I've not learnt anything about that individual, I don't wanna know anything about them. And, you know, from from the detectives as well, it's an interesting one, like, oh, I would, I still remember the

• 37:08Speaker 01

  there was one body that I was looking for once in the river and the detective started describing to me this person's clothing that they were wearing and the colour.

• 37:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  And I was like, I'll stop you right there, mate, that, you know, it's not like you're telling me to get the guy with the red jacket. And if I find someone with a blue jacket, I'm gonna ignore them, I'm probably gonna get the same thing out.

• 37:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  You know, it's it's it's just an object and that's how I looked at it, you know, and whether that's looked at as being, you know, inhumane or, you know, not ta- not taking any sort of um emotion with it, but I think you have to, if you're gonna do that on a constant, you have to, otherwise no one would survive it.

• 37:38Speaker 00

  I I I think there's a logic to it and a rationale behind it. Uh, I know in homicide, uh, yeah, obviously you got to know the victims because victimology and that was something that you did. But I know at the initial stages in in crime scene, when you're called to the homicide, you're so focused, or this is how I dealt with it. So focused that, uh, okay, I've got a job to do for, so for the first twenty four hours or that, I'm concentrating on doing the job later when we get to know the victim and and, yeah, obviously we have to for the investigation. But I do understand the logic of what uh what you're saying there. With the um, the searching in the dark and uh finding bodies and uh uh, tell us about the worst.

• 38:21Speaker 00

  Well, when I say worst experience, they they, you told us already a couple of uh horrible ones, but one that uh people wouldn't fully understand what you've got to go through if you're looking for a body part and you're you're feeling round and you might bump up against their head or or whatever. Tell us about uh a situation like that.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it, um, this one didn't affect me at all, but it it definitely, um, it was definitely the one that, I suppose, for better or worse, made me shit myself straight away. Um, it was a uh a young fella uh in the Swan River that we were looking for, he'd actually done a runner on, runner from cops and made his, made his way into the river, trying to cross the river and he subsequently drowned. Um, the cops that chased him, you know, did everything they could to duck dive and try and find him, but I think it was sitting at about eight or nine metres at the time. Copper in uniform, like you, unless you're a bloody free diving expert, you're not gonna do that. So we came in subsequently afterwards and it was complete and utter black water.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Um, and I was doing what we call a circular search on that one, datum again, middle point, but you as the diver are in are in control of that one. You're just on um like through water comms, yeah, and you would have a a little sort of um reel, like a line reel from that centre datum. You'd go around, once you get to that point, you lead it out a metre, go back around the other way, let it out a metre and su- subsequently keep going around. It's a circular search technique. Um, and I was doing that one, so you're very much by yourself, you're, you're very rarely hearing from topside, so you get in your own thoughts and you start, you know, you you go through moments where you just naturally start slowing down in the water, cause your body's, your your mind's protecting yourself and you don't want to find the the body because you know what's gonna happen and

• 40:02Speaker 01

  and and I think I'd be lying if I said that, you know, you you never had that thought that came through your head to go like, what if I, what if I touch them and they wake up or they they grab you all of a sudden, like.

• 40:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, I I understand what you're saying.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  And it's, it's such a stupid thought, you you think back on it now and like, but that happened every single body I ever found. Like going into it, you're like, jeez, what what if I touch them and they they turn around and grab me all of a sudden, like, it's just the typical horror movie type scenarios.

• 40:30Speaker 00

  Well, are you, the way you describe it, you, we've all watched horror movies with that type of thing, you you touch the corpse and spins around with their eyes open wide and uh, yeah. I I and I, you talked about your senses increasing because you haven't got the visual senses. The silence down there, the cold, you're i- you're isolated, so you're very much caught up in your own thoughts. So I I can imagine uh how it would uh play with you, so uh anyway, you you you're doing the circular search?

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, so doing that and and that silence is, you know, both therapeutic but also daunting at the same time. Like, it's it's it's actually quite nice just being in quietness for a second, li- hearing your own, hearing your own breath. But then, yeah, you can very much talk yourself into a bit of a panic and there's, there's several times throughout my career, I've just worked myself up and I'd had to, you know, stop for a second or two, control my breathing, get a bit of breath work going and then and then move on. Um, anyway, I was searching around for this kid, uh, it it, I think I was nearing the end of the search and I I couldn't believe it. When, when we're searching on on the bottom of a a seabed or a or a riverbed or something like that, we're pretty much guts to mud, laying down

• 41:40Speaker 01

  and you're army crawling whilst scouring your arm in front, and then you'll do a bit of an army crawl, scour your arm in front, do a bit of army crawl. Now, I, whether or not that that span that I had searched just before finding this person, I'd I'd done too short, I didn't extend out. But I essentially did that army crawl forward and head butted this this person.

• 42:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  Um, so that, that made me shit myself, like I said, um, reached forward, grabbed onto, I think it was a shoulder at that stage, tran- transverse my hand down, right, that's his back, that's that's an arm, worked out that the whole body was there. Tell topside, yep, got body, um, five bells and then uh and then, yeah, surface with, surface with that one. So that was, that was probably the most, um, I don't know, quite literally, face to face, one that that that I'd come across. Um, that definitely, yeah, scared me, scared me at the time, but it was just another job by then as well. That was like third, fourth year in the in the divers, but I hadn't had something that sort of head on, I suppose.

• 42:46Speaker 00

  What's the, what's the worst place you've had to dive? Um. When when you you've got there and you just go, ah, I wish I wasn't doing this job today.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  Tw- twofold, um, like the the worst environment um was was always dams, I hated dams. There was to no end of entrapments in there, like trees and logs and shit like that, which just slowed our whole process down. We always got caught, we would have to send divers in, unsnag, then you'd never knew where you where you finished searching, so you'd have to go again. Farmers always threw bloody carcasses in there as well, so you'd come across a cow or some bloody horse or sheep and that would scare the shit out of you, cause you you're searching around for something and then you're like, shit, I've, I think I've got a bone of some sort and you bring it up and it's a, you know, cattle, cattle skull or something.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  Um, but the, I suppose the the worst job from memory rocking up, and it wasn't so much the environment, I mean, the the environment was bloody dangerous, don't get me wrong, was um, was one down in Warpole, where we had to look for another young fella and the whole family were there. Uh, it was a drawn out probably five, six day operation, we knew where the kid was, we just couldn't get to him. That's, that was probably the single handed worst job I think I've ever done to have searched around initially, not gotten anything, not gotten the cookies. Uh, a day or two pass, we search everything that we're able to, it was near a waterfall and that's where the kid had believed to have gone missing.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  But after two days of searching, where we were able to search, which was safe, it was, right, well, until further intel comes in, we can't, can't search the whole river. So packed up and left, another couple of units stayed and a private entity came down uh called Fugro. Um, they provided some really good underwater camera equipment and they were on poles and this other unit, the T R G, were fishing around in the in the waterfall with these cameras on the end of poles. By the time we had gotten home, they'd managed to find this little wedge and saw a foot under within this cave system that the waterfall was going into. So we packed back up, headed back down again, and that was, that was, I remember, the worst job rocking up to going like, we're here again.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  Now we've got to find this this young eight year old boy, no one wants to find a kid, obviously, that's the worst job in the world. And the family were four hundred metres away camping and they they would not leave, they stayed there. And you could never hold that against them, obviously, but it just, again, we talk about pressures from before. You you you're more pressured to find, find that individual for the loved ones, um, so that one sucked. Um, we subsequently, yeah, it was a huge monstrous effort to, we actually had to stem the waterfall in that one. We had to get sandbags, redirect the waterfall, and the smallest guy in our unit was the only one that was able to fit into this cavity where the kid was believed to have been pushed into.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  Um, he managed to get in there, he he describes it to me as like it was a three sixty game of twister. Like he was upside down doing a bend back when he had found a foot.

• 45:49Speaker 00

  Uh.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  Um, he grabbed the foot, told topside that uh that he had had the individual, was coming back out and I was the um, I was the attendant at the time, so I was at the uh the opening of the cave. I had T R G guys behind me with a with a body bag and a uh and a stretcher. And I remember my, uh, my mate, very, very good friend of mine now, he came up and he had a mask on, full face mask. And cause I wasn't on the comms line, which was about ten metres away. He couldn't speak to me, so he just cracked his mask and he said, Makar, I've, I've got him, but I don't think it's all of him. But I can't get out whilst I've got him at the same time. So I've got to pass you the body as I scour over you. So yeah, all good, mate, no dramas. So he, so he's climbed over me and handed me this foot.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  And I know what he meant by saying, I don't think I've got him all because the, the boy was so small, unfortunately, that he thought it was just a part of him. Um, but it was actually the whole kid. Um, so great outcome in terms of we finally were able to get him and we weren't, weren't just gonna be able to leave him there, obviously. But as I said, no one wants to, no one wants to deal with a child, child job. And everyone, I just remember that, that silence of when we got the kid, lifted him into that, that body bag. And just the entire area and the operation just felt dead silent for a good ten, fifteen minutes. Um, so it was a horrible job, that one. But we, we got the family what they needed and what they wanted, obviously. Um, yeah, that's, that was, that was the job.

• 47:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, there, there's, you get an understanding when you're describing a job like that. There, there's no joy that comes from it. It's just that, it's what, uh, what happens. With the bodies when they're found on the bottom, just explain to people what happens when a body goes into the water and why initially they're down on the bottom before the gases build up.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. So a couple of things can happen. Um, and it often changed how we searched for an individual as well. Like if we had witnesses say that someone was knocked out um, before they went into the water, that would um, increase our search area usually because if someone was knocked out, they usually didn't, um, didn't fill with water. So there, you, you've naturally got this thing in your, in your, your mouth or your throat or whatever it is that will essentially clamp down and not let water enter into the lungs. So that person may have floated a little bit before they slowly then became entrenched in water and, and, and fell to the bottom. As opposed to if someone was seen like struggling in water and actually drowned, they fill with water.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  And they will more than likely be where you actually saw them go down. So that's slightly changed it. Um. It's obviously going to change with the time factor, predators, sharks, moving someone. If there's been a swell or a tide, so we'll, we'll search into that data as well to see where a, uh, a, a search area, viable search area is. There's a program where it'll basically look like a hundred ping pong balls and it'll scatter them out where it would go in a certain time period. Uh, and we'll, we'll determine our search area through that. With respect to gases though, that's, that is a temperature thing. So you go down south or in the Perth area. Everybody is different, obviously. Fit people as opposed to, you know, unhealthy people will be very, very different in terms of their gases and their body mass.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  Um, but you're looking at like a sort of a two or three day on average before they start gassing up. And that's if sea life don't puncture those, those cavities.

• 49:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  Whereas I've been in a job up north in Kananara before, uh, headed up there as a result of someone, someone cliff jumping in an afternoon. We got the call. Next day flew there, within twenty four hours, we were on scene and the body breached the surface as we arrived around the corner. Cause the water was like a, like a lukewarm bath. So.

• 49:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  That'll, that'll affect it as well. Yeah.

• 49:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it's interesting. I, I remember the times where on hot days, bodies would rise to the surface. You talk about, uh, the temperature and, and bodies that have been disposed of in the waterways. Quite often they come to the surface, uh, when, when the weather was extreme, extremely hot. Um, uh, post-traumatic stress.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 49:56Speaker 00

  We've, I, I, I know we, we talked about it, you touched on it in, in your book and, uh, do you think you, uh, you've suffered from it, from what you've been through and, and how do you deal with it?

• 50:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, look, I, I would definitely have the science for it. And I, I think I'm a, I'm a perfect, the way I sort of describe it, if I've ever had any talks or anything like that, is like I'm a perfect soup mixture for it. Young fella, ignored most of it for most of his career. Dealt with number of, of deceased bodies, obviously.

• 50:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Um, can I recall a lot of them? Yeah, bloody oath. And that's supposed to be the, the main symptom of PTSD. If you can recall a traumatic incident quite vividly and, and, and well, I don't suffer from the nightmares and the, the, you know, waking up screaming or anything like that. Um, touch wood, not, not yet anyway. I think, I think it's important to be aware of it. Um, and I'm aware that what I've, what I've put myself through and the trauma that I've dealt with, and that's the same for my whole team and a lot of other, you know, units within the police force. I think if you're aware of it and you've got that network around you that is also aware of that, that's, that's half the battle. Um. Like, have I had my difficulties? Yeah, definitely. After that, after that, um, job that I just talked about with the waterfall.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  I, I was not myself for two or three weeks after. I was usually quite comfortable with talking about jobs with friends and family. Um, and whenever I talked about that one, I would just start crying. So one afternoon or one evening, I was also, also part of the, um, the on-call negotiator squad here and, um.

• 51:30Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  During the, uh, Christmas in July event with them, I went out, had a couple of beers and on the way home, just completely, and I totally broke down, had to pull over an Uber. Tell him to piss off, broke down, called my wife at the time. Um, she came, she came down, helped me out and it was, it was just me crying out for help, saying like, I can't stop thinking about this kid. Like, and, and again, like I got personal with that job. The family were always there. I knew the kid's name. Four, five days of looking for him, you know, made it a lot more personal. And, um, I, I woke up the next morning, had a hangover from hell. My wife, she's amazing. She luckily was able to go, uh, this is not right. I'm gonna call my dad.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  Called my dad and said, hey, something's not right with Makar. Um, he came down, all he had to say was, are you all right? The next day and that, that straight away for me was my sign to go, no, definitely not. I need to go speak to someone. So I had a chat with the chaplain that, that rocked up to that job. He subsequently put me onto the psychologist, the police psychologist. I went and had a chat with her, had three or four sessions. I felt a lot better after that because I was just able to process it with a professional. I've always been the first person to be an advocate for psychs, but I'd never thought I would need it or, or use it myself. So that was, that was definitely an eye opener for me to, to make me aware that I wasn't untouchable and I wasn't unbreakable. Everyone's got their limit. And the way she described it to me was like,

• 52:53Speaker 01

  you've gone through a huge incident and you've got a processing factory and you're trying to shove this massive thing into this small door in your processing factory and it's, your, your brain's just short, short wiring every time. Um, so that broke it down for me and explained it in my own words. And subsequently, I also went on a job after those three or four sessions with her and that, that somewhat kicked me into the, into the next job and then put that one behind me, whether that was good or bad. Um, but I found that really helpful. But knowing, knowing now that I've got my wife, you know, behind me and my dad and, and family members and mates that all are, are very supportive of that kind of stuff. If they notice something, I now have the confidence to go, sweet. Well, if they notice something, they're gonna say something to me. And then I can go and get some help and, and seek some attention. Um.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  Like I said, I don't feel affected now. I think I've still got the typical cop mentality about, you know.

• 53:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  Sitting in a restaurant with your back to the wall and you're constantly assessing people. I, I think that's a form of PTSD really, like where you, you, where you're trained and you're trained to, to see those things. That's, that's a, a version of it really. I think we've all got a stroke of it.

• 53:58Speaker 00

  It's something that you carry, uh, carry with you, isn't it?

• 54:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely.

• 54:02Speaker 00

  If you've spent long enough, uh, long enough in the police. And with the, uh, post-traumatic stress, I, I think that a lot of people I've spoken to that, uh, have, have been in the police force and, uh, have experienced it in some form or the other. A lot of them say, yeah, if only I dealt with it at the time, it would have been better.

• 54:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:22Speaker 00

  But I think it's in, in the nature of police, we're there to help people. So you don't want to, uh, put your hand up and say you need help. It's the, the nature, nature of the business. And, uh, just what they brought into, uh, homicide, when I was in homicide, that we had to see a psychologist every six months, I think, I think it was. Which, uh, I don't know about the other people I worked with. I was never gonna put my hand up and say I need to see a psychologist. But when you were rosted on and you had to go see a psychologist, you could talk and it wasn't a sign of weakness. If you had something, you could, you, you could talk about it there.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:56Speaker 00

  And then, uh, I, I think that's a good way for, uh, police to, uh, to, uh, deal with the potential of getting post-traumatic stress or, or being affected by the job and just a little outlet. But you, you've touched on something that I think is so important too, that you've got a circle of, of people around you that can, uh, can help you and, and, and talk about it and say, hey, you, you're not, not right at the moment.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  Um, cause, cause it's not, cause it's not always easy to see yourself, unfortunately, as, as, as most of us know, or if we've, if we do see those little things, as you said, yeah, we're, we're the type of people that don't put our hand up for it. So I, I completely agree with that thing that you just said then. And if, if we were made to go and see someone after each traumatic job or every six months or something, that would, that would save countless people. But it's just, it's a logistics thing and, you know, time and money and all that kind of stuff, obviously. Look, the, the police are not great at it still, but they're getting better, which is good.

• 55:49Speaker 00

  They're de- definitely getting better. Like I, I was involved in a number of shooting incidents and you got put in a room with everyone that was involved and said, they roll out a psychologist and, uh, would say in the open room, has anyone got a problem?

• 56:02Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah.

• 56:03Speaker 00

  As if, yeah.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I remember phone calls, like two weeks after pulling a body out of a river. And it's like, hey, Luke, uh, noticed you went to this job and you did this and this and this. Um, just checking that you're okay. And I'm like, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm fine, mate. Like, I don't, I don't know you from Bar of Soaps, I'm not gonna tell you anything. And then they'd say, all right, well, we'll call you in two weeks' time. We'll check in on you. And if you've got any bad nightmares.

• 56:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I, I, I, I think as a police officer, those, I call them the tick and flick.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:29Speaker 00

  And that offended me more than anything. It was, it was just an organisation's way of covering themselves. Like if you're gonna do it, do it, do it genuinely and, uh, yeah, ma- make it worthwhile, not. Oh yes, I've checked his welfare or her welfare is okay. But look, I, I think part of it too is that we struggle with, uh, numbers in policing and your unit, there's, you were telling me the other day, generally worked at full capacity, about eight, eight people on the, on the unit. And when you're in a small team, and I saw this in, in investigations, like if you needed time off, you felt like you're letting your mates down, your colleagues, colleagues down. So I think a, a bit of that comes into it. For a diver, if someone wanted a career in policing, one thing I say about policing is

• 57:13Speaker 00

  there's so many different things that you can do. Now, you talked about your old man in forensics. You spent the majority of your career in, uh, in police divers. There's so many different fields you can do in policing, isn't there?

• 57:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, hundred percent. It, it's constantly, um, it's like there's a workforce within that job.

• 57:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  You know, you, you're never just a police officer there. And I got told, told that, you know, from the, from day dot at the academy, as you probably would have as well, that there's, you, you can make the career what you want it to be essentially, um, uh, and, and go down a hundred different avenues depending on what you want. And they can always change. So, yeah, it's awesome in that regard.

• 57:48Speaker 00

  Would you, uh, if, if someone asked you, would you recommend policing as a career for them?

• 57:52Speaker 01

  Yes, I, I would. I would just tell them not to join as early as I did. Um, pot calling kettle black. But, um, but yeah, I, I don't regret what I did. I would do it again in a heartbeat because I, I was only telling you this the other day. I, I had a great career and I loved it and I, I got to leave, you know, now with the appreciation of that. I don't, I don't look back on it and think it was a shit job or a horrible job or the, you know, the job's buggered or anything like that. I, I thoroughly enjoyed and loved it, but I think it would have come easier or I would have been able to appreciate it more had I had a little bit of life experience beforehand. The world's different now though as well compared to when I joined and that's always going to be the case, but we always need police officers.

• 58:35Speaker 00

  I, I think maybe credit to your parents or your friends or whatever, Luke. I, I know the problem with people come straight from school into policing, it can be problematic, but you seem to have a good, uh, good take on, uh, your position in, in the world and not affected by just being a, a, a police officer. You ended up leaving because you were getting rotated out of, uh, the divers. That's why you, you, you chose to leave policing?

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So I, I think I said earlier on, um, there's a, there's a tenure policy here whereby you can only stay in specialist roles or e- every role for a certain amount of time and, uh, and divers was eight years. I, um, I had left technically and come back and got it renewed. However, I, I didn't want to wait for that next eight year period where I just got told, hey, you've got to go back somewhere else again. So decided at the time, fifteen years in the police was, it was a good time. Um, if I got told I could be there forever, I would have stayed. But it was, it was a time that I felt was, was the right time to leave. I, as I said, I don't have any hard feelings for the job and I was, I figured I was young enough to go and try something new. So I, I got to leave with my head held high, which is good.

• 59:40Speaker 00

  Well, you're doing some interesting stuff now.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:43Speaker 00

  Tell us.

• 59:43Speaker 01

  Uh, so now I teach, uh, now I teach people how to get out of helicopters that crash into the water. So, um, it's called Hewitt, Hewitt training. Um, I do it for the, a course called the Boziet. So most, um, all, all oil and gas workers who fly offshore have to do that. And we essentially have this big, um, yeah, electronic helicopter that dunks into a pool. I sit in the helicopter with all the students. We capsize them over and then I teach and run them through how to unbuckle, push the window out, get out of the actual helicopter and, and rescue themselves. Um, and that's also training in Defence Force, the police, uh, and any sort of RSC rescue helicopters and stuff as well.

• 1:00:20Speaker 00

  You'd see some interesting reactions, I would imagine.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Cause a lot of people are going out there to earn some good money and they might not be the best swimmers, but they have to do that course. So, yeah.

• 1:00:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I could imagine that would, uh, kick in on, uh, on some people. Um, writing the book, what, uh, what motivated the writing of the book?

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  Um, mate, I, I never thought it was going to be a book. I'll, I'll say that right now. I, I, I just wanted it to be a manuscript that I was going to hand to family and friends and relatives, um, to explain what I did. I often talk about a time when I came home from work one night and my wife asked me how my day was and I said, yeah, it was fine. Didn't elaborate any further and she subsequently saw me on the news later that night pulling a body out of the water. She turned and looked at me and said, not much happened today, eh? Um, so I, I wanted to do it to explain to them what I went through and what I was doing in an articulated way. Cause as coppers, we always try and protect our loved ones, obviously, from what we do. So I did that and it just grew. I'd had some friends and relatives that read it and said, what are you doing? This is, this is awesome. Publish it. So I looked

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  into that. That was a nightmare and a half, but managed to find a good mob over in, uh, Queensland. Uh, and yeah, just a, uh, April gone, uh, was a year since we published it. Um, audiobook now and writing a second one as well subsequently.

• 1:01:34Speaker 00

  Oh, congratulations on, on doing that. And I found, I found it, uh, interesting. And I've got to say, and maybe it's the nature of the work, because I, I had met a few police divers during my time in, uh, in New South Wales Police. They all seem like, uh, good people.

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  Hopefully it's the work.

• 1:01:52Speaker 00

  Is there, is there some, something about it? Like I, I just, speaking to you, I'm just reflecting on the divers that I, I, I knew in New South Wales and they, they all came across as really decent people.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and they are a good bunch over there. I said, I did some training with them and, uh, they were, they were second to none. They're awesome, awesome people.

• 1:02:09Speaker 00

  Well, look, I've, uh, I've had a great time having a chat. You've got me concerned about sharks, some of the, the things I thought might have, uh, protected us. But, um, I've learned a lot about diving and I'm sure the people listening have learnt a lot about it. And I, I just like your attitude to the way that you approached it and, uh, the, the things that, uh, you did in, uh, policing. You're a loss to the police, but, uh, you know, those rotation policies, they love bringing in the rotation policies. But I'm also glad that you, you're sitting here looking back with fond memories of policing.

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  I, I think I said to you on the, you know, at the phone the other day, I, I do have mates that have left unfortunately and they left quite jaded. And I just think like, God, that, that sucks to have that time, you know, effectively wasted if you've got that attitude about it. Like, don't get wrong, there's some bad times and we all get bent out of shape every now and then. But if you just dwell on that, then it, as I said, you're wasting your time. So I, I'll look back on it and I think I had, I had one of the coolest jobs in the world and I can subsequently write a book and, and talk about it now in terms of like some of the cool shit that I did that no one else in the world has ever been able to do. Um, so yeah, I, I look back on it now with fond memories.

• 1:03:15Speaker 00

  And you did all that and they paid you?

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 1:03:18Speaker 00

  That's, sometimes, uh, when, uh, jobs I was doing in the cops, I'm thinking, and I'm getting paid for this. Yeah. So, no, it's, it's been, uh, great having a chat. All, all the best with the future and your, uh, second book. And if people want to get your book, how can they, uh, access your book?

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  Um, if you want to get one personally from me, um, on LinkedIn and Instagram, get in contact. Otherwise it is on Amazon now, um, a hard copy and it's audiobook as well and it's an ebook on all Amazon and all audiobook, um, platforms as well.

• 1:03:50Speaker 00

  Good stuff. Well, look, thank you so much. Thanks for your service and, uh, I've enjoyed the chat. It's been a lot of fun.

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  Thanks, Gary. Appreciate it, mate. Thanks for having me.

• 1:03:57Speaker 00

  Cheers.