A used grave, not a new grave. We are talking an occupied grave, complete with headstone. I look over the top, here's this guy up to his neck in the grave shoveling it out right, and I'm thinking, there's something you don't see every day.
No, when we watched Western's as youngsters, one thing we would always say would be the formation of a possey. You claim to have formed a possey. I'm Andrew Rule. This is Life and Crimes Today. We're going to embark on a series of podcasts.
With a guest to the studio, Mark Tregallis.
Now. I met Mark Tregallis at distant parts of East Gippsland some years ago when there was a terrible bushfire at Malicutera, Malanicuta and Mark, you were a copperate Malicuda or the copperate Malicuda the policeman for many years. Well, you're not so.
I was stationed in Malancouta for sixteen years and it varied between at some stages during those sixteen years of us having four or five policemen staying there. To the first day that I arrived, the sergeant handed me his keys, said these are the keys to the police station. Make yourself at home, I'm off to his team or for six months, right, and that was it.
That was it, you marked you and your family had the wife and kids with you.
Correct. So at that stage I was married and the first kid was on the way. Yep. And I've since then had three daughters and they now all have done the reverse trip back to Melbourne for university.
And now you're following them down to keep an eye on things. Oh pretty much, Yes, visit, but along the way I know this for a fact. Along the way you gathered quite a lot of interesting country copper stories. And you're a pretty good teller of stories, and in fact you have published them in a book.
My three daughters got me to write down all the crazy police stories. They wanted it for their kids and their grandkids when when they got older. I never thought it would get published, and when it did, I thought I would have to buy every copy and give it to extended family as a Christmas present for the next ten years. So I was a bit amazed when it sold out in three weeks.
It's mark that reflects not only the content, which is good, but the title, and the title is remarkably good.
What is it? Well? I know, but I'm asking you no. So the title is back up is three hours away.
That sort of nails it, doesn't it.
And there have been many, many times in my career where backup has been three hours away. To give you an idea of the far East s Gippsland in particular, is a huge area. There's a very low population and very few police. So at times during those sixteen years I was patrolling four thousand square miles by myself and I would get given jobs that would take me two and a half hours to drive to. That's just one way.
And that's the border basically from the border right through to somewhere like ben River close to Orbost.
I guess. So what happens is when you become a police officer on the border, you become a police officer in the adjoining state, so as a police officer in Victoria and a special constable in New South Wales.
So you have got jurisdiction if you need.
It, so you can continue it pursued across the border. You can arrest people with the same powers that New South Wales police have. However, you have no idea what the paperwork is, so you have to take them to a new South Wales police station and then just sign on the bottom line after the other guys with them, Where do they go to court if they're naughty? So if in Malicuta it would be Eaten magistrates court they would go to unless it was somewhat more serious, in which case they would probably.
So they go to court in the other state. If you're pursue the border, it becomes their jurisdiction for court.
If I pursue a car over the border and arrest them over the border, I can't bring them back. It's an extradition, gotcha right, So I have to take them.
Okay, now along the way. Your daughters are on the money because they know the stories. They've heard many of them. They were there when they happened in some.
Respects when I was a first moved to the country. I moved to Portland. Back in those days, during the Kennedy era, police, police, nurses, teachers used to have homes that you could rent at six percent before mister Kenneth sold them all. And what happened was I was meant to get one, but I couldn't. The guy was six So they said, could you find somewhere else? And then someone came up to me and said, look, there's this one hundred year old farmhouse out at whites Beach, which
was about twenty five kilometers from Portland. At seventy five dollars a week, and I've gone for seventy five dollars, I am there. So I moved this. Now I got to admit I as a city boy, grew up in Syndall Mount Waverley my whole life, had never lived in the country. So I moved into this one hundred year old farmhouse. It was so old that when the wind blew, the wall paper used to come out about two feet.
It was in winter, and I remember lighting the fire and watching TV with a family of mice on the hearth. It had character, Oh, it had characters. It also had an outdoor toilet and a semi detached shower. It was part of a ward in section of the verandah. Excellent. So on my first morning, I walked naked out the front door because I could, and into the ward in section of the veranda and into the bathroom. Now, the bath slash shower was one of those enameled cast iron
tubs on four legs with a wrap around curtain. No extractor fan pushed against a far wall where there was this four foot wide lap sash window that you could drop down and that would let the steam out. Yep, and I work that out. I'm in the shower shampooing. What I didn't know was that there was a horse in the paddock next to the shower that heard the water and walked over. And it looked through the window
and went water, think I'll have a drink. So it sticks its head through the window and proceeds to drink out of the shower. This is twelve inches in front of my fate. I'm completely oblivious to it because my eyes are closed because I'm shampooing. Then the horse turns around, looks at me, and says to itself, gee, I wonder what that white stuff tastes like. Let me tell you, getting licked in the face by a horse when you're naked in the shower is exciting. That would be. In fact,
it's so exciting it bears detail. The lick goes in and with the tongue pretty much still attached, your eyes open and in the split second before the sud sit them and they close. The only thing you focus on is this massive set of teeth six inches in front of your face, and a horse not the first thing to come to mind as you're naked in the shower, But the first thing that does, for some unknown reason,
is the monster from the Aliens movie. So you exit the shower, taken the rod and the curtain with you. I exited so fast, I hit the far wall, horse, ride up, heard its head for occasionally. I got used to the horse, and I shampooed the horse's face as well. And now the only problem with you got you.
Got mates with the horse.
Living out yeah, yeah, it would turn up. It would turn up every shower. Good God. Now the only problem with living out at White Speech was did he have a drink the horse? Did he ever? Did you ever? Trop? Yeah? It wasn't there. So the only problem with living out there was the exorbitant rent. So I got young Johnny to move in with me, another unconstable. So on John's first morning, he's sitting in the kitchen having a cup of coffee. You didn't tell him about the horse, did you? No? Here?
When he looks up and sees me walk naked past him out the front door. So so John's head comes around the corner and he goes drink. I've got, yeah, mate, we're going and I look in and I go shower. And then he looks at me and he says, why do you have a large carrot in your hand? And you held the pause, fair question, you held, and I said, I often shower with a carrot. And he goes, you eat the carrot in the shower. I go, no, so what do you do in the shower with the carrot?
And I've gone you'll find out soon enough. So a couple of minutes later, he has his shower, meets the horse. In a couple of weeks, we're both sharing with carrots. Share. I see. So that was my first introduction to country policing.
That is a very funny story. And you couldn't make it up.
Oh no, you cannot make this stuff up.
Funny about running water and horses. I love running water. Tell us about and I'm racking my brain's here from when we've chatted in the past. Just casually gun to the German.
Okay, so this isn't exactly a high crime story, but it is somewhat hilarious. I was stationed in Apollo Bay at the time, and we're working an afternoon shift so knocking off at midnight, and at about six o'clock that afternoon we got a phone call asking for an assistance with a German tourist whose car had broken down on
the Grad Ocean Road. This happened a lot. We often would have problems with visiting, especially European drivers, because they would drive along the Grad Ocean Road, see an amazing site, pull over, take some photos, get back in the car, and then immediately drive on the wrong side of the road and a car coming the other way could cause problems, but Gunda didn't have this. We just got one there and I could just smell when I got to the car that his clutch had basically burnt out. So we
secured the car. We got him back into the police station and sat him down, and there was a car quite close just in lawn his company, so they drove up and only took an hour for him to get there, so good to just sat in the police station and when the next car came up, the guy handed him the keys, so then we waved goodbye and Gunta headed off. Not ten minutes later, we get another call from Gunta saying that this car is broken down, so we go up to it, and sure enough he has burnt out
a second clutch. And both cars were manual. So my first question to Gooda was have you ever driven a manual car? And he looked at me and said no, So he had no idea what he was doing to dry. So he's just burnt out two clutches. So I've secured the second car, got him in the back, taking him back to the police station for a second time. And this time there wasn't another car. They had to bring
up one up from Melbourne. It was going to take another four hours and the company wasn't very happy with Gunta. Let me tell you, that's quite bizarre. So Gunta says, okay, then I'm going to go and get to read. So he disappears into town. Me and Andy are on deck at the time, and we're just doing paperwork in the station. Gunda comes back and he's sitting out the front of the of the watchhouse, which is the area where the
public can come in, and is reading. And I walk past him and I look down and Gunta's reading a porno right and well he is German. I do a double take and I go, Gunda, what are you doing? And he goes I am reading, and I go, you can't read a porno at a police station, freaking give it to me, pull it off and wrap it up so you can have it when you go. Women and kids coming to the police station. Bait. You can't do that, So he was quite indignant. Anyway, it's almost knockoff time
when the third car arrives. This one is an automatic, so about time, Gunda is feeling a lot happier with this. And the guy pulls up into the police station driveway hands over his car. He wasn't too happy, let me tell you. So we go out there. Gunna gets in the car, starts at UF, waves to us and reverses into the telephone pole at the front of the police station. Oh magnificent. Me and Andy are just dumb struck. We were speechless. We could not believe it. So Gonda stops
the car, gets out, goes to the back. Sea's this massive dent in it, looks up to us and says, what do I do? And I've looked at Gunter and gone get back in and keep driving. Just keep driving frontwardswards a wave far away from Apollo Bay as you possibly can.
Absolute roll goal twenty four Carrot Gunta.
So I've never before or had ever had anyone have three car accidents in an eight hour shift.
What were they doing giving somebody who's who clearly good and driver manual a manual. Secondly, in my experience in Europe, everybody drives smallish manuals and they regard automatics as something for little old ladies.
I didn't ask him at the time. It's bizarre, yeah, the whole thing. But the whole thing was just But the weirdest thing was when I passed him and looked up and just see him reaching this pornocrafty. I just couldn't believe it. Now, what's there a story?
Tell me if this is you, the story about the graveyard.
And oh no, that is me, that is you. I think you've got to tell that one. Okay, then well that is most definitely one. So that was down that way too. It was at Apollo Bay. Anyone who has traveled the Gradation road out of Apollo Bay, heading towards the Twelve Apostles, you go through a small satellite suburb a couple of k out of Apollo Bay called Maringo, and then you go up the Maringo Hill, and that's
heading towards trove apostles and warnable and places. So one night I was working with Mick and we're driving back and we're ten minutes from knockoff, ten minutes from midnight, right And we come down the hill and I'm driving and I look across where the old Apollo Bay Cemetery is on the right hand side, and as I look up, I see a light and so I turned to Mick and I go, Mick, there's a light on in the cemetery. And he turns to me and says what. And I go,
there's a light on in the cemetery. And he goes, it's a boat because it slopes down overlooks the water. And I go, no, no, no, no, So I slow down, I do a U tune. Mick goes, don't worry about it, it's just someone reading late. We pull up front entrance of the cemetery, headlights off. We both see a flicker of a hand, torch out. We get torches off. Walking through the cemetery, it is black, no moon, no stars.
Can't see a hand in front of your face. We get to the middle of the cemetery and Mick goes, listen, stop, no word of a lie. We can hear this is a shovel noise, is it? It's the sound of someone digging. Oh my god. I look at Mich looks at me, and I've gone is that what I think it is? And he goes, yeah, I've gone, what do you want to do? He goes forget we ever heard it? Drive back, knock off. I've gone that's a good plan. And then he says, all we could investigate, and I've gone planned
one still sounds better. And Mick says, come on, there's two of us. We're grown men. We've both got guns. And I've gone, oh right, then, would you hold my hand? So we're walking along, digging's getting louder. I have got no idea what we're going to find. All of a sudden that stops freeze. Thirty seconds later, digging starts up again. I get to the far end of the cemetery and over a used grave, not a new grave. We are talking an occupied grave, complete with headstone. I look over
the top. Here's this guy up to his neck in the grave, shoveling it out right. And I'm thinking, there's something you don't see every day. No, And I'm crouched down behind the back of the tombstone, and my eyes are poking out over the top. I'm looking at this guy,
and I'm thinking, you know, this guy's acting sus. Not that digging a grave out at midnight isn't slightly sus to start with, but he's got a black beanie pulled down over his head, and every couple of shovelfuls he's taking a nervous lookout towards the front entrance of the cemetery. Definitely something going on. So I stand up from behind the tombstone. As I do that, both knees go crack. This guy rockets around just in time to see my
hands curl over the edge of the tombstone. I lean over the top of him and just say gooday.
And we must point out to our listeners that you are in the old money. About what's six ' seven six ' eight, Sorry, I'm six eight. I've cheated you of an inch and that metric is too two two two two. So when you stand up over a gravestone at full height with the knees cracking, it's quite a sight at midnight. He screamed, He screamed.
The shovels come flying out scrambling up the side of the grave with vid him with the torches. Police don't move. He's frozen. He's looked up. He's gone. Police. Oh thank god. We get him out, pull him up out of the hole. This guy is shaking like a leaf. And I have gone mate. I can't wait to hear your story, because if you do not have the world's greatest you are in so much trouble. I don't even know where to start.
And he looks at us and goes, I'm the grave digger and I go the town grave digger, and he goes, aha, I go working at midnight by hisself, and he used grave no Carna LUTs and he says, oh, well, old Bill Clogs has got to be buried with his wife tomorrow. And I finished his grave off at half past six. But theyn now, I've got a phone call from his relatives at eight o'clock. They went out and had to look and phone me back to say that I dug the hole in the wrong spot and I had to
come back and finish it before the funeral tomorrow. Then there's car pools in and it's his mate in a ute full of tools and lights who's been helping him all night, but they'd almost finished, so he'd gone home to get a six pack of beer and left him with a little torch with the batteries working. It was all above board. We were stunned.
Oh that is magnificent, And you thought you had the best pinch of all time.
I was all you got was the best story. I would have thought. I would have been looking up law from the sixteen hundreds from England grave my grave robbing and seeing if I could translate that into modern Victorian law. Magnificent. So yeah, look, i'd have bet a thousand bucks he couldn't have come up with a story.
And there you are, in a sense. As soon as you heard it, you go, yeah, a little be right. Obviously he's just dung the wrong hole, and he's and he's made.
They're going to dig the right hole. So he said carry on, And the guy looked at you, and carry on. He said, no, my mate's not gone. Ten minutes. I swear I can hear footsteps coming towards me. So I stop and I listen. Can't hear anything. Minute I started digging, footsteps getting closer than You've jumped up behind doom stuff. I've shot my pasts. He jumped in the car and barreled off with the guy.
Oh that's wonderful. That is a great story. I had some early warning of that one. It's just bears repeating.
It's a very good story. Now.
You know, when we watched Westerns as youngsters, there was always you know, the villains wore black hats, the good guys wore white hats. The Indians as we used to call the Native Americans, were often I think Mexicans or Spanish or Italian or Greek actors often and it was pretty rough and ready. But one thing we would always see would be the formation of a possey. The bad guys would gallop off with handkerchiefs around their faces, and and then the possey would chase them and had them off.
At the pass.
You claim to have formed the in these Skipps Land.
It is no also was in Apollo Bay. We had a fair bit happened in Apollo Bay. So I should first often say that that forming a posse is nothing that is ever taught in the academy, right, okay, but they've never studied this, You do not.
You've had a bit toner with possums, but not posses.
Correct, right. So what happens is a police officer can ask a member of the public for assistance in arresting someone, and a member of the public can voluntarily assist a police officer. The interesting part of this though, is that if that person whilst assisting the police officer is assaulted, then the offender is charged with assaulting police, even though they are not an employee of the police, they are acting at that time as a police officer. Yeah, fair enough,
and that's fair. So as everyone would know who's driven down the Great Ocean Road a Pollar Bay lawn Port campbell during the summer period, it just becomes mad and there are hundreds of campers in there. So in the Apollo Ba caravan Ground, we got a phone call late one night that there were a group of young guys going around stealing things from caravans. And this was after midnight. So again I was working with Andy, and we drove down and parked the car and then decided we'd just
sort of sit back with the binoculars. It was fairly well lit and we would have a look and we spotted five guys that were going around helping themselves opening Eski's taking out any drinks that were in there. A bike got stole, and other people were just putting stuff up.
But here's the thing. There's five of them and there's two of us, right, So we watched until they went back to their camp site, and then we did a check on the registration numbers of the cars and found out that they belonged to crooks that had quite a lengthy set of pride convictions, some of which were violence.
They're not just cheaping easy kids, these are books. So we got onto the radio explained what had happened, and our nearest up to that point was Collak, which was well over an hour north of us, and they said, well, listen, it's going to take over an hour for us to come in and see you and get any help to you. So we had to think outside the square as to how we were going to arrest these five guys safely.
So as we were walking around earlier on that night, we spotted a large group that was drinking down the far end of the caravan park. So we wandered down and it turned out to be a new South Wales rugby team on their end of year.
Were they big strong blocks. They were freaking huge were they game?
And anyway, so and they're half cut and so anyway, they walked up to them and we said, listen, guys, we need a bit of a bit of a hand and they said what do you need. Well, we've got to go and arrest these five guys, but we don't want to do it alone. We'd like you guys to come with us. Now. If any of them takes a swing at us, feel free to jump in. And like, these guys were like, you know, eighteen years of old, and you could just see their eyes light up at the thought of having a staush.
And the gay.
And I said, on top of that, if any of them take a swing at you, we charge them with assaulting police because you are acting at that point in time as police officers. How did they receive that? And they thought that was even better, of course, And one of the guys raises his hand and he said what happened? And he goes, he goes, do you have to swear us in? Oh? I was so close to saying, everyone raise your right hand and repeat after me, but I decided against it, and I said, no, no, no, that's
just in America, guys. It's enough that you say you're going to help us, and that you come along. That's all we needed. So anyway, the coach was there, and the coach was sort of four sheets, So anyway, he sculls the rest of his beer and goes, right, let's get this done and we'll march over to this camp. So a bash on this tent and the voice goes,
what is it? He goes police. Anyway, these five guys come rushing out and there's eighteen people surrounding them, and I go, hey, guys, listen, just want to say we've been watching you for the last half hour. We know all this stuff has been stolen. You're all under arrest. And the five guys go. They look at us, and they go, I don't think so. And you know, by this stage you've got a couple of the sixteen years old sort of champion at the bit to get in
there and the sisters and clean them up. But the coach steps in and he goes, listen up, you five idiots, we're here, and if you think you're going to be able to beat all of us, you got it wrong. So how's about you do what the two nice police officers weren't turn around get handcuffed and we can all go back up, and they did so, they came around and we cuffed them. Because we work remote country, we carry spare handcuffs in the police car, so we're able to cuff them, ll stick them in the back of
the van and take them back. And it was without incident. But as they were walking off, I do have to say there were a few looks of disappointment among the young amongst the young fellas, because I think they were really keen to have what had been able to have acted as a police officer for a few for a few hours. Yeah, it's a.
Beautiful story of and a rare story.
Oh.
I mean, only time I have ever done that. Something that I chose to ask at a lecture we had one year, and that was that if that was to happen and the person assisting us is injured, are they entitled to work cover? And the answer is no, because they're not an employee a police force.
All right, that's tricky stuff, occupational health and safe all that stuff. It's complicated. Mark Tregalis, thanks very much for talking to us about your new book. Well it's not that new, but it's fairly new. Back Up is three hours away from all good bookshops and many bad bookshops. We are so delighted with it that we might like to talk to you next week and we'll see you then.
Well, thank you very much Andrew for inviting me to come on and have a chat, and I would definitely be up for another one next week. Excellent.
Thanks for listening.
Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for True crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more, go to Haroldson dot com dot au, forward slash Andrew rule one word. For advertising inquiries, go to news Podcasts sold at news dot com dot au. That is all one word news podcast's sold. And if you want further information about this episode, links are in the description.