The Northern Territory Police
"T HINGS don’t always work out right for the Terri- ‘" tory Police. Death takes his toll. It claimed a friend of mine, McColl, a few years ago. A grand fellow, highly educated, who joined the Force for the love of the life, for his longing for nights beneath the stars and days of purposeful wandering. McColl was a very gallant fellow. Imagine my distress when I came into Alice Springs and heard that he had just been speared at Woodah Island in the Gulf of Carpenieria. There had been a lot of trouble with Japanese Pearlers. They had been trespassing inside the international 3-mile limit to find new beds of pear] oysters. Their lugger had been attacked by blacks, who had swum out at night and swarmed on board without a sound. The yellow men had been clubbed to death. You know how news filters through the bush in. a mysterious and extraordinarily quick fashion. Well, by this means, news got to Darwin about what had happened. McColl and two others were ordered to arm and equip themselves for a sea voyage to Caleden Bay. The launch was got ready but they protested that: the party was too small for the job of collecting the murderers. They belonged to a dangerous and war-like tribe. McColl protested to his ‘Chief, and even got his Chief to query the order at Canberra, where it had been issued, But the word came back " Go out and do your duty": so
the three police went, knowing the odds were all against them but? they were loyal to the traditions of the service. Well, the story finished by the police landing at Woodah Island, the blacks rushed out of the bush-they didn’t fear Government, Police or firearms, they knew trouble was coming and _ they weren’t going to take it lying down. Poor McColl died. Fate in her irony had decreed that the very man who had been protecting them for years, upholding the privileges accorded to them in the Commonwealth, should lose his life at their hands.-(" The Police of the Northern Territory of Australia,’ by Michael Terry, F.R.G.S., 4YA, January 10.)
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 83, 24 January 1941, Page 5
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361The Northern Territory Police New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 83, 24 January 1941, Page 5
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