BORROLOOLA.
It’s a nearly 1000km drive to Darwin, more than 600km to Katherine and the sort of endless isolation only found in the Northern Territory — a far cry from the surrounds of Swan Hill.
But for Swan Hill police’s new inspector Dan Davison, this is the stark shift his life has taken since starting in the role two weeks ago.
A Melbourne boy, he has been in the police force since 1993, after forgoing dreams of taking up a trade.
“I had ambitions to either be a plumber or a butcher,” he said.
“But after working out by going to a tech [school] that I had absolutely no skills with my hands, I decided I had better do a different job.”
Growing up in Oakleigh in south-east Melbourne, he completed school at Syndal Technical School, working in a number of jobs — including a fishing and outdoor store — for three years after he finished.
But it was Victoria Police where he eventually found his calling.
“I finally decided after working in general duties or traffic that I should become a detective,” Insp Davison said.
“Apart from the fact it interests me to catch crooks, I saw that career path as a really good stepping stone through the rest of your career.
“I worked at the major drug investigation division, the armed offenders squad, the armed crime taskforce and the sexual crimes squad.”
He was promoted to Sergeant in 2009, before taking up a post in Katherine, Northern Territory with his wife Andrea, who was an officer in Victoria Police’s homicide squad at the time.
He continued to work as a detective in the top end, eventually finding himself as a Senior Sergeant in the remote community of Borroloola, overseeing seven police stations.
“Some of them were extremely remote, in the wet season you could only fly in — that was it,” he said.
The remoteness was a huge change from Victoria, with towns dotted closely together across the state.
“It was very difficult,” Insp Davison said.
“I remember early on attending a job and thinking if this had happened in Victoria I would just pick up the phone or the radio and I would have a helicopter or the dog squad or other resources available to me.
“But particularly out in the Gulf [of Carpentaria] where our closest backup was really 600-plus kilometres away, you had to adapt and just do the job as you saw it.
“Now coming back to Victoria people say: ‘Melbourne, oh that’s miles away’ — whereas it was nearly 400km for us to get to the Stuart Highway from where we were.
“I’m finding it hard to deal with traffic noise here.”
But he admits he has always wanted to return to Victoria, and the organisation that kick started his career.
“I had always wanted to come back to Victoria because Victoria is home, I’ve always considered Victoria Police as home really,” Insp Davison said.
“I looked at Swan Hill as an area where, probably from my experiences in the Northern Territory dealing with remote communities and community engagement type policing, that this is probably an area I could apply these skills.”
He is keen to continue to engage communities in the Swan Hill policing area, although he is still trying to get his head around the issues that are important to local people.
But the scourge of methamphetamine and drug trafficking is one he has already heard of.
“When I was at the drug squad I worked on a heroin crew… at that stage, and clearly here we are 11 years later and it is now meth that is seen as the really bad drug,” he said.
“I think the threat to society from meth is real and I think levels of the drug vary across the entire state depending on the demographic. Certainly the feedback I am getting is that it is a prevalent issue.”
Outside of policing, he is a keen outdoors man.
“I like fishing, although you could probably say my favourite hobby in the NT was drowning lures, I certainly didn’t catch many barramundi, I caught a few but not as many as I would like,” he said.
Although his luck may not be too good with the line, it is certainly looking up for his Western Australian mates in purple.
Insp Davison has made the most of being back in Victoria, already heading along to watch Fremantle at the MCG.
“I went down and watched the Melbourne game last week,” he said.
“I thought back to 21 years ago when I went to the first game against Richmond at the MCG, I think there were four of us there barracking for Freo, and now everyone is on the purple bandwagon.”
Although he admits he will miss being on the front lines of policing, Insp Davison is keen to discover what challenges Swan Hill will serve up.
“There is never a dull moment in policing,” he said.
