OUT & ABOUT - Working holidays

Editorial and photography: Grant Condon

For most, summer is a time to take a break from working life, a chance to put the feet up and maybe head to the beach.

But for Sergeant David Walkley and his team at the Port Fairy Police Station, a holiday is the furthest thing from their minds over the warmer months.

From late December through to the end of January, the usually sleepy coastal village of 3,500 people in Victoria’s south west experiences a population boom like few other places in the state when more than 25,000 tourists arrive en masse.

“It’s bedlam,” Sgt Walkley said with a laugh.

The Station Commander has just ended his first summer at Port Fairy, having arrived at the station in June 2019 when the town was a cold and wet place, buffeted by icy winter winds whipped up in the mighty Southern Ocean it overlooks.

But in the summer, the town’s Norfolk Pine-lined streets are an idyllic setting and cafes and beaches are choc-full of holiday makers.

However, as the tourists settle into the more than 12,000 campsites, five caravan parks and hundreds of holiday homes for lengthy stays, they let their guard down, allowing criminal behaviour to seep in.

Sgt David Walkley and Sen Const Lachlan Dickson are part of the team of police keeping the coastal town of Port Fairy safe.

“We deal with a significant amount of stolen and lost property and property being handed in,” Sgt Walkley said.

“Unfortunately gone are the days when you could leave things in a caravan park unlocked and unattended. We have eskies of alcohol and bicycles stolen every night as people move around caravan parks.

“We have a 95 per cent recovery rate of these items and while it may sound like minor offending, it’s a big inconvenience to the owners and takes up plenty of our time investigating.”

A drawcard of Port Fairy’s is its bevy of historic buildings and streets, remnants of a timeline stretching back to its whaling settlement beginnings in the 1820s.

Narrow streets, boardwalks, footbridges and alleyways criss-cross the town, particularly around the beachfront and Moyne River, which splits the town in two.

While a charming feature, the thoroughfares can pose a problem for police in a bulky divisional van as they try to catch up with people breaking the law.

However, Sgt Walkley has a solution to this unique problem – his police bicycle, equipped with special large tyres if he needs to take to the sand.

Bicycle patrols are an important part of policing in the popular tourist town.

“Everything is within walking distance here, so the majority of our road offences are bicycle based,” said Sgt Walkley, who’s qualified to conduct the specialised bike patrols.

“We see a lot of cyclists with no helmets, no lights at night and mobile phone use while riding is also a massive issue.

“When I’m on bike patrol, I intercept every rider I see committing an offence. While I fine some, I’ll mainly talk to them and try and educate. I’ll even visit the caravan park to talk to parents if I see a child doing the wrong thing.

“Word then gets out around town and the caravan parks that we’re cracking down and then the community ends up self-regulating.

“We haven’t had a cyclist fatality in my time here and we don’t want one. But, considering 80 per cent of the town is getting around on bikes at times, the potential is there.”

The boom in tourist numbers and growth in Port Fairy’s population is no surprise.

In 2012, Port Fairy was named the world’s most liveable small community for towns with a population of under 20,000 in the United Nations-recognised LivCom awards and the town is considered an exclamation mark to the world-famous Great Ocean Road, just 40 kilometres away.

Throw in a world-class tuna fishing season in the winter, the popularity of short-stay private rental properties and the renowned Port Fairy Folk Festival, which brings 40,000 visitors over the Labor Day long weekend, and it’s clear that “down time” for local police doesn’t really exist.

And while support comes from the three-person station of Koroit and the much larger 24-hour Warrnambool Police Station, Sgt Walkley knows the four-man team is largely responsible for maintaining Port Fairy’s safe and welcoming reputation.

“You’ve got to be a jack-of-all-trades working in a coastal tourist town,” he said.

“We patrol beaches on the sand in our divisional van, check vessels and their safety equipment and registrations at the boat ramp, or look for offences involving jet skis from the shore all in one day. That’s while we balance our regular duties as well.

Sen Const Lachlan Dickson and Sgt David Walkley keep an eye on traffic down at the foreshore.

“Tourist accommodation ranges from $50 a night to $1,500 a night here, so that also brings in a variety of people, which means there will be a variety of offences.”

As they deal with plenty of visitors, the officers at Port Fairy could be considered by some rusted-on locals as visitors themselves.

In the past year, there has been a changing of the guard in Port Fairy, with three of the four staff positions welcoming new faces following the retirements of some police who had worked in the community for almost two decades.

Sgt Walkley said building and maintaining a relationship with the town’s mainstays is key to his new team’s success.

“Our crime statistics are rising and, while we believe that’s due to a shift away from a culture of under reporting crime, we’re not immune to the problems. We deal with family violence, drug use and issues common in other towns,” he said.

“Until recently, there was a really bad culture of drink driving and alcohol-fuelled violence offences.

“In the last six months, we’ve worked hard on this and have detected significant numbers of drink drivers, most of who were locals, and impounded their cars.

“Those offences are dropping off now and we know that’s because people have not only seen us working, but they’ve gotten to know us as well.

“At the end of the day, we want a safe town for people to live in and a safe town for people to visit, and the community is our best asset to help us achieve this.”

There are plenty of events and activities that bring the crowds flocking to Port Fairy.

As he clocks off for the day, it’s clear that what keeps Sgt Walkley and others working at the station and so keen to stay and make a difference in Port Fairy, is exactly what draws in so many visitors.

“We face the same on-the-job challenges police across the state face, but no matter how bad our day is, we can finish work and be walking along the beach in five minutes. It’s a very calming place.

“And we need that, because working in Port Fairy can be very busy.”