The local police

Editorial and photography: Jesse Wray-McCann

Knowing the locals is an important part of policing in any small town, but in Mirboo North, the residents particularly prefer people they know.

In the tight-knit yet welcoming South Gippsland town, having a surname people recognise can go a long way for police.

So, it helps that all three of Mirboo North’s officers are part of the fabric of the community.

Sergeant Don Haw and Leading Senior Constable Jeff Stevens were born and bred in the town and Ldg Sen Const Brett O’Connor married a local and has lived in Mirboo North for almost a decade.

“It’s a very supportive and inclusive community where everyone knows each other,” Sgt Haw said.

“You can get towns that have cliques, whereas Mirboo North is a more holistic community.”

Sgt Haw, who grew up on a farm at Mirboo North, said the town benefits from a ‘Goldilocks’ factor with its population of about 2300.

“The size of the town is just right,” he said.

“Jeff, who has lived in Mirboo North his entire life, has said to me that between me and him, we should know about 90 per cent of the town.

“It’s hard to describe to someone who hasn’t grown up in a small country town just how interwoven people are, and just how much weight being a local can carry.”

It was early in Sgt Haw’s time as an officer in Mirboo North that he learnt the value in being a born-and-bred local.

“A couple of years ago, we had a family here whose sons were always a bit of trouble and their dad was known to be a bit of a hothead and prone to going off at police if they had to go around to the house,” he said.

“I had to go there one day to speak to one of the boys and I thought, ‘How bad can he be?’

“He came out, I introduced myself and he looked at my name badge and he said, ‘Oh, are you related to such-and-such?’

“I said, ‘Yeah, I am’, and he goes, ‘Ah yeah. Good’.

From that moment on, I had him onside and it was purely because I was a local.

Nestled high in the rolling green hills of the Strzelecki Ranges, Mirboo North acts as a gateway between the rest of South Gippsland to its south west and the Latrobe Valley to the north east.

Sgt Haw said the town’s proximity to the Latrobe Valley, which has the second highest crime rate of any local government area in the state, creates a unique situation for Mirboo North.

“The crooks tend to stay in the Valley and we’re pretty safe because we’re out of sight and out of mind. But every now and then, we get someone coming up here and doing a bit of late-night ‘shopping’, as I call it,” he said.

“It can be a bit of a challenge because they’re not our local crooks.

We have to rely on our forensic evidence and on the community if they've seen a suspicious vehicle getting around the area.

The team at Mirboo North is part of a cluster of non-24-hour police stations in South Gippsland — such as Leongatha, Foster and Korumburra — that share and rotate nightshift duties to keep the area covered 24/7.

Mirboo North’s Sgt Don Haw (right) regularly works closely with nearby Leongatha police Sgt Dale McCahon and Sen Const Nathan Grist.

Sgt Haw said that even on day shifts, they can be called to provide back-up to units in locations as far as Cowes and Wilsons Promontory, both 90 minutes away, Nyora, 45 minutes away, and anywhere in between.

“If it’s a busy shift, you can do two or three jobs, but in that time, you’ve spent two or three hours getting to the jobs,” Sgt Haw said.

“On nightshift, we cover the whole South Gippsland area and it’s not unusual to do 300km of driving in a night just to cover the different towns.”

Police from Leongatha recently helped Sgt Haw respond to a request from paramedics to attend a job near Mirboo North, but it was Sgt Haw’s local knowledge that came to the fore.

The paramedics had to take a mother of two young boys to hospital overnight after a snake bit her.

The woman, of Filipino origin, had limited English skills and was unable to communicate where her sons should be taken to for the night while she was treated at hospital.

The police arrived and Sgt Haw immediately realised what needed to be done.

“Having dealt with that family before and having some local knowledge, I knew who her nearest connections were in the town,” he said.

Sgt Haw phoned the local school principal, who organised a teacher to go to the school and pull up the boys’ emergency contact details.

Sgt Haw was then able to contact a family the boys knew and arranged for them to stay the night.

“For me, these boys were in a scary situation with their mum going to hospital, so going into state care wasn’t an option,” Sgt Haw said.

“I wanted to see them stay with someone they were familiar with.

“The Leongatha members said to me, ‘We’re glad you were here because we wouldn’t have had a clue who to get on to’.”

Sgt Haw said the experience reinforced his love for the community he lives and works in.

“Later that night I got a text message from the principal saying, ‘We’ll have lunch organised for the boys tomorrow and anything else they need’,” he said.

“Everyone in this town just gets in and pulls together.”

With plenty of forest surrounding Mirboo North, local police officers are sometimes called out to investigate cars dumped in the bush.