The career of a lifetime

There are currently 14 serving Victoria Police officers with a registered number that starts with a one, a unique signifier of about 50 years of service.

These officers have seen decades of change, not only in Victoria Police but also in the communities they serve, and they continue to pass on their valuable experience and insights to all the members who have joined after them.

Police Life spoke to four of these experienced members, who have clocked up a combined 182 years of service, about their unique stories from the job, what’s changed since they joined, and why they still choose to come to work.

Inspector Jeff Calderbank VP19100

For Inspector Jeff Calderbank, there is a stark contrast in policing between now and when he joined the force as a 17-year-old cadet in 1975.

“I remember those early days at my training station of Flemington, working the 7am day shift one-up, and Flemington back in the ‘70s was certainly an interesting place so that prepared me well for the years ahead,” Insp Calderbank said.

After several years in uniform and local detective roles, Insp Calderbank began a long career at the Homicide Squad at three different ranks, from detective senior constable to detective senior sergeant between 1983 and 1997.

Among the first of the high-profile homicide investigations he worked on was the murder of Senior Constable Lindsay James Forsythe by colleague Senior Constable Leigh Lawson at Maldon.

“That was my initiation to the squad and I became the first police officer in Australia to successfully charge a serving member with the murder of another serving member,” Insp Calderbank said.

Throughout his time at the Homicide Squad, Insp Calderbank rose to the rank of detective senior sergeant before his promotion to inspector of several crime taskforces.

But in 2000, after nearly 20 years of investigating some of the most heinous crimes in the state, Insp Calderbank made the decision to leave Victoria Police and pursue other endeavours, first in the finance sector and later in the investigations space for other government agencies.

“It was extremely different to policing but it was interesting to deal with different issues and challenges,” he said.

While the 14 years spent in these other roles presented unique experiences, Insp Calderbank’s heart and mind were always with policing.

“To be honest, I knew I wanted to come back to Victoria Police about six months after leaving,” he said.

The opportunity to return arose for Insp Calderbank in 2014 when the Police Registration & Services Board launched a formal pathway for former members to return to the force. He immediately jumped at the chance.

“It was a very rigorous process, but I was eventually able to come back as an inspector overseeing covert operations in the Professional Standards Command,” Insp Calderbank said.

“There was obviously a big learning curve with all the systems and processes that had changed in the time I was out of the job, but I was able to get through those challenges by relying on the terrific senior sergeants I was working with at that time.”

Insp Calderbank went on to lead the 400 member-strong Transit North local area command, a work unit he described as a “hidden gem”.

“You get everything at Transit and no two days were the same, and it was great to work with our protective services officers as well as police during that time,” he said.

In April 2024, he landed in his current position in the Protective Security team within Digital & Infrastructure Services.

“I’m thoroughly enjoying my time here and the opportunity this role has to be more transformational as opposed to transactional,” he said.

“There’s the ability to educate our people on keeping their information and our facilities secure, which helps mitigate risks to our organisation.”

More than 50 years on from his graduation, Insp Calderbank said the people he has met and lifelong friends he has made in the job are key to why he enjoys policing.

“A group of fellow members and I did a bucket list trip of Route 66 back in 2024, driving 2500 miles from Los Angeles to Chicago, and we’re planning to go back and do more of the southern states in the US next year,” he said.

“Being able to do those things with the people I’ve met and worked with along the journey is great.”

Leading Senior Constable Geoff Currie VP19969

Leading Senior Constable Geoff Currie, who celebrated 50 years in the job earlier this year, has also seen his fair share of high-profile events.

A two-and-half-year stint at City Traffic shortly after graduating in 1976 saw Ldg Sen Const Currie briefly recalled to the unit to assist with the 1981 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting held in Melbourne, hosted by then-Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and attended by Queen Elizabeth II.

Tasked to traffic management for the Queen’s motorcade at the intersection of Swanston and Victoria streets, Ldg Sen Const Currie was given one simple directive.

“The one thing we were told that the Queen had said was, ‘I will not hold up any emergency vehicles’. And we thought, ‘Oh, that’s nice’, and didn’t expect anything to happen,” he said.

“So, there I was at the intersection and I hear a siren coming. I’m watching the motorcade come down Swanston Street and an ambulance coming over the hill from Russell Street towards us. And I’m looking at the motorcade, looking at the ambulance, and thinking to myself about the ambulance, ‘Turn, turn, please turn’.

“And it didn’t, it came straight across, and I thought, ‘Well I’ve got to stop this motorcade’. And it was just my luck that the front half of the motorcade had already passed, so I stepped out directly in front of the Queen’s Rolls Royce to stop it and let the ambulance go through.

“All I saw was the Queen in the back seat go forward and then back, because the driver jumped on the brakes very quickly. I assume all was OK because I never heard anything else about it.

“That was a bit of fun in my life.”

As Ldg Sen Const Currie progressed through his early career, he moved around various general duties roles at stations in Melbourne’s east, and a car crime squad in the city’s north-east. A key part of his career was spent in the Neighbourhood Watch unit, where he stayed for about four years.

“There obviously wasn’t any computers or online systems at that time, so our job was to manually go through all of the crime reports so we could then make a list of the crime themes occurring in particular Neighbourhood Watch areas,” Ldg Sen Const Currie said.

“We’d then give those lists to members from local stations to take along and share at their monthly Neighbourhood Watch meetings.”

And while those initial processes were manual and, at times, tedious, Ldg Sen Const Currie quickly found himself at the forefront of technology.

“In the late 1980s, the Neighbourhood Watch management team decided to buy our office a computer, which would’ve been one of the first desktop computers in Victoria Police,” Ldg Sen Const Currie said.

“That’s when I started programming a little bit with what was available and we worked out how to actually log those crimes within the computer, push a button and print the list out for members going to their meetings, which was a big deal back then.”

His early experience with computers set Ldg Sen Const Currie up well for a long career working in intelligence units, where making the most of technologies at hand is considered business-as-usual. He has worked at the Knox Regional Intelligence Management Unit for the past 10 years.

“So much of what we do now in intelligence is producing products and automating systems so members can get the information they want whenever they want it,” he said.

“They call me the SAS (an analytics platform) and Microsoft Office guru because I know how to write those programs, and it’s been good to train other members up to do the same.”

Fifty years after joining Victoria Police, Ldg Sen Const Currie’s reason for staying in the job is straightforward.

“I enjoy what I’m doing and that’s really it,” he said.

“I mean, the nine weeks of leave gives me the chance to get away in the caravan a few times a year with my wife and friends too, so that doesn’t hurt.”

Sergeant David Ryan VP19698

Like many police officers who joined the force in the ‘70s, Sergeant David Ryan’s career started with a fateful conversation at a local police station.

“I don’t really know what the impetus to join was, but I remember it was something I wanted to do from about form two, or year eight as they call it these days,” he said.

“I was 19 and working in construction when my boss basically told me that I wasn’t meant for a job where I use my hands, and I thought, ‘Oh, I must be more cerebral then’.

“So I went down to the local police station at Springvale, spoke to the really terrific senior sergeant and signed up then and there.”

After graduating from the Academy in 1976, Sgt Ryan went on to spend close to 20 years as a uniform member at several police stations in Melbourne’s south-east including Oakleigh, Prahran and Dandenong.

“I loved being on the road and I was lucky enough to work with really good people, especially in the early days with some of the older sergeants who showed us how to do things the right way,” he said.

In his two decades in general duties roles, Sgt Ryan recalls some of the more notable jobs he dealt with included an assault by a senior trade union member and a car crash involving a top politician.

But in the early 2000s, he decided to take a short hiatus from the job to spend time with his wife and grow their family.

“I spent about a year working at an Aboriginal hostel in Western Australia, then went off to Germany, where my wife is from, for about two years,” he said.

“We had our kids over in Germany then we came back because I still had my job here.”

Upon returning to Victoria Police, Sgt Ryan made the change from general duties to a law instructor role at the Victoria Police Academy – a post he has held for the past 30 years.

“This is without a doubt the best spot as a sergeant in Victoria Police, it doesn’t get any better than what we have here,” he said.

“We get nice people who come through as recruits and want to be here, people with such interesting backgrounds and stories.

“Whether it’s people who have tried out for the NBA in the States, or spent three years nannying in London, or who have owned their own businesses – most of the people I joined with 50 years ago didn’t have that life experience and it’s terrific to see it coming through in our recruits now.”

And while Sgt Ryan has seen plenty of change over his five decades in policing, his approach to the future is simple.

“There’s a German philosopher, Nietzsche, who said that if on your deathbed you can look back and say you were happy with what you did, it’s a good way to be and that’s how I feel,” he said.

“So as long as I’m enjoying it and as long as I’m making a contribution, I’m happy to hang around and keep going in the job.”

Leading Senior Constable Peter Taylor VP19635

Like Sgt Ryan, Leading Senior Constable Peter Taylor tried his luck at various other vocations - including banking, farming and even as a train driver - before joining Victoria Police as a 21-year-old in 1976.

“I didn’t really see those other jobs as long-term careers, and then I spoke to one of the local policemen at Dimboola, where I’m from, and thought it sounded like a good job.

“I knew that I might be able to help people as a police officer, and that’s the main thing that brought me here.”

After three years at inner city police stations, Ldg Sen Const Taylor transferred to Horsham, marking the beginning of several decades’ worth of experience as a general duties officer in the country.

He went on to spend a cumulative 25 years at his native Dimboola Police Station, which he said allowed him to embed himself as a trusted figure in community.

“My main aim has always been to stop crime from happening, so being involved in those local communities is really important as a police officer, to earn people’s respect and hopefully prevent crime,” Ldg Sen Const Taylor said.

“Unfortunately, crime does still happen, but I think that respect is still there. There have been times where I’ve gone to the pub for tea and someone I’d previously dealt with has come up and had a drink with me.”

The close community connections that every country police officer relies on was sometimes a double-edged sword for Ldg Sen Const Taylor.

“It can be difficult because you’re attending deaths and suicides and car accidents and, being born and bred in Dimboola, I knew everyone in town and they knew me,” he said.

“But then, on the other hand, when you have to give that bad news to family members, in some ways it’s good for the family to know you and have a familiar face pass on that message.”

Several decades working in country towns has also provided Ldg Sen Const Taylor with no shortage of quirky tales.

“I have quite the list – I’ve startled a 90-year-old lady from her deep sleep during a welfare check, I’ve guarded the scene of an exorcism, I’ve been confronted by a gentleman with a pitchfork,” he laughed.

As a people person through and through, one of Ldg Sen Const Taylor’s more memorable encounters saw him inadvertently become part of a marital spat.

“We were on the side of the road with the radar and pulled up this Mercedes Benz for speeding.

“I walked up to the door and saw a couple in there, they were both very well-dressed, and the lady in the passenger seat started just berating me, saying they couldn’t have been speeding because her husband set the cruise control properly.

“She just kept going and going at me, so I invited the driver to come have a talk to me outside the car so I could ask him what was going on with his wife.

“And he goes to me, ‘Ah, I turned the cruise control off, but I didn’t tell her’.

“He didn’t want to get in trouble with her, so he threw me under instead!”

From Dimboola, Ldg Sen Const Taylor made his next move to the single-member station at Natimuk in Victoria’s west, where he was the town’s sole police officer for close to three years. It was in Natimuk that he decided to make a big life change.

“I found it very quiet out there and, when I turned 60, I thought it might be time for me to retire,” Ldg Sen Const Taylor said.

“So that’s what I did, but then I got bored after two or three months and decided to apply to re-join.”

In August 2017, about 18 months after retiring, Ldg Sen Const Taylor returned to the Victoria Police Academy to undertake 20 weeks of the then-31-week recruit training program before being posted to Warracknabeal at his former rank of leading senior constable.

“Going back to the Academy in my 60s was interesting because of the age difference between me and others in the program, but it was good to see some of the younger people want to have a chat with me and ask me about my experiences,” he said.

After eight years at Warracknabeal, Ldg Sen Const Taylor relocated to Cohuna in the state’s north-east last year. And while he’s currently undertaking light duties at nearby Echuca while recovering from an injury, he’s showing no signs of slowing down.

“I don’t really have a firm timeline for retirement, despite my wife being at me to retire so we can spend six months of the year in the caravan,” Ldg Sen Const Taylor said.

“I still really enjoy going to work, I like the people I work with. Obviously they’re all younger than me and much better than me on the computers, but I still enjoy it a lot.”

If you’re looking for a job with opportunities to last a lifetime, visit police careers.

Editorial Cassandra Stanghi
Photography John Pallot, Cassandra Stanghi and supplied

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