alone. “They are a very violent people,” he said quietly.
Why would a police officer choose to work solely in these communities? In the old days, these were punitive postings, or places for coppers who needed to be hidden from sight. Chris Hurley had put his hand up for such assignments—because Hurley was ambitious. One acquaintance of his told me Hurley had a particular and clear vision of how he planned to progress, one he liked to talk about. Everything had been carefully calculated, tallied. Hurley knew that for a man tough enough to stick it, these communities were the fastest way up the ladder.
“I’m going the whole way,” he’d boasted to an old friend. Hurley was from a police family: his older brother was an officer, and this friend told me that Hurley’s uncle, also an officer, had earned the rank of inspector. Hurley wanted to get at least that far as well. As senior sergeant he needed just one more promotion. So he suffered the discomfort, and put the extra money paid to officers serving in remote communities into a property portfolio; already he had two waterfront apartments in the booming beach town of Burleigh Heads.
But ambition was only part of the explanation. Remote places can be addictive. A well-regarded inspector who served on Palm Island for six years told me how, early in his tenure, he’d been viciously beaten by the locals, but he decided not to be transferred and had subsequently won great respect. “I saw violence mainstream people can’t understand,” he said, violence from which there was no respite. Living on the island was “like living in a fishbowl. There’s no escape. Every bugger knows your business and if they don’t they make it up.” Still, he reckoned those were the best years of his life. Days on Palm, he explained, seemed more vivid, more intense. Somehow life was closer to the surface. And he felt he was making a difference.
There might also be a darker appeal. For someone who feels like an outsider in the mainstream, or undervalued, or unsuccessful, or overlooked, these can be good places, places every Mr Kurtz can go and stockpile ivory—or raw power. Police in these communities have enormous control over people’s lives. “I was like the king of the island,” the inspector recalled. I suggested that this was a temptation some officers succumbed to: the community became their fiefdom. “No,” he said, perhaps misunderstanding what I was getting at. “It was just that it was my place.”
What I didn’t ask the inspector was this: Can you step into this dysfunction and desperation and not be corrupted in some way? In a community of extreme violence, are you, too, forced to be violent? If you are despised, as the police are, might you not feel the need to be despicable sometimes? Could anyone not be overcome by “the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate?” Or had I read
Heart of Darkness
too many times?
I wondered if Chris Hurley had heard the story of Palm Island’s first superintendent, Robert Curry. Mr Curry, known as Boss or Uncle Boss, was an ex–army man who oversaw the settlement of the island throughout the 1920s. The Aboriginal inmates cleared the land and erected buildings, without even a horse or dray, and when eventually a dray came—with no horse—Uncle Boss ordered the men to haul it themselves. It was he who introduced European dancing, and the jazz band and garden competitions. He fired his gun at Christmas. He fired his gun on the beach at seagulls, and while boating, at passing whales.
A Conradian figure himself, Uncle Boss resented the interference of other white officials on the island. As one of them noted, “Mr Curry practically regarded this settlement as a child of his brain.” When rumours spread on the mainland that he was flogging young Aboriginal women, Curry suspected his rivals. But the allegations were true. Without these whippings, he told his superiors, his
Why would a police officer choose to work solely in these communities? In the old days, these were punitive postings, or places for coppers who needed to be hidden from sight. Chris Hurley had put his hand up for such assignments—because Hurley was ambitious. One acquaintance of his told me Hurley had a particular and clear vision of how he planned to progress, one he liked to talk about. Everything had been carefully calculated, tallied. Hurley knew that for a man tough enough to stick it, these communities were the fastest way up the ladder.
“I’m going the whole way,” he’d boasted to an old friend. Hurley was from a police family: his older brother was an officer, and this friend told me that Hurley’s uncle, also an officer, had earned the rank of inspector. Hurley wanted to get at least that far as well. As senior sergeant he needed just one more promotion. So he suffered the discomfort, and put the extra money paid to officers serving in remote communities into a property portfolio; already he had two waterfront apartments in the booming beach town of Burleigh Heads.
But ambition was only part of the explanation. Remote places can be addictive. A well-regarded inspector who served on Palm Island for six years told me how, early in his tenure, he’d been viciously beaten by the locals, but he decided not to be transferred and had subsequently won great respect. “I saw violence mainstream people can’t understand,” he said, violence from which there was no respite. Living on the island was “like living in a fishbowl. There’s no escape. Every bugger knows your business and if they don’t they make it up.” Still, he reckoned those were the best years of his life. Days on Palm, he explained, seemed more vivid, more intense. Somehow life was closer to the surface. And he felt he was making a difference.
There might also be a darker appeal. For someone who feels like an outsider in the mainstream, or undervalued, or unsuccessful, or overlooked, these can be good places, places every Mr Kurtz can go and stockpile ivory—or raw power. Police in these communities have enormous control over people’s lives. “I was like the king of the island,” the inspector recalled. I suggested that this was a temptation some officers succumbed to: the community became their fiefdom. “No,” he said, perhaps misunderstanding what I was getting at. “It was just that it was my place.”
What I didn’t ask the inspector was this: Can you step into this dysfunction and desperation and not be corrupted in some way? In a community of extreme violence, are you, too, forced to be violent? If you are despised, as the police are, might you not feel the need to be despicable sometimes? Could anyone not be overcome by “the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate?” Or had I read
Heart of Darkness
too many times?
I wondered if Chris Hurley had heard the story of Palm Island’s first superintendent, Robert Curry. Mr Curry, known as Boss or Uncle Boss, was an ex–army man who oversaw the settlement of the island throughout the 1920s. The Aboriginal inmates cleared the land and erected buildings, without even a horse or dray, and when eventually a dray came—with no horse—Uncle Boss ordered the men to haul it themselves. It was he who introduced European dancing, and the jazz band and garden competitions. He fired his gun at Christmas. He fired his gun on the beach at seagulls, and while boating, at passing whales.
A Conradian figure himself, Uncle Boss resented the interference of other white officials on the island. As one of them noted, “Mr Curry practically regarded this settlement as a child of his brain.” When rumours spread on the mainland that he was flogging young Aboriginal women, Curry suspected his rivals. But the allegations were true. Without these whippings, he told his superiors, his