Retiring police officer looks forward to future

FORMER Gympie police sergeant Vic Tipman will have plenty of opportunity to make up for all the lost family time after his 42 years serving as a police officer.

Gympie MP David Gibson, with Ray Pringle, Vic Tipman and Ann MacDonald helped mark the occasion with a handover of memorabilia from Mr Tipman’s career. Picture: David Crossley

FORMER Gympie police sergeant Vic Tipman will have plenty of opportunity to make up for all the lost family time after his 42 years serving as a police officer.

But his wife Diane said Mr Tipman would have trouble winding down.

Mr Tipman, one of Queensland's longest-serving police officers, retired on Thursday and was farewelled from the force at Gympie RSL the next evening.

Mr Tipman, 60, had only three sick days in his whole career, despite many assignments he probably would have preferred to miss.

Mr Tipman briefly became a media star last week as he told reporters of some of those moments.

Mr Tipman told ABC Coast FM he started as a police recruit during the still-controversial confrontations with demonstrators during the 1971 Springbok rugby tour.

He worked the Fortitude Valley beat in Brisbane's CBD in 1973, a difficult time even without the firebombing of the Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub.

He had stints also in St George, Roma and Toowoomba.

Mrs Tipman agreed with him that his career was sometimes hard on his family.

"Especially if weapons are involved or serious domestic violence, there's always a fear on the part of the family that we may not come home," he said.

Mrs Tipman said she often could not sleep when her husband was a detective in Toowoomba.

"I never told him I used to sit by the phone and I would wait half the night," she said.