Australia's first police dog handler Charlie Degnan recalls his most memorable case, finding two little girls lost in Ipswich

AUSTRALIA'S first police dog handler Charlie Degnan still recalls the pain from his assignment to find two missing girls in Ipswich in 1973.

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WHEN his dog stopped and stared at a fridge, Charlie Degnan knew something was wrong.

Mr Degnan was a police dog handler - the first in Australia - when he was sent on a job to find two missing girls in Ipswich in 1973.

"My dog tracked across a backyard and over another backyard and there is the fridge in the next garden and my dog's just staring at it," he said.

"So I went over and opened the fridge and there were two little girls facing each other. They went in there probably to see the light go out. It (their deaths) wasn't suspicious at all.

"I still see those kids today. They would have been in their forties now.

"I didn't talk about it for 30 years, but now I can't close my eyes without seeing them. That will never leave me."

Charlie Degnan with his dog, Lobo.

Mr Degnan said the police dog squad in the early days was nothing like the well-resourced slickoperation it was today. Back then there were only two trained officers in Brisbane. him and another policeman on the northside. He said it was rare to be called to a job instantly.

"They didn't know what dogs could do," he said.

"They thought they were super dogs. The quicker you get to a scene the better, before the track is ruined by lots of police walking over it."

Mr Degnan will talk about his experiences at Sunnybank Hills Library on September 5 at 10.30am.