Meet Gold Coast women of the year Judith De Boer, one of Queensland’s first policewomen

She was one of Queensland’s first female police officers, surviving sexism and tragedy before working in war torn East Timor. Now Judith De Boer welcomes Glitter Strip developers as her adversary.

JUDITH De Boer is known for her tireless work to preserve Gold Coast green space and areas of historic significance.

Now in her seventies, after a life marked with tragedy and sexism, work in war-torn East Timor and as one of Queensland’s first female police officers with arrest powers, she says Glitter Strip developers are a welcome adversary.

“It was 1965 when I decided to join the police when my father saw an advertisement in the paper,” Ms De Boer said.

Judith De Boer was one of the Queensland's first ever policewomen, today she is a community leader on the Gold Coast. Picture: Jerad Williams

“I had experience working at Sunday school and with kids so he thought I would be good at that. I was 22 and so naive that you had no idea, no training, nothing.

“My first day of work I was told to read the manual which was full of dead bodies, and I had never seen one in my life. By lunch time I was out on the street — that was it.”

From there Ms De Boer worked with vulnerable kids.

“The children we worked with were wonderful people doing their best. One of my greatest challenges then was hearing the facts of life from 13-year-old girls and pretending I already knew,” she laughed.

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She developed such a close bond with some of the kids, they attended her wedding.

Her policing career, however, was a casualty of the times and as a married woman she was required to resign.

Judith De Boer now takes on Coast developers. Picture: Jerad Williams

“It was disappointing but you just didn’t question it, it was just the natural order of things.”

Married life did not stop Ms De Boer caring for some of the system’s most vulnerable.

By the 1980s she had moved to the Gold Coast with her second husband, and her family had grown to six children, four of whom were adopted.

“Unmarried girls were made to adopt out when I was starting a family. Some of the girls that had to hand over their babies were fine young women. It was a different world.

“There isn’t a difference where the child comes from, they are all my own, everyone of my children enriched our lives. They are all wonderful people.”

In 1999, Ms De Boer joined the United Nations travelling to Afghanistan, East Timor and Kosovo to work at the independence elections registering voters.

Ms De Boer worked for the United Nations in East Timor.

“It is impossible to describe the conditions, it took your breath away the courage and what people were prepared to do to vote.

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“East Timor stuck with me especially. People were dying and the whole place was on fire but people still came out and voted.

“The old came first, they told us they had lived their lives so they were willing to go first in case anyone got killed. And here we complain about voting.”

Through it all, Ms De Boer said the greatest challenge of her life was the loss of her only biological child, Christopher. He was two-years-old when he drowned.

“To me, strength is trying to do what is right and I have always tried to that with whatever was in front of me.

“But in that moment I learnt a lot about myself. I had never dreamt I could survive that type of agony.

“But I did, and if I could survive that, I can survive anything.

“I think we are all fabulous in that way, us women.”

The Bulletin’s inaugural Harvey Norman Gold Coast Women of the Year campaign celebrates the city’s leading females.