The memory I’ve tried to repress for 50 years

In my experience the memories you’d like to repress are the ones that remain most vivid. Picture: istock

Repressed memories? If only. In my experience the memories you’d like to repress are the ones that remain most vivid, not so much diminished as intensified by the passing of time.

It’s over 50 years ago, and I’m driving down St Kilda Road in Melbourne towards the Junction. Driving slowly, as it’s raining. Passing a parked ambulance, I see the crew’s faces illuminated by the dashboard lights. I distinctly remember thinking, “You won’t get me.” Seconds later a human body comes smashing through the windscreen and is wedged halfway into the car. The ambos are there instantly, as I stagger into the roadway. The bloke had stepped off the island and the fish ‘n’ chips he’d been eating were scattered across the road. And there were his false teeth.

The ambo, when he was off-duty, came to the police station to sign witness statements. “It wasn’t the driver’s fault.” Later blood tests showed the bloke had been drunk. But the most powerful memory within these memories? The kindly cop being consoling to me – and making me a cup of tea.

And now I find myself writing a tribute to the police as first responders, and as the heroes they so often are. Think of the policewoman at the Bondi Junction massacre.

Decades after the experience described above, I make a cup of tea for a cop. I’m living in a 120-year-old house in Sydney’s Darlinghurst, deeply asleep on the third floor, when a young officer shines a light in my face. A burglar alarm has malfunctioned and sent a signal to the legendary, even notorious Kings Cross Police Station a few blocks way. He’s had to scale a high security fence to get inside. “Ripped me uniform,” he says.

In gratitude and embarrassment I put the kettle on. It’s his first day back after stress leave. An appalling story about cutting the rope and taking down a man who’d hanged himself, defecating in the process. The constable had needed psychiatric help but little was available. “There are only two shrinks to help all of us in NSW,” he told me.

Things are better now. In response to the fact that so many cops left the force within a few years, due to the trauma of dealing with accidents, murders, suicicides, violent attacks. Policing, like soldiering, is a profession that mass-produces PTSD.

We sat together and talked for hours, before he limped off to have a scratched leg looked at and his uniform repaired. Thanks, Mr Plod.

Living in the bush, we’ve had many reasons to admire the local cops. They’ve helped with cattle rustling, with a robbery, a home invasion, with fatal accidents on Gundy Road. They even donned protective clothing to keep an eye on us when we were quarantined with Covid. Uncomplaining, efficient, decent. Yet so used to being hated. I confess to being bitter when caught by the Highway Patrol in speed traps.

We know the toll of our soldiers in wars but I’ve no idea how many cops have died in the line of duty. Or been mentally maimed. And they don’t have monuments.

It’s a dark and dangerous life. And those who do it deserve our respect, our gratitude and understanding. Bad apples? Bad decisions? Of course. But so many wholly admirable human beings. I’ll put the kettle on.