by Justine Ford
Frustrated by cadets, Ron quit in February 1973. He had given it a year, but promised himself he’d be back when he was old enough to return as a direct entrant.
But by now there was another reason Ron was desperate to climb the ladder.
Her name was Colleen.
*
On 24 October 1972, one of Ron’s fellow boarders asked if Ron wanted to accompany him to a church service in Malvern. Eager to get out of the boarding house, Ron said yes.
The church was so packed when they arrived that there was little room to move. There was only one seat left, next to a striking girl with honey-coloured hair. She didn’t even look at Ron, but from that day on, Ron started attending church regularly.
‘On the third or fourth night, we ended up sitting together,’ Colleen says. ‘He was so different. He was so straight and well dressed with polished shoes and a straight back and sides, while I was wearing torn jeans which had been texta-ed all over, a kaftan top and leather sandals.’
But Ron didn’t care that sixteen-year-old Colleen Drought was a city girl or a self-confessed hippy – he wanted to see her again. Colleen told him that her mum wouldn’t let her go out until she had finished Year Eleven, so Ron rang her on the last day of school, three months later.
‘She said, “Who are you?” ’ Ron recalls, cringing. ‘Clearly I’d made a big impression on her.’
Ron and Colleen went on their first date in late 1972. ‘We went into the city and saw a movie with Goldie Hawn in it, called Butterflies Are Free,’ Colleen recalls. ‘He was respectful.’ She pauses, grinning like a teenager. ‘I also liked his gorgeous blue eyes and winning smile! From then on, I thought, That’s it, I’m done, he’s mine!’
Colleen recalls meeting Ron’s parents for the first time about six months later. Even though she had met Ron in a church environment – much like the way Bill had met Phyllis – she suspected they didn’t entirely approve. ‘I was wearing a pair of flared purple cord jeans and a tight black blouse, and I had long hair at that stage,’ she says. ‘I was probably not the kind of girl they were expecting Ron to marry. I think they always had visions of the boys marrying country girls.’
Ron found it even more nerve-racking when he met Colleen’s mum, Jean Bannister, and her stepfather, James Bannister, at their home in Caulfield in Melbourne’s south-east. After he rang the large metal bell outside, Jean and James ushered Ron into a plush sitting room.
‘They had white shag pile carpet and special armchairs,’ Ron says, recalling how fancy it seemed compared to his family’s utilitarian farmhouse. ‘Her mum put out Barbecue Shapes, and at three o’clock they had sherries. I couldn’t believe I was allowed in there! I was a bit out of my comfort zone.’
Jean and James took to Ron instantly. ‘They really liked him because they knew he was going to be a police officer,’ Colleen says.
A few months later, she proposed. ‘It would have been sometime in 1974,’ Ron says. ‘She asked me to marry her because I was too slow! She told her mum and her stepdad and they nearly choked. I was nineteen and she was eighteen. But then we had a sherry to celebrate.’
*
A few months earlier, in October 1973, Ron, having come of age, had returned to police training. It was timely because recently a brand new Police Academy had opened in Glen Waverley, supplanting the old training facilities on St Kilda Road in the city. The new academy was housed in a draughty former Catholic monastery, where all the recruits were expected to live from Monday to Friday. For Ron, that meant giving up his room in the boarding house, so on weekends, he’d return to the farm in Lockington, or sometimes sleep on a mattress at the nurses’ quarters at Kew Cottages where Colleen, who’d become a student nurse, was now living.
‘None of the girls knew he was there,’ Colleen says. ‘He came in late at night and he snuck out in the morning.’
The Police Academy was no less rigorous and just as militaristic as the cadets, but Ron kept reminding himself that soon he would be a policeman. ‘At 6 am we’d get up and do fatigues for an hour,’ he remembers. ‘We all wore the same thing – grey pants and a jacket that had to be starched, even though we’d be weeding the garden, hosing concrete, digging the garden bed, and a whole range of jobs that were manual labour. After that, we’d shower and have breakfast in the mess hall.’
The similarities to the military didn’t end there. The recruits had to keep the floors polished and dinner was served promptly at five. ‘Not only that, but you had to have your socks and underpants all lined up,’ Ron says. ‘Every now and then they’d spring a room inspection on us, wiping their finger on the surfaces looking for dust. They’d yell, “This is a disgrace!” if it was dusty, or if your books weren’t lined up, or if you hadn’t made your bed properly. Everyone looked forward to Friday because you were allowed to go home.’
Only under very special circumstances were recruits allowed to leave the campus during the week, and classes ran all day. ‘You had to do law, which was a big component, and there were two to three periods of that every day,’ Ron explains. ‘You had to learn what your power of arrest was, what theft was, the nature of summary offences – things you’d encounter as a constable on the street.
‘We learned English and wrote essays,’ he continues. ‘We were taught to touch-type, and back then, we used typewriters with carbon paper. There was also physical exercise, drill training, firearm training and defensive tactics. Back then police had a handgun and a baton, whereas now they have capsicum spray as well.’
Ron was a member of Recruit Squad Seventeen, an all-male outfit of twenty-four, which included recruits who went on to esteemed careers, a couple who ended up in jail, and one cop, Denis Tanner, who was twice investigated for murder, although no charges were ever laid against him.
At eighteen-and-a-half, Ron was one of the youngest non-cadet entrants at the academy, where the average age was twenty-one (these days, it is almost thirty).
‘What I remember about Ron was his maturity,’ says Paul Evans, a former recruit squad member who would later become an assistant commissioner. ‘The rest of us were silly eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds, but Ron was one out of the bag. I heard him speak and thought, God, he’s mature for his age.’
According to Evans, Ron had a flair for his studies, and was a natural born cop. ‘He was good, honest, and straight down the line,’ he says. ‘He could talk to people and he had a passion. You just knew he was made for the job.’
The other thing that stood out about Ron was that he knew where he wanted his policing career to take him. ‘He wanted to be a detective,’ Evans remembers. The rest of us didn’t know what we wanted to do. He was just the complete package.’
What Ron didn’t tell his fellow recruits, however, was that it was the television show Homicide that had inspired him. Had he said so, he would have found himself in good company. ‘I think a lot of us were influenced by the TV shows in those days – Homicide, Division Four and Matlock Police,’ says Evans. ‘I was influenced by Matlock Police and Homicide. When you’re sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, you do get influenced by all these wonderful things.’
Yet even though Ron knew what he wanted to do, he maintained his humility. ‘Ron was never full of himself,’ Evans says, acknowledging that a few of their peers were ‘loudmouths’. ‘He was down-to-earth and very level-headed. And he was so good to the rest of us. He was interested in everybody and always had a smile on his face. He was one of those fellows you couldn’t help but like.’
John Moloney, from the country town of Donald in northern Victoria, was Ron’s closest friend at the academy and agrees their squad was made up of some ‘bonzer fellows and some that weren’t so good in life’. Moloney’s father had died when he was young, so he returned home as often as he could to help his mum look after his seven siblings. It couldn’t have been easy, but Moloney could count on Ron’s support. ‘Ron was one of the
reasons I passed at the academy,’ Moloney says. ‘I’ve modelled myself on him, I can tell you that. His values were great, he had that natural ability and his mind would be ticking away all the time. He had an older head on his shoulders.’
The two boys from the bush formed a bond that year that would last a lifetime. ‘We became such good friends at the academy, and I became a friend of the family,’ Moloney says. ‘I’m very blessed to call him my friend. The greatest decision I ever made was to join the police force, because I met him.’
In February 1974, his training complete, Ron graduated from the Police Academy, earning seventh place in his squad, and topping the class in law.
‘Graduation day was exciting because you invited all your family,’ says Ron. ‘We’d march on the parade ground and then get called up to be given our certificates. Then we’d march off, and it was a tradition that everyone would throw their white hats in the air.’
Colleen delighted in the pageantry of the ceremony, to which she wore a new outfit she’d bought especially from Sussan. She did feel a pang of sadness, however. ‘Because I was engaged at the time and not yet married, I wasn’t allowed in the family photo. That’s how things were in those days.’
After the ceremony, dinner and drinks were held at a function centre. Ron invited a friend from school, his brother and sister, and Colleen, who turned heads in a black-and-silver floor-length lurex gown with a halter neck.
There was another tradition that also told the world Ron Iddles was now an officer of the law. ‘After the celebration it was pretty normal to hang your jacket in the window of the car to let everyone know you were a policeman, that you were the real deal,’ he chuckles. ‘So of course I hung my jacket in the window of the car!’
With training at the academy now over, Ron now had nowhere to live. He crept into the nurses’ quarters at Kew Cottages to sleep on Colleen’s floor many more times, but it was far from ideal. The logical solution was for the couple to live together, so they found a furnished one-bedroom flat in Thornbury and set up house.
Ron and Colleen feared their devout parents would disapprove, but the backlash was even more intense than expected.
‘The parents didn’t take it well,’ Colleen remembers. ‘Ron’s dad and mum came down with the Bible and read a passage to us about fornication. We didn’t even know what it was – we had to look it up in the dictionary!’
Regardless, the young couple continued living together while Ron took up his first posting as a member of Victoria Police. But it was no dream job.
*
After graduation, the new members’ names were pulled out of a hat to determine who would be stationed where. Most were sent to Russell Street headquarters to perform active duties while living in the barracks. Fewer than a handful of others were sent to Government House and Parliament House. Ron drew the short straw, and was sent to work as a security guard at Government House. ‘All I’d ever wanted to do was be a policeman, and after five months’ training, I ended up at Government House. It was disappointing, to say the least,’ he says.
Ron was willing to do the hard yards, but not this. ‘When I got there I was basically read the riot act,’ he remembers. ‘It was my job to patrol the grounds, and there were morning, afternoon and night shifts.’
On morning shift, Ron’s first job was to climb the tower and raise the flag to full mast (assuming all the state’s dignitaries had made it through the night). Between nine and one, he was positioned at the back gate in a guardhouse not much bigger than an outside toilet.
‘Around eleven o’clock the only vehicle for the day would arrive – the Baker Boy bread van,’ Ron says, citing it as the highlight of the shift. ‘I’d take a sheet of paper with me to the guardhouse and write on it what time I thought the Baker Boy would come. That was about the extent of the excitement.’
Ron wasn’t allowed out of the guardhouse except for a toilet break, and only when the sergeant sporadically dropped by to see if he needed one. After lunch, he would work until three, and was sometimes stationed out the front of the building to take down details of any cars that might arrive.
Ron’s yearning to do actual police work only grew stronger, and after a week, he got his chance. ‘One day I was there when a guy came in who was drunk, and being drunk in a public place was an offence,’ Ron explains. But rather than chide the man and tell him to go home, Ron did as he’d been taught. ‘I arrested him. I called South Melbourne Divisional to come down,’ he says. ‘My boss was furious because it meant I’d have to go to court. But I thought that’s what police work was about.’
As punishment, perhaps, Ron was then rostered onto night shift, which meant a whole new level of boredom. ‘You had to walk around the grounds of Government House on the hour, and you had to be at the back gate on the half-hour,’ he says. ‘Sometimes the inspector – who would visit once a night – would be there waiting for me on the half-hour.’
By now an expert at making surfaces sparkle, Ron had to mop the brown cork floor before buffing it to a high shine. He had no intention of slacking off, but had he been so inclined, he would have been caught. ‘Sometimes the inspector would park a hundred metres away then sneak up to make sure I wasn’t asleep,’ Ron says, rolling his eyes. ‘So after a week, I’d had enough.’
He knew there was a way out. ‘Every Friday a government gazette came out, and in it were vacancies at police stations,’ Ron says. ‘So I applied for Collingwood and Fitzroy.’
And after just a month at Government House, he was offered a job at Collingwood.
*
Three months before he turned twenty, and three months before her nineteenth birthday, Ron Iddles and Colleen Drought got married. The reception, at the Monash Hotel Motel at Clayton, was a great success, which was just as well given it cost a hefty $5.50 a head, the same price as a Gary Glitter ticket at Festival Hall.
Colleen’s uncle, Church of England minister Reverend Thomas Drought, performed the ceremony with another relative, Canon Alfred Miller. It was all very formal. ‘Even though I’d been living with my husband, I still wanted to wear a white dress,’ Colleen says. ‘In those days you weren’t supposed to wear a white dress unless you were a virgin.’
So, on Saturday, 21 December 1974, in an ivory gown inspired by Princess Anne, Colleen walked down the aisle towards the man with whom she’d spend the rest of her life. ‘I looked terrible,’ Ron remembers. ‘I was wearing blue flared trousers and a matching jacket with velvet trim.’
Colleen wore a pale blue silk pantsuit as her going-away outfit, and couldn’t wait to find out where Ron was taking them on the first night of their honeymoon. Around nine o’clock, the pair set off in their car, which the wedding guests had covered in graffiti, tin cans, toilet paper and confetti, as was the custom. Ron insisted they drive a hundred miles before stopping, as his father had always done on family road trips. At the end of the journey, the young Mr and Mrs Iddles made it to Euroa, where Ron booked into what Colleen describes as ‘one of those really horrible old motels’.
‘She sat on the edge of the bed and cried her eyes out,’ Ron remembers.
‘He had no idea,’ Colleen says. ‘He was very young though, and we didn’t know we could go anywhere posh. And his dad had always said, “You’ve got to get the one hundred miles!” ’
Even though the newlyweds would go on to enjoy the rest of their honeymoon in Canberra and Sydney, the morning after the wedding was a let-down too. ‘Ron got up really early in the morning to clean the car,’ Colleen says, still astounded. ‘I was lying there thinking, Where’s my husband? The magic moment just went!’
Shame it was too early for a sherry.
3
THE THIEF CATCHER
‘I was very excited and apprehensive because Collingwood was busy and, at times, violent. There were police members who’d been there for eight or nine years who were reasonably experienced. As t
he new boy on the block, how was I going to fit in? What was the culture? But at the same time I thought, I finally made it. I’m finally here.’
– Ron Iddles
In 1974, inner-city Collingwood was tough. Hardworking and hard drinking, it was the kind of place where if you said the wrong thing in the wrong pub, your beer would be served with a knuckle sandwich. Collingwood’s rough-house reputation was nothing new, and over the years, all sorts of colourful characters had called it home, including the flamboyant 1920s gangster Squizzy Taylor, who’d once lived in Johnston Street.
Ron’s new boss, Senior Sergeant Ivan Smith, was tall like Ron, wiry, and super-fit from playing VFL in the country, and later, a season for Fitzroy. Smith was in charge of fifty-five officers who worked across three shifts. He was a fair, methodical and neat leader who insisted that his staff wear their hair as short as his. Ron laughs, ‘He had a crew cut like Gomer Pyle.’
Within days of starting at Collingwood, Smith’s paternal nature made Ron feel at home. ‘Ivan treated everyone like they mattered,’ Ron remembers. ‘He didn’t have children of his own but he used to say, “The members are my children”. It was great to have such an understanding boss who cared about his officers. Collingwood was a difficult area to police, but Ivan provided the support and guidance a young police officer required.’
Part of Smith’s job was to identify areas in which his charges could improve. He even remembers asking Ron how to spell words from time to time, to make sure the young constable’s spelling was up to scratch. Typically, Ron was prepared. ‘He’d say, “I’ll get my ready-speller”,’ Smith recalls. ‘He used to carry a ready-speller in his pocket!’
Not that Ron needed his ready-speller on Collingwood’s mean streets. Riding around in Divvy Van Five, he quickly discovered there was always something going on. ‘There were seventy-six hotels operating in the area at the time, high-rise commission flats and many family violence issues. It was also a Painters and Dockers area.’ The Painters and Dockers were a (now defunct) trade union that represented shipbuilding labourers, and were alleged to have criminal ties.