Clair Jessen was the wife of Alfred John Jessen, sworn into the Queensland Police Force in 1944 and serving many city and country communities, including from the very remote Burketown Police Station in 1960. Mrs Jessen wrote down some of her experiences as a police wife, and today we bring you Part 1 of her memoirs – A Promotion to Burketown.
Burketown Police Station, c1950. Image No. PM1500b donated to the Queensland Police Museum by Constable Donald Afflick in 1990.
Like most women I can remember the night my husband, a young Policeman, proposed to me; “I can’t offer you much,” he said, “but you will always have 3 meals and a bed”. I must say over the years he kept that promise, though the three meals and a bed weren’t always to my liking.
Our first transfer was to Rockhampton. After much searching we found a house to rent. The previous tenant, a bachelor during the years he lived there, had never washed a floor or anything else. Just viewing only the house was rather daunting, however it was a large roomy house, cheap rent and we were flat broke, so a month before we moved in Operation Clean-up started. We decided to clean the dirty lino in the rooms to save a little money and after weeks of scrubbing, the dirty lino changed to a pretty floral pattern.
Toilet — a shocker! It was the first time I had seen fungus growing out of a toilet bowl and potatoes starting to flower under the sink cupboard. The back yard was a jungle, and the previous tenant, fond of a beer or two, would stand on the back landing and throw empty bottles out into the backyard. It was so bad our dog had to go into kennels until we mowed and cleaned any broken glass. But finally, after all the hard work we had rather a nice house. Little did I know this first posting was to toughen me up for the next transfer.
My husband arrived home one day to tell me he had a promotion and transfer to the Gulf. He had not told me he had applied as he was very down on the promotion list so had little chance. However, we were lucky, as no one had applied for it and he jumped 200 men. I thought it could not be so bad. Hadn’t I, a city girl, just spent 3 years in Rockhampton, and wasn’t that the bush? I was soon to be enlightened. We spent hours with a map spread out on the floor, trying to find Burketown and a slight shock when we found this little dot on the map. It was then it dawned on me, that not only did we jump 200 men, but 200 men had jumped aside to let us have this posting, while they safely applied for coastal towns and civilisation.
So, in the year 1960, we went by train to Cloncurry where we spent the night before flying on to the Gulf. I can remember that evening standing on the old pub verandah, walking down the deserted street with just a few stray dogs and drunken men were wandering around, and I thought Burketown cannot be worse than this. But six months later when we returned to collect a new Police Jeep, Cloncurry looked like Paris, for any town that had electric light and ice cream surely had it all.
After the night in Cloncurry the next morning we found ourselves boarding the plane for the remainder of our journey. The old plane on this flight was known as the milk run as it touched down at every station as it delivered supplies. The only other passengers were a couple of native men moving from station to station looking for work. The rest of the seats were removed from the plane to make room for produce being delivered during the flight. The male attendant had little thought for our comfort, his main concern was to hand out supplies wherever the plane landed.
Meanwhile, the station owner would look into the plane, giving the new Sarge a nod and handshake, few words spoken. However, as we learned later as soon as we left, word was sent over the Gulf that we had arrived. So I have no doubt by the time we landed locals already knew our height, weight and colour of our eyes – such is the power of the Bush Telephone!
The last landing was ours and as I looked out at the dry dusty saltpan, not a tree or a blade of grass could be seen, just a few people standing around.
I truly felt like leaping back into the plane and flying away. The few people standing around it seems was the whole town of about 20 people. Apart from our arrival, plane day was the only time to see a new face and get news from the outside world. If you were lucky there might be an old newspaper on board, no matter if it was a week old, it was read from cover to cover, then handed about for others to read. From the airfield it was only a short drive down the dusty dry road, passing a few tin shanties along the way before pulling up at the Police residence. There are no words to describe the sight of this old low set wooden building, one end the Police Residence, the remainder Police Station and Constable’s quarters, again not a tree or blade of grass to be seen, built we were told around 1880, and long condemned…
Part 2 of Clair Jessen’s memoirs will be provided next week.
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This information has been supplied by the Queensland Police Museum from the memoirs of Clair Jessen titled ‘Three Meals and a Bed”. The Police Museum is open from 9am to 4pm Monday to Thursday and 10am to 3pm on the last Sunday of the month (Feb-Nov) and is located on the Ground Floor of Police Headquarters at 200 Roma Street, Brisbane. Contact: E: museum@police.qld.gov.au
“FROM the VAULT- The Memoirs of Clair Jessen Part 1 – A Promotion to Burketown” by the Queensland Police Service is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (BY) 2.5 Australia Licence. Permissions may be available beyond the scope of this licence. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/au/legalcode