February 3, 1992 AD
Counted by Hand
Twenty-four recruits reported to the Tasmania Police Academy at Rokeby as Squad 45, the first intake of the year, among them eighteen-year-old David Geoffrey Marston of Burnie. Two were lost to the medical examinations before lunch. In the afternoon a substation fault blacked out the gymnasium halfway through the fitness battery, and the instructors finished the tests by torchlight and stopwatch. By evening the remaining twenty-two had been issued uniforms, manuals and rooms, and at least two were already reconsidering.
Squad 45 assembled on the Academy parade ground early on a humid, overcast morning. Twenty-four recruits had been selected from more than two hundred applicants. The force needed them badly. Tasmania Police was losing experienced officers to mainland services that paid better, and the squads coming through Rokeby were expected to fill those gaps sooner than any before them.
Superintendent Ronald Hext, the Academy's officer in charge and a former military policeman, began by saying nothing. He walked the lines slowly, noting who fidgeted, who locked rigid, who met his eye and who looked past him. Only then did he address them. Among the recruits in the second row was David Geoffrey Marston, eighteen years old, the son of a Burnie fisherman, who held his position without moving for the length of the inspection.
The medical examinations took the rest of the morning. Two recruits did not get through them. One had a heart condition he had not disclosed on his application. The other was colour blind, which the application process should have caught and had not. Both were sent home before lunch, and the squad stood at twenty-two. Dr Helen Lim, the Academy's psychologist, began the first of the cognitive assessments in the afternoon. Her results would not be known for several days.
The fitness battery began in the gymnasium after lunch. Midway through it, a fault at the local substation cut power across much of Rokeby. The gymnasium went dark, and the electronic timing equipment went with it. The instructors did not stop. They fetched torches, took out stopwatches and finished the push-up, sit-up and shuttle tests by hand, calling the counts aloud. The 2.4-kilometre run went ahead outside on the Academy circuit, timed the same way. Marston finished it third fastest in the squad.
Defensive tactics followed in the same gymnasium once the power returned. Instructor James Reilly, who carried a scar on his forearm from a knife attack during a drug raid in Launceston, took the squad through basic restraint holds. Among the recruits was a former nightclub bouncer from Glenorchy who had expected the session to be easy. Reilly put him on the mat twice in under a minute and used him as the example for the rest of the hour.
Uniforms were issued in the early evening, along with the procedure manuals the recruits would spend the coming months learning. Rooms in the accommodation block were assigned in pairs. Marston was paired with Timothy Crawford, a former primary school teacher from Hobart who had left the classroom after six years and joined the force looking for something he could not yet name.
By the end of the day two recruits had asked the duty instructor what would happen if they withdrew in the first week. Neither withdrew that night.
