August 2002 Volume 83 Number 8 "serving the protectors"
Music in his blood
By Brett Williams

One of SA’s most popular police bandsmen played the final note of his career just days ago. But, after 40-plus years in the band, will he ever give music away entirely?

Thinking about an experience he had with a child cancer victim in the 1980s still leaves Des Clark “choked up”. He says it was a “touching episode”, which has never left him.

It happened after Clark had performed with the Band of the SA Police for Camp Quality at Mylor in the Adelaide Hills. He asked a frail, bald-headed young boy – whom he had seen watching the performance intently – if he wanted to try out on the drums.

The eight-year-old, weakened by his condition, could not walk. His carer carried him over to Clark.

He joyfully accepted a set of sticks, banged away on the drums and later thanked the caring bandsman for the experience. Clark said: “That’s all right. I’ll see you next year.” The boy responded: “No, you won’t.”

“That really knocked me,” says Clark. “I knew then he wasn’t going to make it, and he was a lovely kid. “

Afterwards, the carer said he (the boy) was more concerned about the effect his remark had on me than (he was about) his immediate future.”

That story is one of many on which Clark, 60, will now reflect in retirement. The revered percussionist ended 42 successful years with the police band last month. Some of his memories might choke him up, but Clark believes that, as a member of the police band, he led a charmed life.

And who would argue with the ever-jovial, red-haired former drum major, known to his mates as “Blue”? He performed a job he loved, travelled abroad, met royalty and revelled in endless applause.

Some of his most treasured memories are those of the band’s last 12 years’ performances. He describes as brilliant the 1990 Edinburgh Tattoo, at which the band won recognition as the event’s top act.

Clark proudly explains how, with a film of the band’s performance, the Edinburgh organizers for 10 years gave guidance to tattoo hopefuls.

In 1998, he returned to Britain with the band to perform at the Royal Tournament in London. “We played in front of the Royal Family,” he says, “and some of us got to meet members of the family.

“I was lucky enough to be selected to meet Princess Anne and, while I’m not a royalist, I found her a most engaging person, and very down-to-earth.”

In 2000, Clark was again off to Edinburgh with the band for celebrations of 50 years of the Commonwealth. The band was, at that event, selected to represent the entire Australian contingent. Representing his country was, to Clark, “a real buzz”.

But the greatest source of pride to him was last year’s Sensational Adelaide Police Tattoo. For a massed-bands item, he took the role of lead drum major and choreographed moves with band director, Ken Ekin, and arranger, Roger Downton.

“That one performance really mattered to me the most,” he says. “I was given all that responsibility, and had a chance to show myself. But the others (performances) were certainly big moments in my life. I’m a very lucky person. I’ve been in the right spot at the right time.”

Clark’s life in music began when he was just five. His mother, a singer, was determined her son would learn the piano. He developed a healthy dislike for the instrument, however, and gave it up two years later.

Nonetheless, Clark had music in his blood and, by the age of 12, wanted to join his school band to play the drum. But he was not then proficient with the drum, and his battler parents could not, in any case, afford one for him.

So, he turned to the Hindmarsh Municipal Band, whose leader, Alec Radcliffe, took the young Clark under his wing. By co-incidence, Radcliffe also was master of the police band, and would later encourage his protégé to join SAPOL.

When the time came, in May 1960, Clark followed Radcliffe’s advice and joined the police force. This meant leaving his job as a junior postal officer, and casting aside an earlier plan to join the navy.

In signing on to be a police officer, Clark’s sole objective was to “get into the band”. And, through his two years of cadet training with the Mounted Cadre at Thebarton police barracks, the band often seconded him to play with it at various events.

After he graduated as a 20-year-old in 1962, Clark went straight to the police drum corps. “In those days,” he says, “it (the corps) was so big that it was almost a different entity from the band.

“I went up from that (the corps) into the band and progressed through. I was the only one asked to come back into the band as a percussionist, because I had started playing around with xylophones and glockenspiels.”

But Clark also had a taste of operational policing through his earliest years in the job. He served with Accident Investigation (now Major Crash) as an “observer” and driver. From that brief experience of fatal road crashes, Clark did “a lot of growing up”.

He had also been a skilled Morse key-operator in his job as a postal officer, and so spent some time working in the police Radio Branch.

As Clark’s career went on, he would draw the greatest satisfaction from simply “interacting with and entertaining the public”. But band life came with some hardship as well. Clark remembers playing for RAAF parades on the tarmac at Edinburgh air base. He and the band at times stood waiting for dignitaries in either sleet or 50-degree heat.

“On one job at the base” he says, “we had to wait for a dignitary from about 7 o’clock in the morning, and there was sleet coming down. Ready to play something for this dignitary, we stood out there for nearly an hour. I’ve never forgotten that one.”

But only once did Clark ever consider leaving his beloved band. As a dog-lover and German shepherd breeder, he toyed with the idea of joining the Dog Squad in 1973. He says, however, that his superiors reacted with a resounding denial of his wish to join. It seemed they saw his value to the band as far too great to lose.

To Clark’s colleagues, his confinement to the band was a bonus. Many speak of the comical character who truly knows how to ham it up to an audience. “He must have done a bit of theatre and watched all the old Three Stooges shows,” says colleague, Constable Scott Howard.

“He brings a lot of comical relief to the band, as well as his skills in Latin percussion.”

Fellow-bandsman, Senior Constable Lance Perryman, says Clark always lived by the rule that “the show must go on”. “He probably left the department with 200 sick days that he didn’t take,” says Perryman. “That’s just the culture of people of his ilk.”

Now, on reflection, Clark sees the band as one of SAPOL’s greatest weapons in “breaking down barriers”. “You couldn’t get better PR anywhere,” he says. “It should be listed as a state icon.”

In retirement, he intends to travel the country with his wife, Margaret, in their new four-wheel drive. But he will not give up his music. “I train a group of young people,” he says, “the John Reynolds Raiders Drum Corps, and I aim to do a lot more with them.”

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