Australia’s first police dead

One of them was able to swim but the other was not, and therefore clung for support to his comrade, and thus both perished clasped in each other’s arms.
James Allen, Jnr – 1853

Embraced in death, as author James Allen, Jnr described them, were two SA police officers – the first Australia ever lost in the line of duty. Corporal William Murray Wickham, 24, and Mounted Constable John Dunning Carter, 22, had tumbled out of a bark canoe on the River Murray on May 7, 1847.

Stones from the old Thurk Station chimney were used to construct the commemorative cairn in honour of Wickham and Carter. Above (left): officers salute flags during a serivce, and (right) Snr Const Trevor Milne reads from the Roll of Honour.

Local station-owner, JH Wigley, had heard “a shriek and (a) splash”. He rushed out to investigate, but found nothing. The two likely fear-struck young officers had drowned under the dark autumn sky of that Wednesday evening at Wigley Reach, near Thurk Station (now Banrock Station).

Later accounts of the tragedy varied. James Allen, Jnr suggested the weight of the officers’ accoutrements and heavy military boots had overburdened the poorly built canoe. But witnesses said that Carter – who stood propelling the boat as Wickham sat in the stern – caused it to capsize by leaning slightly forward.

In any case, each died serving his fledgling colony as a member of a then only nine-year-old police force, with just 65 men. Only 10 fewer make up today’s total number of honoured SA police killed in the line of duty.

Sadly, few records of the tragic Wickham-Carter incident exist. But something of Carter’s character would emerge in the memoirs of his brother-in-law, a high-profile inspector and later commissioner, Alexander Tolmer. “John,” he wrote, “was one of the finest and most intellectual young men in the force.”

Wickham and Carter were inexperienced, but considered up to the task that ultimately cost their lives. They had, for some years, operated from a police post set up in 1841 at Moorundee, just downstream from Blanchetown.

In early May, 1847, the pair received orders to travel to Overland Corner, where they were to deal with reported disturbances. Overland Corner, although used as a resting and grazing area by drovers, had neither facilities nor status as a township.

Drovers had moved sheep and cattle through the area for several years from NSW. And, although settlement throughout the Riverland to that time remained sparse, droving had caused hostilities between Aborigines and whites.

The looming task for Wickham and Carter seemed to be to quell some of the resulting unrest.

The pair set out from Moorundee on horseback and, dressed in full uniform – heavy tunics, trousers, riding boots, sabres and firearms – rode through mallee scrub. Some way into their journey on May 7, the officers decided to stay overnight at the river-front station of JH Wigley.

Then, undeterred by major risks, the officers bravely attempted the river-crossing that killed them. Local Aborigines later recovered the two bodies, which they laid to rest on the river bank.

Details of the disaster soon appeared in Adelaide newspapers, The Register and The South Australian. The news devastated Wickham and Carter’s colleagues, who had never lost one of their own.

Deeply saddened, they sent – and paid for – a detachment to collect their mates’ bodies and return them to Adelaide for a funeral in the West Terrace Cemetery. On July 16, The South Australian reported on the many “sorrowing relations, comrades and friends” who had paid their last respects at an emotional service.

The officers could never have known that they would live on into the next two centuries as two of Australia’s most revered police dead. And, today, most are certain they showed the kind of courage that warrants such posthumous reverence.

The commemorative cairn at Banrock Station on the River Murray, and (below) the plaque.

“When you assess bravery, this one perhaps at first doesn’t give that impression,” says Police Association president, Peter Alexander.

“But there they were, in all their regalia, on the River Murray in those tragic circumstances: a flimsy canoe, no back-up, no communications… There was more braveness attached to it than a first assessment might seem to show.”

In 1947, a police officer made a chance discovery of the Wickham-Carter graves, which had fallen into disrepair. The Police Association of SA and the City Watch House Recreation Fund donated money to restore the officers’ gravesite.

After the restoration, then commissioner, William Francis Johns, led a centenary memorial service in honour of Wickham and Carter.

The succession of tributes continued with the erection of a cairn and commemorative plaque at Banrock Station in 1997. Unveiled that year on Police Foundation day, this permanent memorial – just three kilometres from the scene of the fatal accident – marked the 150th anniversary of the officers’ deaths.

With community support, Riverland police had pushed for, and built, the structure out of stones from an old Thurk Station chimney.

In 2001, those same police campaigned for permission to stage a memorial service at the cairn in September, in line with National Police Remembrance Day. They won SAPOL approval, formed the Riverland National Police Remembrance Day committee, and held such a service in 2001 and again in ’02.

This month, the committee will stage its third successive ceremony. “It’s now become a yearly event,” says committee member, Senior Constable Trevor Milne. “It helps the police up here – and members of the public – to commemorate National Police Remembrance Day.

“This is special to us, because Wickham and Carter were the first two police officers to die in the execution of their duty. And that was in an area that we (Riverland officers) police today.”