Never to be mates

Had country cop Ron Huddy not died in a tragic on-duty car crash, he and his policeman grandson, Adam Barney, might now be great mates. Instead, the 1962 accident on the Sturt Highway near Mount Mary cost each the chance ever to know the other.

Barney, not born until eight years after the death of his 36-year-old grandfather, laments the lost opportunity for a relationship.

“You can’t change history,” he says in a philosophical tone. “I just wish I had had the opportunity to be sitting on the porch drinking a home brew with him, and reminiscing about when he was a copper at my age.

“My father died of a heart attack when I was 13. He was 35. Family’s important to me, and it’d still be nice to have my dad around. I’d love to be able to go out and kick a footy with him, and the same thing’s true for Ron. It would have been nice to meet him and know what he was like.”

Barney, 33, will pay tribute to his grandfather at the National Police Remembrance Day memorial service this month. He will attend the Fort Largs ceremony with his wife, Vera, and mother, Judy Davies (Huddy’s now 54-year-old daughter).

Huddy, in Adelaide just hours before his death, had collected a new Holden police utility to take back to his post at Morgan. As he set out on the return trip, his second wife, Lorraine – soon due to give birth to their second child – stayed in the city.

Huddy died after he tried to overtake another vehicle but collided with the offside of an oncoming semi-trailer. He had little chance to survive the April 19 collision, which caused the utility to overturn four times.

His brother, Jeff, now 81, has never forgotten that Thursday evening before Good Friday. “I’ll remember that for as long as I live,” he says. “We heard on the wireless there was an accident on the Mount Mary part of the road, but the report didn’t say it was a policeman.

“Midnight, the police knocked on my door and gave me the bad news. It was a shock and, when it’s one of your family, it’s hard. I had to go with them into Eudunda to identify him, and it was a terrible night.

“He was just bandaged all over, and you could only see parts of his face. A lady in charge said he was a bad mess. I saw the ute, and that was a bad mess, too.”

Judy Davies, then 12, had seen nothing of her father for the previous four years. He and her mother, Pat, had separated just before she turned two. But Huddy’s death still devastated her.

“My stepfather came to try to comfort me,” she says, “and I didn’t want to be comforted then.

“My (maternal) grandparents took me to the funeral, and I can still see that as if it were yesterday. There were just so many people there. I’ve never been to a funeral before, or since, that was quite like it.”

Huddy, born in Ardrossan in 1925, had joined SAPOL as a 15-year-old probationary junior constable in 1941. After a two-year stint with the Northern Territory police force from 1945, he returned to SA, where he served chiefly in the country.

His posts from 1947 – after three months as a mounted constable – included Stirling, Renmark, Palmer and Gumeracha. Huddy’s death as a senior constable brought to 39 the number of SA officers killed in the line of duty.

Barney, during his cadet training at Fort Largs in 2001, walked many times past the wall of remembrance – unaware of its tribute plaque to his grandfather. Since his childhood, he had known of Huddy’s occupation and death at a young age, but little else.

Only when Barney’s wife paid him a visit at Mt Barker police station last year did he come to know much more. She alerted him to Huddy’s name on the list of dead, which she happened to notice on a National Police Remembrance Day poster in the station.

Until then, neither Barney nor his mother had known Huddy’s death was in the line of duty. Inspired to know more, Barney secured information on his grandfather’s work history from SAPOL.

And, as a first for him, he went to the National Police Remembrance Day service at Fort Largs last September.

“Knowing that he had been in the police force, and died in the line of duty, I had a sense of wanting to pay my respects to him,” says Barney. “I (wanted) to be there to represent him.

“Now, I couldn’t not go. I’ve already got it marked in the calendar this year, and fully intend on being there.”

Barney now has the urge to find out all he can about his grandfather, and put together a “whole story”.

“Without starting to speak to people he worked with,” he says, “I don’t know how much more I can find out. If anything comes to light, I’d certainly want to pursue that.”