CAREER IN FOCUS
GLENROWAN’S OWN
‘MR FIX IT’ WHEN ONE OF AUSTRALIA’S BUSIEST ROADS RUNS THROUGH THE PATCH YOU TAKE CARE OF AS A POLICE OFFICER, IT HELPS TO KNOW A BIT ABOUT CARS. And there’s no one more suited to keeping the Hume Freeway safe than Leading Senior Constable Ross Woodrow. Not only is Ldg Sen Const Woodrow the much-loved lone police officer in the small north-east Victorian town of Glenrowan, he is also a qualified mechanic. After 17 years of working under the hood of all kinds of vehicles and mastering his trade, Ldg Sen Const Woodrow made the move into policing at age 31. For almost 10 years now he has worked at the single officer station in Glenrowan, using both his policing and automotive expertise to look after travellers moving through the area. So when he loads his radar gun, handcuffs and other police equipment into his police car each shift, he puts them in there with an assortment of spanners, shifters and other tools. He has lost count of the number of times over the years he has noticed a fault on a vehicle, pulled it over and fixed it with his tools at the roadside. “I’m fortunate that I’m in tune with any hint of a wheel wobble, a safety chain hanging down or something not looking right,” he said. “I stopped a guy recently leaving the BP Glenrowan service station because I could see straight away there was an issue with the trailer wheel. “As I pulled him over, the wheel fell off. “That could have been a very nasty thing if he had gotten to the freeway.” The 66-year-old’s career has been marked by going above and beyond what is expected of him, particularly in road policing. 24
POLICE LIFE | SPRING 2020
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