Glenrowan's own 'Mr Fix It'

Editorial and photography: Jesse Wray-McCann

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.

When he started at Glenrowan, the two local BP service stations on the Hume Freeway were suffering from petrol drive-offs, sometimes as many as three a day.

Ldg Sen Const Woodrow decided to build a strong rapport with the BP staff and educate them on how to prevent the crime.

“I told them that when cars come in with no number plates, don’t activate the pump. Ask them to come in and show identification before you do,” he said.

“When it’s a reasonably quiet period and someone parks at the furthest bowser, comes out wearing sunglasses and a peak cap pulled down over their head, again, don’t activate the pumps.”

Add this to the fact that Ldg Sen Const Woodrow can sometimes patrol through the service stations up to 20 times each shift, and the frequency of petrol drive-offs has dropped.

“The partnership I have with the staff at BP, it almost feels like family,” he said.

“They know that we are around a lot and that we’re not far away should they need us.”

Sandee Campbell, the store manager at BP Glenrowan North, said the family feeling was mutual.

“I just know that we are safe here with Ross,” Ms Campbell said.

“Ross really feels like an uncle to me.

“All the other stores are really jealous of us having Ross as our local police officer.

“Even BP head office, right to the top, they know about Ross and how good he is.”

Ldg Sen Const Woodrow also conducts regular drink and drug driving testing sites, as well as operations where he combines Victoria Police’s automatic number plate recognition technology with other agencies such as VicRoads and the Victorian Sheriff's Office to keep the roads safe.

“I’m committed to putting as much quality effort as I can into the job,” he said.

His passion and hard work were recognised earlier this year when he was named as the Road Policing Practitioner of the Year, Victoria Police’s top annual road policing accolade.

A shining example of some of Ldg Sen Const Woodrow’s fine police work in Glenrowan came about 18 months ago.

“I was driving through BP and there were these two big guys standing by this four-wheel-drive ute,” he said.

“I looked at the number plate and it just didn’t look right.”

A quick search on his onboard computer revealed the number plate was a fake.

“I pulled up just short of the ute and one of the blokes started to shape up, clench his fists and come towards my vehicle,” he said.

The pair then jumped back in their ute and drove towards the freeway.

Ldg Sen Const Woodrow radioed for back-up as he gave chase.

“That’s the best part about the north-east. You might be one-up and vulnerable, but I tell you what, if you ask for help, it’s there in seconds,” he said.

With the help of two Highway Patrol cars, they were able to box in the ute and slow it down on to the shoulder of the freeway.

“All of a sudden, the two offenders lit it up and went down this huge embankment,” Ldg Sen Const Woodrow said.

“How it didn’t get bogged, I don’t know.”

The ute tore its way through farm fence after farm fence, eventually disappearing from view.

“We set up a perimeter and were trying for almost two-and-a-half hours to find this vehicle in paddocks and haysheds,” Ldg Sen Const Woodrow said.

They were about to give up the search when Ldg Sen Const Woodrow decided to take up one of his common patrol spots, parked in the median strip of the freeway.

“Sure enough, this vehicle came along again,” he said.

“They took the Glenrowan exit, gunned it at an intersection and lost it.”

The ute rolled several times, landing on its side and trapping the passenger.

The driver got out and, after slinging a few choice words at Ldg Sen Const Woodrow, he began to run.

But not fast enough.

“As soon as I grabbed this bloke, there were blue uniforms everywhere, just like an avalanche,” Ldg Sen Const Woodrow said.

It ended up being a significant arrest because the two men were out on parole and responsible for a massive amount of unsolved aggravated burglaries and thefts from vehicles.

“We were able to put away a couple of really nasty fellows,” Ldg Sen Const Woodrow said.

There’s not much that gets past Ldg Sen Const Woodrow on the roads in the Glenrowan area, and that day was just one of the many that prove it.