Timber Creek's police museum at risk of slipping into history after floods

Barry “Bazza” Burrowes looks out the door of Timber Creek’s police museum. (ABC News: James Elton)

Surrounded by sodden photographs and records, an Aboriginal bark canoe sits relatively unharmed.

Readers are advised this story contains distressing details of the historical treatment of Aboriginal people.

The vessel has clearly served its purpose and floated as floodwater inundated Timber Creek’s Police Museum in the Northern Territory last week.

Barry “Bazza” Burrowes, the museum’s volunteer custodian, casts his eyes around the aftermath despondently.

His eyes rest on the canoe. He says he wouldn’t mind hopping into it and drifting off down the river, “never to be seen again”, rather than face the clean-up in front of him.

“That canoe wouldn’t hold me,”  he says, his dark sense of humour still intact.

Mr Burrowes, who turns 83 this year, has just returned to Timber Creek after record floodwaters swept through communities along the Victoria River last week.

The town of 300 people sits on the Victoria Highway between Katherine in the NT’s Top End and Kununurra in Western Australia.

The museum was completely submerged, along with Mr Burrowes’ adjoining living quarters.

Now there’s a lot of work to do if the history housed in the museum is to survive.

Baton, handcuffs, pistol

The smell of damp paper and mould is thick in the air.

Century-old police uniforms, once stored safely in boxes, have been washed away or destroyed.

Others that had been hanging for display on mannequins have fared better, and are still partially intact.

“He’s not going to come around,” Mr Burrowes says, performing rapid chest compressions on a clothed mannequin torso lying on the floor.

A well-preserved leather utility belt around the torso’s waist still has its holsters for a baton, handcuffs and a pistol.

Each surviving artefact is a small miracle for Mr Burrowes, who had expected the worst.

Memories that float

Photographs from the height of the flood show just the roof of the museum peeking above the water. Inside, a watermark is imprinted high on the wall.

It seems cruel that the museum, with its fragile contents, was one of the only buildings in Timber Creek to be fully inundated.

When flood warnings were first issued, Mr Burrowes put items into crates and lifted what he could from the floor onto shelves and tables.

His efforts were in vain, as the height of the water exceeded all expectations.

Mr Burrowes was particularly worried about a crate of paper police reports from 1908, but they are completely unharmed.

“It must have floated or something,” he says. “There’s not one of them damaged.”

It is a mixed story with the collection of photographs.

Again, the ones on display have fared a little better than the ones in storage. Many have faded in the water, while others are in danger as mould sets in.

A frontier town

The museum is an unflinching record of the unique history of a town Bazza describes as a “frontier”, in more ways than one.

There are stories of the Nackeroos — the nickname of a reconnaissance force that patrolled the north in World War II and evolved into the modern Norforce.

There are also stories about the often brutal treatment of Aboriginal people by police in the early days of colonisation.

Out the back of the museum sits a tree that is a testament to that legacy.

“We call this the sad tree. It’s still got the wire hanging from it,” he says.

Bazza explains that police used to chain Aboriginal people in custody to the tree instead of placing them in a cell, in all weather, “up until 1935”.

A deep groove has been carved into the branch supporting the chain as the tree has continued to grow around it.

“If this could talk, it would tell you lots of things,” he says.

An uncertain future

Bazza is not sure if the Timber Creek police museum will ever open to the public again.

Before the floods, he had already been making plans to hand it over to someone else to run.

The local council placed advertisements for another volunteer with the same deal — free accommodation on site, unpaid, five days a week. So far, they are yet to find a willing successor.

For now, Bazza has largely been left to deal with the aftermath himself.

But he is hopeful that eventually, the saved artefacts will be restored and a future museum director will reopen the place.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to be quite honest,” he says.

“I just love history.”