Recently every second person we meet, on finding out we're Australian, has asked about the allegations coming out of Australia of match fixing, drug taking and organised crimes involvement in sport. It has been widely reported as big news over here, with the media revelling in the story. The biggest Australian story since the radio hoax. Well I must say it's been a change to hear some news being reported from home, even if it is bad, we don't usually hear much about Australia on the TV, radio or newspapers.
However, In between stints of caring for pampered and eccentric pets, we've had our own brush with crime, to be true, organised crime. The story unfolds while we were minding Buffy, the Chesapeake Bay Retriever in Wales.
Buffy in his heyday was a magnificent specimen of his breed, powerful, muscular, with a sleek coat and fast loping stride. These dogs have a keen sense of smell, which enable extraordinary tracking abilities so that they can hunt down and catch prey in one ferocious bite of their wide powerful jaws. However, with the passing of time, as sadly happens to us all, Buffy was no longer the dog he was in his youth, suffering from failing vision, hearing loss, arthritis, incontinence and irritable bowel syndrome, to name but a few ailments. However he still retained his keen sense of smell and was able to track down someone nibbling on a choccy biscuit, several rooms away, on the floor above and behind closed doors. These days the wide powerful jaws were only used for crunching the occasional doggy dentastix.
So it was not surprising that Buffy hadn't heard the neighbours house alarm going off frantically into the night. What was surprising, was that neither had the rest of us.
I answered the doorbell that night, to a man enquiring if I'd heard the alarm and rung the police. On replying no to both questions, he said he was new to the cul de sac, but a short time ago, he had seen a young man in a hoody and jeans, running down the street. He was going to check with the other neighbours and if they hadn't informed the authorities, he would. Closing the door I thought to myself, what a nice man and how fortunate Buffy was to live in a street where everyone looked out for their neighbour.
Later that evening the doorbell rang again. This time it was the distressed homeowner. I ushered him into the lounge, pointed him in the direction of a comfy armchair and placed a whisky in his hand. As he sipped away, he calmed down and was able to tell us of the break in and how the robbers had brazenly, totally removed the two French living room doors from their hinges to break into his house (similar doors to the ones pictured in the photo below).
I enquired as to whether the police had any leads, mentally picturing the youth with the hoody, running away with the stolen booty. He said he had only just called the police to inform them and as they weren't aware of the incident they hadn't arrived as yet. Strange I thought, I told him that one of the neighbours had dropped in earlier, had called the police and possibly had got a good description of the thief. Maybe police communications hadn't relayed the message as yet, being new to the area I wasn't sure just how long was the police response times. It hadn't been that long, only 4 hours since the call - the night was still young.
Weeks passed by and we had moved on, I thought no more of the incident until Buffy's owner contacted me. Apparently the police had caught the villains, two escapees from prison. Another neighbours CCTV footage had assisted in their apprehension, combined with the details I'd given of the night in question, there was enough evidence to charge them. One of them had actually admitted to knocking on my door and enquiring as to whether I'd rung the police.
An open and shut case of when crime doesn't pay.
Recently we had our credit cards scanned at an ATM, something you hear about happening but never expect it to happen to you. Fortunately, by chance I had happened to check our balance on the cards (didn't want to be caught short on my next shopping trip). It didn't look quite as healthy as it should have been. On further investigation I saw that money had been taken out in 5 equal amounts over 2 days. The money had been withdrawn from, you'd never guess where - Melbourne, Australia.
Is it really true that Australia is the home of organised crime?
The cards were immediately cancelled and while I await new ones there will definitely be no more shopping expeditions for me.
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