‘Rock Solid’ Police Officer Retires

July this year will mark 14 years since I made the journey from Rockhampton to Rainbow Beach to start work at the newly established Police Beat.

I remember that drive well.  Two flat tyres meant a forced layover in Calliope, where an old bloke (operating a tyre business on his farm) fixed our car, while his manky-looking horse licked our six-week-old baby on the face – causing my wife to freak out.

After hitting the road again late that afternoon we arrived at Tin Can Bay Station around 7pm, to pick up some keys and meet the boss.

The station was in darkness, so I made a phone call and a couple of minutes later the lights went on, and a bloke wearing a singlet, a pair of faded Okanui board shorts and thongs came to the front door.

Well it turns out that this bloke – who looked more like a beach bum than a police officer – was none other than Sergeant Darren Grieve, Officer-in-Charge of Tin Can Bay Station.

The first impression I made of Darren that night – as a laid-back character – proved to be accurate over the ensuing years, with not a lot getting under his skin – despite plenty of people trying.

But now, as Darren has pulled on the blue shirt for the last time, it’s a good time to reflect on some of the other qualities that make up this man.

Yep, you read that right. This is not some April Fool’s joke!  After 40 years of dedicated service with the Queensland Police Service – 21 of those years spent here as Officer-in-Charge at Tin Can Bay – Darren has started pre-retirement leave, marking the end of a remarkable career which started at the police academy way back on May 12, 1980.

After finishing as a Probationary at the academy in October 1980, Darren’s first posting was Brisbane City Station, where he spent a few months before transferring to Upper Mount Gravatt, and then Southport in the middle of 1981.

In February 1984 he briefly returned to the ‘big smoke’, serving at Fortitude Valley Station for a couple of months, before returning to the coast as part of Mobile Patrols. A three-year stint at Coolangatta Station soon followed, before in February 1988 Darren decided to head west, and spent the next three-and-a-half years serving in Cunnamulla.

The salt air (and family) called, and Darren returned to the coast (the Sunshine Coast this time) in September 1991 – initially serving in Education and Training, before joining the Accident Investigation Squad.

The year 1999 was a good one for Darren, being promoted to Sergeant in July and then securing the OIC job at Tin Can Bay in September – where he dropped anchor (pardon the pun) for the next 21 years.

So that covers where he’s been, but what’s he really like?  Everyone probably has their own opinion, but here’s my take…

At Tin Can Bay Station, Darren goes by the nickname of ‘The Cougar’. This is thanks largely to some striking similarities between Darren and a bloke called Barry ‘The Cougar’ Dawson – a fictional character featured in a 2006 TV advertising campaign for Cougar Bourbon. A fair-haired martial arts expert, Barry Dawson was an exponent of ‘The Art of Manliness’ which were various skills designed to help men survive in any situation.

While the Barry Dawson advertising campaign is all ‘tongue in cheek’ our version of ‘The Cougar’ has his own – very real – set of skills which made him the best boss I have ever worked for, and a bloke the Cooloola Coast community should be thankful they’ve had at the helm for so long.

Always community minded, Darren has been involved with the Tin Can Bay Lions Club and the Rainbow Beach Surf Lifesaving Club. He was instrumental in setting up (and running) the Tin Can Bay branch of the Blue Light Association, which held regular not-for-profit disco events for the youth on the Cooloola Coast.

Among Darren’s many achievements, he rates the establishment of the Rainbow Beach Police Beat as one of his proudest – a move which put a long-overdue, permanent policing presence in the Rainbow Beach community.

A 3rd Degree Black Belt in karate and a Brown Belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ), Darren exudes a quiet confidence that only a man with his skills (i.e. knowing he can tie you into a pretzel at any given moment), has.

Over the years, Darren has taught a generation of kids in Rainbow Beach the ‘Cougar Arts’ – or more accurately the ways of Budoshinkai Karate-Jitsu. From 2005 until 2019 he spent most of his Monday and Wednesday afternoons at the Rainbow Beach School teaching kids and adults alike the principles of respect, fitness and self-defence.

He even found time to teach BJJ to those of his work colleagues brave enough to show up – and on a side note, I now know a really good chiropractor! (Yes, I needed regular ‘unpretzelling’.)

As a work colleague and boss, Darren was next level. You’ve probably heard the saying, “when the going gets tough, the tough get going”, well that’s Darren.

To give you an example, I vividly remember going to a job at Pelican Bay in 2010, where a three-year-old child had been hit and killed by a car in the campground. Recognising that I had young kids around the same age, Darren took over the job the minute he arrived on scene, conducting all the necessary inquiries, completing the paperwork and shielding me from as much of the unpleasantness as possible.

When I asked one of the other boys at Tin Can Bay Station for their opinion of ‘The Cougar’ as a boss it was, “Two words – rock solid”.

I feel like there is still so much to write, so many good things to say about a man who has served the Cooloola Coast community for all these years, but I would probably need a few extra pages in the paper to do him justice.

For now – on behalf of all the crew at Tin Can Bay and Rainbow Beach – I want to wish Darren well in his retirement. I can picture him sitting on his tractor mowing – daydreaming about another premiership for his beloved Brisbane Lions.

So that’s it. ‘The Cougar’ has left the building, and all we have left are lots of great memories and a really big pair of shoes that will need to be filled.

by Senior Constable Michael Brantz, Rainbow Beach Police Beat