Water Police make a home at Queenscliff

BOATING safety on the western and southern side of Port Phillip Bay has been greatly improved by a new permanent outpost of Victoria Police’s Water Police squad in Queenscliff.

The unit has moved into the Queenscliff police station on Gellibrand Street and is also using a berth at the nearby Queenscliff Harbour for one of its boats.

The Water Police Squad has been operating occasionally from the mostly unoccupied Queenscliff Police Station since the COVID pandemic began in 2020.

An offshore rescue vessel has been strategically positioned in “The Cut” at the Queenscliff Harbour since then to assist with patrolling Bass Strait and help Volunteer Marine Rescue (VMR) vessels.

In a new arrangement with Western Region Command, the Water Police will use the Queenscliff Police Station on a permanent basis and staff the building with its officers.

The Naiad rescue vessel VP15 can be kept ready to go in a pen at Queenscliff Harbour for rapid deployment, or on a towing trailer.

“Having a permanent footprint down here from the Water Police’s perspective has been on our radar for a long time, but the worlds have had to align for it to happen,” Senior Sergeant Lynden Blackey said.

“We’ve done a lot of work over the past 12 to 18 months to get this off the ground.

“It allows us to be a bit more strategic and timely in our responses to jobs that are at the bottom end of the bay and also offshore.”

The Queenscliff site is now the Water Police’s third base, after the headquarters at Williamstown and a smaller base at Paynesville in Victoria’s east.

Leading Senior Constable Shaun Wallace said the new location was extremely useful in an operational sense.

“A lot of the boating population within the Western Region, they all funnel down through the Bellarine, and with the pelagic fish – the tuna and kingfish – returning to the heads and offshore of western Victoria, a lot of big boats and fishing is done from either Queenscliff, Ocean Grove or around the Bellarine Peninsula.

“So having a boat down here to safety audit those boats heading offshore but also respond to any incidents if we need to has been really good.”

He said fishing traffic could be very heavy on the water in favourably low wind conditions.

“If you had been here the other day, there were boats everywhere, from all the way from Intended Head and St Leonards around to Clifton Springs; you could have walked across the water on the amount of boats that were out there.”

The Queenscliff unit also works closely with Queenscliff Coast Guard, Southern Peninsula Rescue and Coast Watch Ocean Grove to conduct operations in Port Phillip Bay and offshore in Bass Strait.