FLASHBACK: Mackay officer saves lost teenager from certain death

111 years ago today, a Mackay police officer saved a young woman’s life after he found her exhausted and unable to speak in mangrove scrub.

Sub-Insp Edward Martin saved a young Mackay woman’s life by tracking her on horseback and foot through mangroves near Bakers Creek in 1906. Picture: QPS

ON THIS day 111 years ago, a Mackay police officer saved a young woman’s life after he found her exhausted and unable to speak in mangrove scrub at Baker’s Creek.

Mackay Sub-Inspector Edward Martin, then reported to be 60, was recognised and subsequently awarded the Police Medal for Merit for his rescue of Mackay woman Lottie Dimmock.

A search was launched on October 25, when Lottie went missing, and Edward Martin joined it the following morning. When he found her in a mangrove scrub at Baker’s Creek late that afternoon the tide was rising and she could barely speak, but he managed to return her safely home.

The story was reported around the country. The Cairns Morning Post, on November 22, 1906, reported that the woman, who was suffering from “symptoms of insanity”, had disappeared from her home in Mackay.

Her friends reported her disappearance to police, which resulted in an extensive search by both officers and volunteers.

“When about a mile and a half from the girl’s home the Sub-Inspector came upon what he believed to be her tracks,” the Cairns Morning Post report said.

He lost the tracks shortly after but managed to locate them again 15 miles out of town, which led him to a mangrove swamp.

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Taking off his boots and leaving his horse behind, he made his way into the mangroves, where he followed the tracks for a while before he lost them in the water.

“Believing the girl was drowned, the Sub-Inspector searched in the water for some time,” the newspaper article read.

He again found a set of footprints, which turned out to be that of a Malay fisherman, who told him he had seen the girl some time earlier, around where he had lost her tracks.

The fisherman told him she was in deep water and the tide washed her out again onto the bank. He offered to help her, but she refused and the girl then went into the mangroves.

Sub-Insp Martin went back to where he found the tracks and followed them for half a mile to a point where he later found the girl.

“She was lying in the mud held fast by the roots of the mangroves, and was completely exhausted - so much so, indeed, that she could not speak,” the newspaper report read.

Another paper, The Queenslander, reported that woman was in an “exhausted condition, her clothes torn and draggled, and her face and arms scorched”.

The girl was found late in the afternoon, as the tide was running in. the Cairns Morning Post wrote that at high tide there would have been four foot of water where she was found.

“There was no chance of the unfortunate girl extricating herself from the position she was in, and had it not been for the timely arrival of the Sub-Inspector at full tide she would have been drowned,” it was reported.

He was next faced with getting the girl home and “this was no easy matter, notwithstanding his age, and the tracking he had done barefooted”.

“He carried her out of the mangrove to the spot where he left his horse,” the article read.

“Then he placed her on the animal’s back, and holding her on, commenced a three hour’s trudge alongside, arriving at her mother’s residence at eight o’clock at night.”

Lottie was later sent to “the asylum”, the Cairns Morning Post said.

Originally published as FLASHBACK: Mackay officer saves lost teenager from certain death