Ken Buck was in charge of some terrifying inmates at Goulburn Jail including Peter Schneidas who bashed to death a guard at Long Bay Jail and became the Goulburn officer’s biggest challenge. Now in retirement, Ken is as busy as ever as a volunteer at History Goulburn. Photo: John Thistleton.
In an industry fraught with crime and despair, Ken Buck led elite emergency and response units at Goulburn Jail, which held the country’s worst criminals.
One Sunday morning in August 1993 his boss suggested Ken buy a newspaper and lottery ticket – because he would read in the paper that overnight a plot to kill prison guards was uncovered. Eleven inmates, some serving sentences over the Anita Cobby and Janine Balding pack rapes and murders, had planned to cut the throats of guards and escape.
“As I would have been the only person on duty with the master key, I would have been the next target,” Ken said.
Luckily, an outside informant had tipped off the Department of Corrective Services and the prisoners were transferred to other jails.
One morning in October 1981 Ken didn’t get off so lightly.
Three desperate prisoners trying to escape took a prison officer hostage and barricaded themselves inside a fortified interview room.
They had broken out of the jail’s front yards, climbed a gate and entered an office where they threatened a prison officer with a knife and chased him down a corridor.
On their way to the interview room they grabbed another prison officer for a hostage and stabbed another one through the foot after he attempted to keep the door open with his foot.
Ken had trained for this type of event in Sydney’s Long Bay Jail and at Bathurst Jail, vacant since the fiery riot that had triggered a royal commission.
Jail superintendent Max Routley locked down the entire prison population of about 300 inmates, then put Ken in charge for the next 11 hours during a tense siege.
In the interview room, one of the inmates warned the guards to back off or they’d kill their hostage.
Negotiator Lou Hearne talked to them, while assault team leader Barry Muffet had his teams geared up and ready. Police and ambulance were on standby.
Over the coming hours the prisoners demanded to speak to then Premier Neville Wran; they wanted a phone, a television, playing cards and food and drinks.
A guard tower at Goulburn Jail, where inmates often knew what was happening within Corrective Services from their prison grapevine, before the staff watching them. Photo: John Thistleton.
Ken’s decisions were critical. Some demands were met in exchange for weapons – scissors and a steel leg off a table. Other requests were refused.
He organised floodlights to illuminate the whole area outside the interview room, to mask nightfall from the hostage takers and to give the assault team a good, clear vision of the area in case anyone tried to make a run for it.
At 9:13 pm, they finally surrendered, giving their remaining knife to their prison officer hostage. He had suffered cuts to his left hand and bruising on his right shoulder. Due to trauma he did not return to work again.
Earlier that year Ken was woken in the middle of the night at home to be told three inmates had tried to escape. They had climbed through a hole cut in a corrugated ceiling above B Wing.
One made it over the wall. Once outside the jail, his recapture became the responsibility of the police, who were awaiting a dog handler from Sydney.
In the meantime they asked Ken to call his wife Robin to bring her German shepherd Sabre to start the search.
An instructor in a Goulburn German Dog League, Robin had trained German shepherds, including Sabre, to track people.
“I would go for a walk up into the bush and hide behind a tree and Robin would get an article of my clothing, give it to the dog as a scent, then the dog would follow that scent and eventually find me,” Ken said.
“I would take one of his favourite toys, a teddy bear and reward him with it and hug him and carry on,” he said.
Hunting the prisoner, Sabre pulled on his leash so hard Robin had to hand him over to emergency officer Garry Shepherd. Robin went home.
Sabre led them through the bush, across to the Hume Highway, but after they crossed the road they lost the scent. Robin returned and with her guidance Sabre picked up the scent and led them to a Department of Main Roads workman’s caravan. They found a padlock had been tampered with.
Then the police dog handler and dog arrived by helicopter and Sabre was called off the scent.
The inmate wasn’t found and the dog handler told Robin in a subsequent debrief Sabre should not have been called away and was a better tracker than his dog.
