By Mark Heenan
IT ONLY seemed like yesterday that Vic Robb was off to East Timor to assist the United Nations peace keeping unit.
Five years on and now a Senior Constable with the Footscray Multi-cultural Liaison Unit, he is excited about being deployed to the Solomon Islands.
The mission is an initiative of the International Deployment Group (IDG), which manages the deployment of Australian and Pacific Island police offshore.
Sen Const Robb leaves on 23 July and heads to Canberra for a five-week deployment training camp after accepting a role as a learning and development officer.
“It’s basically a series of overseas missions – some of the missions currently are in East Timor, Nauru, Jordan and Sudan,” he said.
Pre-deployment training includes covering Federal Police issues and learning ethical standards and local regulations.
Sen Const Robb, in East Timor when the 11 September attacks occurred, agreed the deployment lines of communication have dramatically improved since 2001.
“I think it’s much better, I think the communications (strategies) are much better (than in East Timor back then),” he said.
“You can take a laptop computer and set it up to a wireless Internet.”
A police officer since 1988, Sen Const Robb was working and living with Muslims at the time of the 11 September attacks.
“It was interesting. I was alone in my stretcher (and) I was living in my shipping container (In East Timor) and I’m getting all these messages, turn to Channel 9 turn to Channel 10 (and watch the news). I had no television and radio (then) and I had no idea.
“You can’t grasp the enormity of it, it was something like five days later that actually I got to see any footage of September 11.”
The father-of-two is expected to serve in the Solomon Islands for at least four months.
“I think (with) the Solomon Islands (exercise) there is a lot better planning going into this as far the Victorian Police are concerned,” he said.
“With the way the mission has been set up with a capacity building exercise – the outcome (is) going to be far better.”
Sen Const Robb has spent the past three years with the Footscray Multi-cultural Liaison Unit and begins working in the Solomon Islands on 31 August.
Meanwhile, 22 Victorian Police officers flew to Canberra last week as part of deployment training for East Timor with the Australian Federal Police.
