Luke ‘Macca’ McCulloch spent eight years on the WA Police diving team, working on well-known cases like the light plane crash in 2017 which killed two people on Australia Day, and a prominent 2018 murder. Two years ago he left his role, and he has recently independently published an account of a particularly arduous ten-day operation he worked on, titled Tales of a Diver: Profundis, Obscurus, Sordidus. Originally intended as a way to tell his story to those close to him, the book has now seen McCulloch book speaking engagements at libraries around Perth, and he was recently invited on ABC radio to chat about his career.
The AU Review caught up with Luke McCulloch via email to talk about the nitty gritty of this unusual and compelling career choice, and about how it felt to write about and process a job that asks divers to confront the darkness in both a literal and figurative sense.
Luke, thanks so much for talking to The AU Review about your book – to start with, can you tell me a little bit about how you became a member of the WA Water Police Dive Squad? Had you already been working with the police for a while before then?
I was a general duties police officer prior to my role as a Search and Rescue Diver. I was stationed in a few different western suburbs police stations for the first three years of my career, then carried out my country service in South Hedland for a further four years. This is where I applied for the Dive unit and was lucky enough to be successful in that process and spent the next eight years there. In regard to the selection process, I talk more about this in the book and without giving too much away, let’s just say it was a lot of diving, a lot of ‘finning’ and a whole lot of being cold!
What can you tell us about the role of a police diver in solving cases? How much of the process of investigating do you get to be a part of and what other teams do you work alongside?
In the investigation world, the Police Dive Squad are one of many tools that an investigator (detectives) have available to them. Any requirements to conduct a sub-surface search in any water ways in the State of WA and the Divers are called in. Unfortunately, that’s usually the extent of our part to play in the bigger picture though.
We obviously have a lot of experience to add when it comes to ascertaining what has occurred under water or expert opinions. But, after that, and once the area is searched or the item/objective located, we usually depart and don’t have much more to do with the investigation.
What skills and training did you need to develop for your role? Did any of it surprise you, or did you know what you were in for?
Yes, I needed to develop several new skill sets to get into the diver role and continued learning once I was in the squad. In order to get onto the selection course I first had to get my PADI dive ticket as I had actually never dived prior to that. I was always confident and competent in the water, but never dived, so I needed that in order to be accepted on the course.
When I managed to get into the dive squad, I had to then acquire the skill to be able to search under water in no visibility and with touch only. I had a degree of knowledge about the role so it all wasn’t too surprising for me but there still was nothing that can prepare you for finding bodies under water, especially when there is no visibility.
You’ve worked on a number of cases that were quite prominent in the media – how does it feel to see these cases talked about in the media and know that you’re a part of those stories? Do you sometimes feel like the version of those stories the world gets to see is a bit different to how you understand them?
I think the best way to describe how I feel about the stories are dependant on the outcome of the search more often than not. Any police incident where Police Divers are in attendance gets the attention of the media pretty quickly so there were lots in my time in the squad.
However, if it was an incident whereby we didn’t find what we were searching for, I often felt like it was a failure on our part and didn’t enjoy seeing that identified on the media. It may have been due to a number of things like incorrect search pattern, poor information gained from witnesses or just purely poor skill level.
If the outcome was positive and we achieved our goal in finding whatever it was that we were looking for, I felt immensely proud. Proud of the way we as a team conducted ourselves, our training coming to fruition and serving out community by doing out job well.
And yes, the world obviously gets to see a much more targeted and PG version of the real thing. By targeted, I mean they portray the story in the light of the incident so that may be about drugs, weapons or a person we’re searching for. But what they don’t capture most of the time (particularly with the body recovery jobs) is the toll that the jobs have on the police. I understand it’s about the incident though and that’s the role of the media.
Obviously, people will need to read the book in order to get the full measure of this, but can you tell us about some of the most exciting aspects of this job? If someone is considering this path for their own work, what would you tell them?
As with all facets of policing, the most exciting part for me was that you never knew what was going to happen each day and I found that was exacerbated at divers even more so. One day you would be conducting patrols on the Swan River or out at Rottnest Island and the next, you’re in a regional location anywhere in Western Australia, looking for evidence to assist in an investigation. It was a thoroughly rewarding job, when everything came together (intel, investigations, training, planning etc.).
If you were considering a path into the dive squad, firstly, be comfortable in confined spaces and have good spatial awareness in the water because you – more often than not – will not be able to tell which way is up and down. Secondly, be comfortable in the cold and obviously in the water.
Understandably, your work would be quite emotional at times, particularly when you have to recover the body of a person who has died as part of performing your role. How do you look after your mental health and that of your workmates when this is your day to day? Do you think writing about your experiences has been part of processing what you do?
I believe everyone deals with this differently and during my time as a diver I lost count of the bodies that I’ve retrieved from the water. My personal method was to treat everybody I was looking for and retrieving as an object. Yes, it’s a human being, but for me to not fall attached to it and conduct the search with my full ability, I couldn’t have my judgment clouded. So I literally tried everything I could in order to not know the missing persons name, age, anything about them personally or anything from their family. That could all be known after the find, in my opinion, and it didn’t mean I didn’t care, on the contrary, it was the opposite. I cared so much about finding them, that I did everything in order to give myself and my team the best chance of finding them and not getting personally attached was part of that.
In reference to looking after my mental health and my work mates, again I think everyone is different. I have mates now that are dealing with their own struggles of PTSD, a number of years after leaving the Divers and I have no doubt that I have some form of it myself but just in a minimal capacity. I fortunately have an amazing support network around me with my wife, family and friends who I’m not afraid to have conversations with about my mental health. In saying that though, no one is bulletproof, and I’ve had my own run in with mental health after a job that I describe at the end of my book. I, luckily enough, had my wife and dad at the time say that I wasn’t being myself and so I went straight to the police psychologist.
I like to think that I am emotionally intelligent enough these days to pick up on any signs of PTSD if it ever started to control me, but I know that I also have my support network around me to assist in that as well, and that I believe is vital for any First Responder.
Writing the book was never meant to be a way of dealing with my mental health. But in a way, it definitely has been very cathartic and the more I reflect on it, it majorly helped me and I hope it helps me into the future too.
You’ve now been out of the job for about two years, after eight years as a police diver – at what point did you decide that you were going to write about this part of your life, and how did you approach the task?
I actually started writing this story on the drive home from the ten day operation that it’s about. The initial intention of it was to provide to my family and perform as a manuscript for possible kids or just direct family, to know what I did exactly. The process took me the better part of about two years to write and then it just stayed on my laptop with no real ‘ending’. When I had my brush with my own mental health battles, it sort of became obvious to me that it was a great way to end the book with an epilogue of that headspace I was in and that its okay to not be okay.
Once I left the police on a career break (one year off on leave without pay), my wife surprised me on the Christmas 2023 with a hand-bound copy of the book! This was then passed around my new work team and my close friends and family. All of them encouraged me to publish it, so I eventually looked into it.
But, I waited until my career break was over and I wouldn’t then need to seek permission from the police force as that would have delayed the process immensely. I did, however, want the blessings of the families of the loved ones that we recovered in the stories. I tracked them down, managed to pitch the idea of the book being published to them, provided them with a copy and they were kind enough to give me the green light to start looking at the publishing process.
Can you tell us a little bit about why you chose the subtitle Profundis Obscurus Sordidus, and what that means?
All past and present WA Police Divers form part of what’s called the WAPDA – Western Australian Police Divers Association. The WAPDA catchup once every three to four months with each other and it’s just a great way for like-minded persons who have all gone through similar hardships to converse and have a beer or two. The WAPDA Latin moto is this – Profundus Obscurus Sordidus. This translates to “deep, dark and dirty” which we thought was a fitting moto for us and the work we do, with a hint of dark humour attached.
You and your partner are the publishers, distributors, marketing team for this project – why did you decide to independently publish rather than approaching a bigger publishing house? What was involved in making this book a reality?
One I had been convinced to publish the book, we had no clue where to begin and no real direction. So good old mate Google came to the rescue. I pitched my book to a few publishers over Australia with still no real direction in mind and with no idea what to look for. I had two interested publishers get back to me, but I couldn’t really decipher the ins and outs of what costs I needed to contribute vs what the remuneration would be. It also seemed very scary to jump into bed with someone that I didn’t know much about (definitely trust issues from the Police I think) and lastly, I truly had no idea what to expect in terms of sales, so I didn’t want to throw the world at it, to be let down later on it not being good enough.
When a third company approached, InHouse Publishing, they essentially put the ball entirely in my court with respect to self-publishing and covering all the upfront costs to then be provided the books and sell them for 100% of the profits. This approach seemed so much easier to me because if it failed, then it was no one else’s fault but mine. I could also get as many copies as I wanted (100 being the minimum) and truth be told, I did not expect to sell any more than that initial 100. I was happy to know that I would be out of pocket a little bit, have a published book, be able to provide copies to friends and family and know that it was a very simple, uncomplicated process.
InHouse made the process incredibly clear. They were there every step of the way to answer questions, offered guidance when required and the package was valued very well, in my opinion.
Once the editing process, formatting and cover design were done, it was then back to my wife and I to start the marketing process. We initially were going to keep pre-orders open for two weeks before deciding on the final number to order. I could order 100, 250 or 500. So, it was a big jump and risk to go to 250 if they weren’t going to sell. But we put the sale online and once it went live, we had 104 sales within 24 hours. So naturally I pulled the trigger and purchased 250. Then that initial 250 went in the first week and so it just grew. This is a massive testament to the support I have around me though in my own little community.
I suppose looking back, I just never had the confidence in myself and my story to take to a big publisher and was happy to take on the risk myself and accepted that.
What do you hope your readers will take away with them after reading your story?
I really want readers to appreciate police in general to start with, but then to understand that Police Diving is just one facet of policing – but they all have their own individual stories and tales, which to the modern-day civilian is just mind blowing. An interesting comment I read the other day was that the average person goes through two to four major traumatic incidences in their lifetime and a Police Officer will average 800 in a career. I believe that this story brings this to light and shares that the role also comes with its own tolls to officers, which need to be recognised and understood by the community that they serve.
Thanks so much for your time, Luke.
Tales of A Diver: Profundis Obscurus Sordidus by Luke McCulloch is available now from InHouse Publishing.
Luke will be speaking at a number of libraries in the coming months so check out his Instagram to find out more.
Header Image supplied by Luke McCulloch
