The Sydney Morning Herald Wednesday, May 10, 1989

Moving tributes for police nice guy ‘Big Al”

By LINDSAY SIMPSON ” Chief Police Reporter As one of “Big Al’s” best mates read a moving eulogy, burly police officers, hats in hands, bowed their heads and cried. Big Al was Constable Allan Wayne McQueen, the well-mannered policeman from Kyogle who died in the line of duty, shot trying to apprehend a suspected car thief in Sydney.

Constable McQueen, who had been in the force two years, had been picked to work with the Anti-theft Squad a training ground for young officers on their way to becoming detectives. Big Al, who spent three years trying to become a police officer, was known by that name “not so much because of his height but because of his heart”, said Cheryl Coleman, whose husband had shared a house with Constable McQueen in Coffs Harbour.

As Senior Constable Steve Tedder, who gave one of the eulogies said, “Big Al had the basic love and desire to become a police officer”. In 1986, while running his own cleaning business in Coffs Harbour, he built his own house and several local police officers became his flatmates. At that stage he had five jobs and was studying at night for his HSC English in an attempt to become a police officer. About this time, before he was even in the force, he saved a man’s life. The man had quarrelled with his girlfriend outside a local night club and had head-butted a pane of glass. The glass had cut his throat and Al tore his shirt off and stemmed the flow of blood while waiting for the ambulance.

Big Al. who trained as a boxer and played Rugby League, was not always the muscle builder he was at the time he joined the force. His former Rugby League coach at Kyogle High School, Mr Stan McBride, said that in the 14-year-old competition he had been the second smallest kid in the group.

Ballina townspeople also came to the funeral service. One local, Mrs Val Studdert, said she had never met Allan McQueen but had come out of respect for what he had done. “If we don’t have law and order, we have nothing,” she said.

The pallbearers wore pistols. Perhaps that’s the way it has to be these days, but they touched the pretty white wooden church in the green countryside with vulgarity. They were big, strong young men and their bulky police uniforms made them bigger, so that when they came to the narrow church door carrying their mate’s coffin, they could barely squeeze through. In any case, the coffin seemed too narrow for a young man as big as Allan McQueen.

Nearly 300 police went to his funeral in Ballina yesterday along with his mother and father, Mr John and Mrs Shirley McQueen, and 300 family and friends. They spilled out of St Mary’s Anglican Church into a church hall, where the service was shown on video, and out of the hall on to the grass, where they listened through loudspeakers.

If we are to still violence, we must cherish life. Yesterday, 26-year-old Allan McQueen’s life was cherished. Today, others will cherish the life of 32-year-old David Gundy, the unarmed man killed in a police raid following Constable McQueen’s mortal wounding. Spring had sung in both men for only a while before life escaped them in violence. Senior Constable Graham White told the mourners that Allan McQueen had been a man of honour, love and integrity and a man whose word could be relied upon. He did not search for riches but for life itself, said Constable White. “Today he would be saying, ‘Let’s get on with it. Let’s not have all this fuss and bother’.”

Detective Senior Constable Steve Tedder said that the day McQueen received the letter of his acceptance into the force, “his face lit up as if Manhattan had lit up”.’ Constable Tedder lived with Constable McQueen in Manly and called his mate “Big Al”. “What a joy he was to live with,” he said. Constable McQueen had made more friends in 18 months in Manly than Constable Tedder had in 28 years.

Colleagues of slain policeman Allan McQueen weep as he is laid to rest in Ballina yesterday. One of his favourite expressions was: “Not a problem“. Another was: “I’m here for a good time, not a long time.” Constable Tedder said it was somehow appropriate that Allan McQueen began his long battle for life on April 24, the day before Anzac Day. That was the day Allan McQueen became a hero. Police Commissioner John Avery said Constable McQueen had exhibited the qualities of a police leader of the future. “His father said it was a waste of a fine young life, and I agree,” said the Commissioner. “His was an unforgettable example of courageous service that will enshrine his name in the annals of the history of NSW.” Mr Avery quoted Virgil: “Blessings on your young courage, boy, for that is the way to the stars.”

Outside the church, a senior policeman said: “There’s a finality to heroism.” Mr Athol McQueen, a cousin and the boxer who knocked down champion Joe Frazier in the 1964 Olympic Games, said: “I hope there are more young blokes around like him.”

” The police band played a funeral march for their colleague, past Sunnyhaven Flats. The open-faced country folk let the tears run down their cheeks. As the cortege passed a place called Camelot, on the way to the Lismore Crematorium and another place called Goonellabah, an old woman stood at the roadside and said : “Poor little fellow.” At the crematorium flowers spelled out the letters NSWP -New South Wales Police on the hillside.

A young policeman picked up a rose and handed it to a young woman. , ‘ Mr John McQueen wipes away a tear as he stands with his wife Shirley at their son’s funeral.

https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/123586879/