When Tom Bown was growing up in Liverpool, he dreamed of being a Canadian Mountie - "I'd be wearing a red suit, big hat, and riding a horse."
Today - at 55 and living in Australia - he's got the uniform, the badges and all the trappings, if not the horse.
Tom has collected 128 police uniforms from all over the world. Plus 4,000 shoulder patches, 900 metal badges, hundreds of helmets - from a British bobby's to a 179-year-old Prussian artillery officer's spiked Pickelhaube - down to a Los Angeles policeman's motorcycle helmet the officer was wearing when he was slapped by Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Tom,a retired Commonwealth police officer, born of a British Army chef in Poonah, grew up in the UK, and came out to Australia 25 years ago, "because the unions were killing England."
He arrived in Sydney at 5.45 on a Saturday morning, had a job by nine and started work as a mechanic/service station manager on the Monday. Later he joined the Commonwealth (now Federal) police force and worked international airports watching for drugs, chatting to celebrities like actor Lee Marvin, and beginning his odd hobby of collecting world police memorabilia.
'A sergeant had given me an old Commonwealth Police badge plain-clothes men wore on their lapels. It was tiny, made from sterling silver, and had a crown on top. I was told it was very rare. It started me on the road to collecting.'
He began writing to the Mounties, asking if they could send him a badge or two. They said no. He didn't give up. 'I got a couple of interesting badges from the police driving school and sent them across, asking for a swop. They agreed and then it snowballed.'
Tom wrote to international police forces offering his stamp collection for badges. He got back breast badges from Mexico, the US, Bermuda and Trinidad. A Canadian police officer promised to send Tom badges if he could get him some telephone-line porcelain insulators.
'I thought that was pretty odd, but I went to Telecom and discovered they were going to take a pile of old insulators to the dump. The fellow couldn't see what use they would be to me but agreed to go through the pile. We came up with 12 different ones, two of them made in Japan before the war. They had helped carry the first messages to the top of Australia.'
The Canadian cop was delighted with the double-ribbed and triple-ribbed insulators that had taken three months to get to him by sea, and sent Tom two gold and two silver breast-plates.
Then came his biggest coup. A friend working in a local gun shop, knowing about his growing uniform and cap collection, introduced him to holidaying Los Angeles policeman, Paul Kramer.
'Paul had made world news by being slapped across the face by Zsa Zsa Gabor.
'He was on motorcycle duty one day when he saw this Rolls Royce with an out-of-date Californian number-plate. He pulled it over and Zsa Zsa leaned out.
'He told me that he'd asked her why she didn't have current plates. Then he found that the car wasn't even registered. So he said he would have to book her for that as well. He asked to see her driving licence and she hadn't got one.
'So he said: "I am going to have to book you for that, too," and started to write out the ticket. She got out of the car, walked up to him and slapped him. So he then booked her for assault.
'Paul is a gentleman; quiet, gentle and harmless. He had to leave the force and got a pay-out which he was told he must never divulge.
'When he saw my collection of uniforms from all over the world he said I could have the one he was wearing at the time of the incident. He sent me the helmet, riding breeches, shirt, leather jacket and boots.'
Cheekily, Tom wrote to the Moscow police in what was then the USSR, asking if it was possible to have Soviet police badges. To his surprise he got one back from the water police and one from the service police, swopped for two Australian police badges.
Three caps from Hungary arrived last week. Every day in the mail there is an overseas package: badges from Sierre Leone, leather police jackets from West Berlin; an elaborate silver badge from Thailand and a small, tinny one from Iceland. He's been given handcuffs and small, cruel-looking thumb-cuffs from New York. He has been posted long and short batons, a night-stick and an ancient police whistle. The International Police Association became enthusiastically involved when it became known that in Edmonton, Queensland, an ex-cop was getting together one of the world's most comprehensive collections of police insignia.
Now he has a cupboard stacked with uniforms on hangers, wall cases crammed with badges and epaulets. His wife, Ann, who collects porcelain, has a rival display of plates from a dozen different countries.
Tom has ensured that his hoard is looked after. Many of the bobbys' helmets, gendarmes' caps and fur-trimmed headgear from Russia are on permanent loan to a local police station. 'It's in locked, glass cases,' Tom assures me. 'Because if you ever want something knocked off leave it unsecured in a police station.
'I've given it to them because police deserve a lot more respect. When some idiot threatens an officer with an axe and gets shot there's an outcry. But when a policeman gets shot they say nothing. People will come and see my collection, be interested and will ask questions. They will find police are rather proud people.'
He also handed over most of his collection of 4,000 shoulder patches because tube moths were getting into the albums and eating them. 'The upkeep of spraying and keeping them airtight was enormous.'
He is most proud of a simple London bobby's high-domed helmet. 'The police started in England and for a long time had great respect. When I was a child, growing up, if you did something wrong a bobby would give you a boot up the bum, clip you round the ear-hole and tell your old man.
'Today the jails are full because it doesn't happen any more.'
