Recently I was speaking to a senior official of the Main Roads Department and we were discussing how, in the old days, police officers searched out registration details of motor vehicles.  During business hours it was possible to ring the Main Roads Department and get the details of a registered vehicle. This would have included trunk line calls which would have been recorded in the relevant register but after hours contact was another story altogether.

I recalled distinctly to this Main Roads official that during my short period on the beat at Roma Street in 1960 the member on reserve duty, or a member who just 'blew' into the station, was often sent over to the Main Roads Department’s building, which was then on the corner of Turbot and Albert Streets (the current site of the Suncorp-Metway Building), with a registration number so that the details of the vehicle to which it was allocated could be obtained. This could have been as a result of a radio message from say Mt Isa, the police officers at which could have been waiting for these details to assist in an ongoing investigation.

Upon arriving at the Main Roads building, it was necessary to ‘knock up’ or ‘wake up’ the night watch-man. If you were successful in doing this and then at him finding the file, you could get the relevant information to give the radio operator so that he or she could then convey them to the Central Communications Centre for transmission by radio to the inquirer. This could have been done by morse code because I recall that means of contact still being in place at the time for some of our communications.

In contrast, in recent years prior to my retirement in 1999, the QPS had, by courtesy of the Department of Transport, the MINDA (mobile integrated network data access) which was a device capable of providing the registration details and information on the registered owner within about thirty seconds of entering the number into it.  (I understand that in 2016 the Minda devices have been withdrawn and replaced with more effective devices).

As Chairman of the Mobile Data Committee for several years, I was pleased to be associated with the Minda innovation which was always the plan of the committee to be the forerunner of mobile data.  This has materialized in effect in 2016 and with it the ability of police officers being able to check on a vehicle which they may be following is much superior  to the early days of the trip across the road to get those vital details if you could raise the night watch-man of course.