Batman socks, a dog fountain, a cafe corner: Quiet tributes for two fallen officers

The police officers who went to Dezi Freeman’s remote home in Victoria’s high country to serve a warrant a year ago today say they didn’t know what they were walking into. But they knew they had two of their best officers with them.

Veteran detective Neal Thompson was on his last proper job just days away from retiring while rising star, 35-year-old Vadim de Waart-Hottart, had recently arrived from Melbourne’s Public Order Response Squad.

In the ambush that followed, Freeman shot both officers dead, and injured another, before disappearing into the wilds of Mount Buffalo in Porepunkah. The murders sparked Australia’s biggest-ever manhunt, ending in Freeman’s death in a shootout seven months later and more than 100 kilometres away at the New South Wales border, and left a community – and two police families – devastated .

On Tuesday, hundreds gathered outside the pair’s station in Wangaratta as police unveiled two memorials for Thompson and de Waart-Hottart, hewn from rock side by side. A dog fountain is coming too, for Thompson the dog-lover. And another plaque will be unveiled, further up the mountain in Bright, a year on from the killings on Wednesday.

Police Chief Commissioner Mike Bush said it would be “a solemn day for every single member of Victoria Police”. Ten officers went to Freeman’s off-grid property that day to “hold an alleged paedophile to account” as part of a child sexual abuse investigation, Bush said.

“Over the last 12 months I have witnessed our organisation unite in times of utter shock and grief, all while remaining steadfast in finding answers for our beloved colleagues.”

Many of those answers are still to emerge, ahead of inquests into both the August 26 shootings and Freeman’s final shootout with police when he refused to surrender in his shipping container hide-out near the border. The hunt is still on too for those who helped him on the run, after all those long months of searching and hundreds of police raids across the high country.

But this week is not about Freeman, the sovereign citizen lionised by conspiracy theorists online. Nearby towns are heaving with loved ones of de Waart-Hottart and Thompson travelling up for the memorials.

In one photo, Vadim holds a painting created for him by someone he helped on the job through a mental health crisis; tall Vadim in a swirl of chaos, listening with his hands clasped.

Since his death, some of his former squad mates have taken to wearing a uniform not strictly police-issue: Batman socks and badges. De Waart-Hottart once joked he’d get thrown out of the police academy for wearing Batman socks, but he loved the caped crusader. His little brother Sacha, back home in Belgium where they’d grown up, had always said Vadim was his hero, his Batman, protecting him and now Vadim was out protecting his community.

De Waart-Hottart did it all with a smile, acting commander Peta Barrett said Tuesday. In fact, he could never quite believe his own luck. He was brimming with tales of unexpected opportunities, she said, travel disasters that turned into kind offers of hospitality.