You're damned if you do and damned if you don't - and often expected to work under impossible conditions.

Though the circumstances are different, this hasn't changed over the past 200 years.

Yet through doggedness, shrewdness, selflessness and guts, our police usually got the job done.

Constable William Murnane joined the force in 1873 and was stationed at Evandale.

However, he unwisely spoke up when the sub-inspector there tampered with evidence in order to obtain a conviction of Mrs Dinah Duffell of the Patriot King Hotel, and suffered the consequences.

He retired to Longford, before rejoining the Territorial Police in 1878 and being stationed at Patersonia.

When the Lisle gold rush began in 1879, he was transferred there.

Now Lisle is 40 kilometres from Launceston, and the worthy constable was not issued with a horse.

The department did give him a five-shillings-a-day salary, and a cheap timber hut without windows which they called a residence/office. But if he needed a horse, he had to rent one for £1 a day - paid out of his own pocket.

This was impractical, so every few days he walked the 40 kilometres into Launceston to obtain warrants, then 40 kilometres back.

He was away for at least two days, and the criminals simply waited until he was out of sight, then had the town to themselves.

One time after a store was robbed he fooled the felon, who felt so secure in the constable's absence he began openly hawking the stolen goods around.

He had quite a shock when Murnane jumped out from a hiding place and nabbed him.

If he was foolish enough to make an arrest, Murnane would have to take the prisoner with him to Launceston on foot.

Naturally villains wouldn't march 40 kilometres in a day, so he was forced to stop overnight at one of the Patersonia hotels, paying a day or two's salary for this out of his own pocket.

There was no reimbursement of expenses.

At the end of 1883 Murnane transferred to the Launceston Constabulary as a detective and left Lisle.

The townsfolk were so appreciative of his dedication they held a public ceremony in his honour, giving him a beautiful certificate and a purse of gold sovereigns.

Afterwards came a farewell party at the Post Office Hotel, where the stopcocks were opened and the beer flowed freely.

When Murnane and his wife Annie later arrived in Launceston, they found a large advertisement in The Launceston Examiner commending him for his work over the past years.

Late in 1884 he transferred to the Health Board as a sanitary inspector. Many police took on special duties like this, apparently while remaining within the police force.

There he served faithfully for 40 years, through two smallpox epidemics and the Spanish flu, before dying at Invermay in 1924.