Taily me old.. you are a bit behind the times when it comes to the Constabulary (is that a word?) west of the FIFO capital.
I shall attempt to bring you up to speed
"The Adavale Copper" of which you speak, was relocated to Wyandra several years ago after some angst. Chris, his replacement at Adavale is one of the nicest blokes you will ever meet, (however you would not want to get on the wrong side of him as he has several amateur boxing titles to his name).
Never the less, the infamous old Adavale copper, (who is now in Wyandra) is still referred to as "The Adavale Copper". Got it?.
I personally find him no trouble at all, and quite pleasant and helpful. Others, who do dodgy ****e (like speed dangerously past triple road trains in Jaguars) however, have run foul of the man on occasion and contributed to his notoriety (including his wife I believe).
I can relate a story regarding "The Adavale Copper" that I find amusing.
A good mate flew for the RFDS here for many years, and eventually got transferred to the Cairns base. Not long after he got posted to Cairns, he was called out to a motorcycle accident up the Cape, where a rider had gone for a trip over the handlebars and hurt himself. Upon landing at the retrieval point, my mate was giving the flight nurse a hand by collecting the patients particulars. The conversation went like this:
My mate: "what's your home address?"
patient: "you won't know where it is! It's one of the smallest towns in Australia with a population of just 6, called Adavale".
My mate: " yeah I know where it is all right.. I must have caught a thousand yellow belly fish in the Blackwater Creek over the years. They reckon that there is a C**t of a copper there now though."
Patient: (looking thoroughly delighted) "That would be me!"
Back to the Cunnamulla incident. It's probably one of the best places to be if you are are going to have an engine failure at night ( in either single or twin). The country is very open and flat. Great to see that everyone walked away. I try and keep out of the NVFR debate with the pontificating experts on here. I have nearly 400 hours of NVFR in a single mostly in arguably the blackest of black hole country, and I ain't dead yet. I try to avoid flying at night if I can, same as I avoid driving at night if I can, as the risks are greater. I keep myself and the aircraft current, and it's seems to work out OK.