Sometimes it's the smallest details that can reveal the biggest crimes.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains images and names of people who have died.
It was a slight peculiarity in the tufts of grass near a deserted fire that led one of Australia's best known Aboriginal trackers to capture Roy Governor, one of the last bushrangers in the early 1920s, near Mendooran in central-west New South Wales.
Aboriginal police tracker Alexander 'Tracker' Riley worked for the NSW Police Force for 40 years and was based in Dubbo from 1911 to 1950.
The Wiradjuri man is best known for his instinct for finding lost people, fugitives and helping solve many cases.
Roy Governor was an expert bushman who had evaded 30 policemen for three months after committing a robbery.
He took to the bush in the Pilliga and terrified settlers over a wide area; that was until Tracker Riley uncovered that Governor had tied pieces of sheepskin to his feet, wool side down, to disguise his tracks.
When police rushed to his hiding place, Governor opened fire. He fell to the ground with a bullet in his back which penetrated his chest and lung. He was revived and initially sentenced to death at the Dubbo Supreme Court before the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
This was just one of many cases Tracker Riley was key in solving.
History comes to life
Tracker Riley is the subject of a theatre-dance production called 'Tracker' which has been choreographed and co-directed by his great-great-nephew Daniel Riley.
The show premiered this month at the Sydney Festival and is set to tour Perth and Adelaide.
"Tracker had been building for many years really, through numerous connections and this ongoing, I suppose for lack of a better term, tracking of my identity and how I fit into my Wiradjuri culture and Wiradjuri kinship system out there in western NSW," Mr Riley said.
The production weaves together dance, music and text, with an all-First Nations cast to tell the story of the first Indigenous sergeant in the NSW Police Force.
Mr Riley, a Wiradjuri man, is the first Indigenous artistic director of the Australian Dance Theatre since the company was founded in 1965.
"I needed and found I wanted to tell another story that connected me to my cultural identity and it just felt like the right story to tell," he said.
"The more I dug into who Uncle Alec was, what he did, the way he served and his cultural strength, it just felt timely to tell this story.
"As my Aunties, also the project elders, said, to make sure people don't forget his name and know the strength of this incredible human and icon in our Wiradjuri lore."
History preserved locally
Local studies officer for Dubbo Regional Council, Simone Taylor is one of many who has helped preserve Tracker Riley's history.
"Tracker Riley actually was quoted in a newspaper that he wasn't so much interested in solving crimes and arresting people, but he liked finding lost people and that was his main goal," she said.
Tracker Riley was also well-known for his role in capturing Albert Moss, who murdered three men near Brummagen Creek at Narromine between 1938 and 1939.
That year he was also officially commended for his work which led to the recovery of property to the value of £80, stolen from the Western Stores in Trangie, along with the arrest of the offenders responsible for the robbery.
"Tracker Riley was able to track their footprints for three miles before they uncovered the buried stolen goods," Ms Taylor explained.
"Three miles if you think of that, three miles if it's a bit sandy you might see the footprints, but if it's stony or rocky or hard-packed dirt, animals walked past, or other people might have walked past, so he managed to find them despite all of that."
The case which 'haunted' Tracker the most
Tracker Riley's granddaughter, Aunty Ann Cribb, said it was the case of a missing boy, that really stuck with her.
On Christmas Day 1940, Tracker Riley was called to look for Desmond Clark, a two-year-old boy who had gone missing from near his home at Bugaldie in the state's north west.
Tracker Riley had ideas of where to look, but police eventually called off the search.
Aunty Ann revealed her grandfather wasn't able to enter the property because he was black.
"My mother said that always haunted him. He was always upset about the fact that he couldn't go on," she said.
"It wasn't the fact he was black, it was the fact he couldn't go and save that boy."
It was almost a year later that Tracker Riley returned to the scene, and began looking in the opposite direction, where he eventually found the child's body in a wash-away.
A family man
In 1942, Tracker Riley was the first Aboriginal police officer to receive the King's Fire and Police Services medal for distinguished conduct.
But he was also fondly remembered for being a family man.
"As far as a person, he was very gentle, very quietly spoken, very humble and what I would call from that period especially a true gentleman," Aunty Ann said.
"He was always very dedicated to his family and the local community."
He married Ethel Taylor, an Aboriginal woman from Dubbo, at Wellington in 1910 and together they had eight children.
While working in Dubbo, he lived most of the time on the Talbragar Reserve, north of the town.
Riley was quoted in the Sunday Herald in 1950, ahead of his retirement crediting his tracking skills to Aboriginal "men who roamed the bush near Condobolin" 60 years prior.
"We lived at the Mission Station, but I liked to hunt with the full-bloods. When I was eight years of age they started to teach me how to track," he was quoted as saying.
Aside from police duties, Tracker Riley was also a keen footballer, boxer and a fine athlete. He was well respected in the community and coached athletics in Dubbo for many years.
He retired from the force in July 1950, but received no pension for his 40 years of service.
The legendary tracker is still fondly remembered in Dubbo today.
In June 1997, his granddaughter Kathy Green and the Minister for Roads Carl Scully opened a cycleway along the Macquarie River named in his honour.
