Inside Canberra’s Forensic Anthropology and Archaeology (FAA) lab. Photo: AFP.
The number one question Sergeant Amy van Bilsen gets asked is simple: “Is your job like in the movies?”.
Her laugh is immediate.
“Like the movies, we definitely get in under the crime-scene tape,” she says.
“But it’s never that glamorous. It can be long shifts in forensic suits and DNA masks, which can be quite sweaty and hot.”
Amy is team leader of ACT Crime Scenes for the Australian Federal Police’s (AFP) Forensic Anthropology and Archaeology (FAA) capability, a small but specialised team based in Canberra tasked with examining human remains.
Canberra’s FAA forensics team studies a scene during a training event. Photo: AFP.
Over the years, it’s helped piece together crime scenes, identify long-term missing persons, even recover soldiers’ remains from battlefields decades old – although most of the work involves kangaroo bones.
“It’s actually quite common for Canberra bushwalkers to stumble across skeletal remains,” Amy says.
“Most of the time, however – probably close to 100 per cent – they’re kangaroo bones. People just aren’t familiar [with bones], but we can provide that assurance whether it’s human or not.”
Last financial year, the team attended 13 scenes in the ACT, four of which involved human skeletal remains. But even these weren’t too sinister.
“Often times, if they’re human, they’re medical specimens. So there might be a case of deceased estate and someone is going through boxes in the attic and comes across what is essentially a human skeleton, but it’s one for medical training purposes,” she says.
“That would be the case for the four we found last financial year.”
Established in 2019, the FAA team is made up of about 15 members spread across the country.
Most balance their FAA work with other roles in the AFP, from fingerprint analysis to craniofacial reconstruction.
Amy joined the AFP in 1998 after studying human anatomy in Brisbane and completing a master’s in forensics.
Kangaroo bones brought back to Canberra’s FAA lab for examination. Photo: AFP.
“Because I’d been in the crime scene team here in Canberra for quite some time, we were getting these types of jobs – like when bones were found by bushwalkers,” she says.
“We realised there were quite a few of us with these skills and a need was identified to coordinate our response better, develop training and standard procedures. That’s when FAA was formed.
“There’s a lot you can tell from a skeleton: sex, trauma, whether it’s pre- or post-mortem. But really, identification often comes down to dental records or DNA.”
The FAA team examines bones in the field, through images, or in a lab. But other times, it takes them to far-flung places overseas.
In 2023, Amy and two colleagues supported the Australian Defence Force in Papua New Guinea, helping recover the remains of Australian soldiers who died during the Kokoda Campaign in 1942.
The Templeton’s Crossing site, only accessible on foot or by helicopter, revealed 65 graves with partial remains of 15 soldiers recovered alongside personal artefacts.
“We recognise the historical significance of this work and we’re honoured to have supported the ADF,” Amy says.
Her most memorable assignment, though, was closer to the world stage: Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.
“It just comes back to that privilege to help,” she says.
“I was deployed for a couple of months in the Netherlands and Ukraine during the disaster victim identification phase. We were part of a process that gave families answers they otherwise wouldn’t have had.”
The FAA team on the ground in Papua New Guinea unearthing remains of WWII soldiers. Photo: AFP.
Currently, the team is busy on a research project with University of Technology Sydney to test what effect decompositional fluids has on digital devices buried with human remains.
“These devices can have a lot of information – messages, audio files, time of death,” Amy says.
“But some of the fluids could be really acidic, or there could be water or a lot of weathering if the remains are outside … We haven’t got any results yet, but there might be procedures that can be implemented immediately, or different methods of extracting the data, in future investigation.”
After 27 years with AFP, Amy may not remember the job’s first-day excitement but never forgets how diversified it can be.
“I think once you’ve done something for quite a bit of time, it becomes too familiar and you forget how exciting it was when you first started,” she says.
“But I understand there’s a lot of variety in our job, which is a real blessing.”
