In his far north Queensland hometown of Coen, Barry Port is a living legend — even the town's public bar is named in his honour.

The 74-year-old was the last Aboriginal tracker officially employed by an Australian police service.

Mr Port hung up his hat three years ago and now spends his days fishing on the Coen River.

That's a far cry from the perils he faced during his 36 years pursuing drug dealers, escaped prisoners and cattle rustlers while assisting Queensland Police.

"We'd go out looking for drugs, people camping in the bush who had set up big plantations and once we found it we'd destroy it all," Mr Coen said.

"You could follow their footsteps through the scrub, they'd make a bit of a track to their crop.

"It was a pretty dangerous job, [the dealers] they've got guns and knives and you'd have to be very careful."

Crocodile infested waterways

Mr Port said traversing the remote terrain and conditions in search of criminals and missing travellers also posed serious risk, particularly in the crocodile infested waterways of Cape York Peninsula.

"Some of the rivers were pretty high and you couldn't take a vehicle across so we'd have to swim and go by foot," Mr Port said.

"We'd look for footprints, broken sticks, you'd work your way through the bushes.

"It was dangerous."

Barry Port's skills were invaluable in solving crime and helping to save lives. ( ABC Far North: Anna Hartley )

The quietly-spoken Lama Lama Elder said he's proud he could serve his community through the traditional bush skills he learnt from his father, who learnt from his father before him.

"Dad didn't have any vehicle so we used to go hunting on feet," Mr Port remembered.

"We'd look for fresh tracks from pigs and we'd learn how to find bush tucker, my dad and mum showed us how to do it.

"My dad used to help the police too."

Key to people's survival as well as crime-busting

Hamilton Morris as Sam Kelly in Sweet Country ( Supplied: Bunya Productions )

The role of Aboriginal trackers has been celebrated in popular culture through films like The Tracker and Sweet Country but Dr Michael Bennett, senior historian for NSW Native Title Services, said their important contributions were a largely under-acknowledged aspect of Australian history.

"There are innumerable crimes that have been solved by trackers over the past 200 years," Dr Bennett said.

"There are also an incredible number of people who owe their lives to trackers because it was the trackers who were sent out to look for people who'd become lost in the bush, lost in arid environments and without the intervention of trackers they simply wouldn't have survived."

And despite the conflicts caused by colonisation, Aboriginal bush skills were helping police since the very first days of European settlement.

"Even after the First Fleet arrived and convicts absconded, there were early accounts from the late 1700s and early 1800s of Aboriginal men from Sydney being asked to pursue and capture convicts that had escaped so it's really right from the first point of European contact that knowledge was being utilised," Dr Bennett said.

"The New South Wales Police Force was formed in 1862; they were using Aboriginal trackers from day one and they continued to employ them right up until 1973.

"Going back to the early days a lot of police were just simply unfamiliar with the landscape; they relied on trackers to help them just set-up camp for the night, to find water, to live in a landscape that was foreign to them."

Role of trackers evolved over Australia's history

Dr Bennett said the role of Aboriginal trackers evolved as the fledging Australian nation took shape.

Barry Port continued a tradition of Aboriginal trackers helping police to find criminals such as bushrangers Ned Kelly, above and Ben Hall. ( Supplied )

Ben Hall was a notorious bushranger in the Central West of New South Wales during the 1860s.

"After the Gold Rush, during the 1860s, there were bushrangers like Ben Hall and later on Ned Kelly roaming through the bush robbing and pillaging; the police relied, to a great extent, on trackers to pursue those bushrangers," Dr Bennett said.

"Billy Dargin was involved in the shootout that led to the death of Ben Hall, Watkin Wynne played a really incredible role in the capture of the Clarke brothers south of Braidwood.

"Moving forward into the 1870s and 1880s, the role of trackers was much more focused on protecting the pastoral and agricultural wealth of central and northern New South Wales.

"Trackers were asked to pursue horse thieves and sheep thieves and to investigate crop burnings."

The numbers of trackers employed by Australian police services diminished throughout the 20th century with the introduction of new technologies and policing methods.

"As cars and trucks and planes and helicopters became available to police, the role of trackers in looking for people lost in the bush certainly declined," Dr Bennett said.

"The growing use of police scientific techniques helped them to be able to solve murders and other crimes and trackers were no longer required."

While Barry Port's retirement marked the end of an era, Dr Bennett said traditional bush skills were still an available resource.

"I certainly believe that those skills still exist today within Aboriginal communities throughout Australia so the practitioners are there to be called upon should the police require them but I guess the methodology of policing has changed in the last couple of decades."