Anyone who has visited the Northern Territory outback will know it is a vast and lonely place, easy to get lost in, but difficult to be found.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that the following article contains images and names of people who have died.

Skilled locators have long stood on the sidelines of some of the most infamous missing and wanted persons cases in the Northern Territory.

Azaria Chamberlain, Peter Falconio and even Nemarluk, the Indigenous warrior who is said to have fled from the Fannie Bay Gaol by swimming across the Darwin Harbour: all have called upon Indigenous police trackers.

Trackers were prototypical forensics teams; countrymen who could trace people's paths through bushland based on their footprint, gait and manipulations in the landscape so small they might go unnoticed by people who don't know the country well.

Recently, the passing of a Yuendumu man remembered as one of the last great police trackers gave cause to remember the significant legacy of the trackers.

A Northern Territory policeman and Aboriginal tracker pause during a patrol for a billy of tea and the new by portable radio. ( Supplied: National Archives of Australia. A1200, L21412. )

"Their first use was essentially exactly what the title says: tracking people down; finding them in the bush," former assistant police commissioner and NT Police Museum and Historical Society chairperson Mark McAdie said.

But their role was also cultural, and frequently drew upon their community relationships, language knowledge and even their skills foraging for bush foods.

"They also assisted those early police to survive in the bush because it was new country to them and they didn't know how to survive."

In other words, the trackers were an early bridge between black and white worlds, stepping in to fill the considerable gap between policing the outback and moving through its ungovernable, unforgiving terrain.

A prisoner saves his captor

In the Northern Territory, the first tracker identifiable by name was posted to Barrow Creek in 1874, after riding by horseback from Oodnadatta.

Neighbour was awarded an Albert Medal for his bravery in 1911. He remains the only Indigenous recipient. ( Supplied: Dr Herbert Basedow 1928 / National Museum of Australia )

They have been recognised for their bravery and unique skills in the decades since, and police history is filled with remarkable stories of their bravery.

Despite this, tracing their contributions can be difficult.

Many trackers were only ever employed using a single, often westernised moniker. (The Barrow Creek tracker is officially recorded as Sargent.)

"A name like John, or Teddy, with no surname, no other identifying materials," said Mr McAdie, who worked with trackers at remote police stations early in his 35-year career with the force.

"One of the tasks that we're trying to do is identify every tracker who's ever been employed. It's a very difficult task."

According to Mr McAdie, the police force never trained a tracker, but hand-picked them based on their pre-existing knowledge of country.

They held complicated, symbolic relationships with the force.

In one well-known case, a tracker called Neighbour, also known as Ayaiga, was being escorted across a flooded river crossing in 1911 when Constable William Johns, an officer who later became the South Australian police commissioner, came off his horse and plunged into the water.

Former assistant police commissioner Mark McAdie served in the force for 35 years. ( ABC Radio Darwin: Jesse Thompson )

Neighbour, a prisoner in chains at the time, would go on to be awarded a significant bravery medal for what he did next.

"Neighbour took his neck chain, wrapped it around his shoulders and jumped into the river and saved his life," Mr McAdie said.

"He became a tracker afterwards, and that's not actually uncommon. A good proportion of trackers started their careers with the police as prisoners rather than as trackers and morphed into trackers afterwards."

The tracker becomes the tracked

In 1969, another of these remarkable stories prompted a white policeman to campaign for a tracker's bravery to be honoured for decades.

Graham McMahon was working with the Criminal Investigation Branch in Alice Springs when he learned of Teddy Jangala Egan's actions about two years earlier.

Aboriginal tracker Ted Egan was posthumously awarded a police medal for bravery for the 1967 capture of a fugitive in the Central Australian outback. ( Supplied )

Billy Benn, a fellow tracker, had murdered a rival and fled into the outback.

But Mr Benn was talented and meticulously erased his tracks to avoid capture, leading numerous police squads on a long outback pursuit.

Mr Egan, who is quoted as saying tracking humans is easier than animals because "people make too much mess", was brought in to help.

But in this instance Teddy located the criminal using the pawprints of his dog.

"[One of three policemen with Teddy at the time] said 'There we were, lying behind rocks with our rifles, and Teddy walked up and took the firearm off him'," Mr McMahon recalled form his backyard in Darwin.

"But the police force got the credit for finding him in the papers in those days, and Teddy wasn't recognised.

"The policeman out there really respected [trackers], but not necessarily the higher-ups in the police force. Teddy Egan is an example of that."

It wasn't until 2015, after Mr McMahon had written to at least five separate police commissioners, that Mr Egan was posthumously recognised with a medal for bravery.

Mr McMahon also successfully campaigned to have plaques commemorating the trackers installed at remote police stations across the Northern Territory.

Up until recently, police trackers served in the Northern Territory police force since it began in the 1870s. ( Supplied: National Archives of Australia. NAA: A1200, L81400A. )

Is enough being done to recognise them now?

"We can always do more," Mr McAdie said.

Non-Indigenous police mystified by skill

Although they were generally relegated to the Northern Territory's remote areas, trackers were occasionally called upon to solve urban mysteries.

Two police trackers in the Northern Territory circa 1958. ( Kyle Woodley Collection / Northern Territory Library )

In one instance, Mr McMahon and his team were left scratching their heads over a residential break-in.

Trackers often worked as labourers between tracking work, and their roles would be re-shaped into Aboriginal Community Police Officers as trackers were phased out as the turn of the millennium approached.

Mr McMahon found Mr Egan sweeping floors in the police station when he asked for his help.

"With that, Teddy came in," Mr McMahon said.

"Hours had passed and then Teddy turned up, he was short on words. He said 'I think I found him'."

The tracker led the police to a home in the suburb of East Side where they found a sleeping man, the stolen goods and a pair of thongs spread out on the floor around him.

The police were mystified.

"I asked him where he'd gone and [Teddy] said he tracked him all along the footpath, through Woolworths in town. He'd gone in one door and out the other, over the footbridge and into East Side.

"I said 'How'd you track him, Teddy?' It was two and a half miles.

"He picked up a thong and there was a tiny bit of bitumen in it.