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Olympic champion Kyle Chalmers has let his younger rivals know that he's ready to lead them on a journey towards the Paris Games next year, winning the national 100m freestyle title on the final night of the Australian Swimming Championships.

The 24-year-old South Australian, who led from start to finish, clocked 48.00 seconds to see off teenagers Kai Taylor (48.41) and Flynn Southam (48.53) at the Gold Coast Aquatic Centre on Thursday.

"These boys are the reason I get up every day - they inspire me to get up and get after it and they are the future," said Chalmers, who admitted he has never been happier in his swimming career.

The night began with a second world record swim from Paralympian Timothy Hodge, again lowering his own 200m IM mark which he had broken in Melbourne earlier in the year and then again on Thursday morning.

The 20-year-old from Sydney clocked 2min 12.06sec and was later named in the 32-strong team for this year's Para World Championships in July-August in Manchester.

"I've got to say I'm very, very happy with that time and to break that world record twice was amazing," Hodge said.

World champion Mollie O'Callaghan claimed the women's 200m freestyle crown in a time of 1:55.15, ahead of Olympic champion Ariarne Titmus (1:55.28) and Shayna Jack (1:55.37).

Queenslander O'Callaghan added to her last gasp win over Jack in the 100m and her personal best times in the 50 and 100m backstroke to wrap up a successful meet.

In the women's 200m backstroke, 16-year-old Brisbane schoolgirl Jaclyn Barclay (2:11.50) lunged at the wall to take her maiden open title from Hannah Fredericks (2:11.72) and Jenna Forrester (2:11.95).

Dual Olympian Brianna Throssell added the 100m butterfly to her 50m 'fly win, touching in 57.57 to pip Alexandria Perkins (57.64) and Kayla Costa (59.37).

Matt Temple won the 200m butterfly in 1:56.96, while Olympic bronze medallist Brendon Smith snatched the 400IM title from Tokyo teammate Se-Bom Lee.

The last individual event of the championships featured Tokyo Olympic finalist Madeleine Gough winning the 1500m freestyle in 16:08.76.

© AAP 2023

Queensland police have confirmed that a preliminary examination of items located at a refuse site are not related to ongoing investigations into a missing 78-year-old woman.

Several "items of interest" were found on Thursday afternoon at the landfill site, which was being combed for the remains of retired teacher Lesley Trotter.

Three days into the search, Queensland Police said several items were discovered at the Swanbank waste management facility in Ipswich.

Ms Trotter vanished from the inner Brisbane suburb of Toowong on March 28.

Her mobile phone and wallet were found in her unit and her car was still in the garage.

Investigators believe Ms Trotter was killed the night she went missing and her remains were hidden in a wheelie bin, which was compacted by rubbish collectors and freighted to two massive landfill sites.

The search began on Tuesday at the Swanbank facility on the outskirts of Ipswich after days of preparations to narrow down the search area.

Police said no further updates would be available at this stage.

© AAP 2023

Queensland is inviting retired and former police officers back to the front lines as the service faces the departure of hundreds of staff in the next few years.

Proposed changes will allow for a new category of "special constable" to help ease staffing pressure on the state's police service, with officers over the mandatory retirement age of 60 allowed to return and undertake frontline duties.

At present, police officers can only be employed full time or part time and they cannot be employed past 60.

With 176 Queensland police officers expected to depart the force in the next 12 months and more than 850 by 2026, Commissioner Katarina Carroll said the special constables would strengthen frontline numbers, particularly on busier shifts such as weekends and public holidays.

"Another example is if people take long-term leave over those holidays, we'll get these special constables in, but also frontline duties for natural disasters and those big events that we've got coming like the Olympic Games," she said on Thursday.

Ms Carroll said police hotlines were already buzzing with interest and several soon-to-be mandatorily retired officers had expressed their desire to stay on within these roles.

She said the ideal roles to fill were general duty frontline staff, and police would target both retiring workers and those who had departed the force in recent years.

Officers will have to undergo testing and will be fully sworn in and have the standard powers of an operating police officer.

"This is transition into retirement but I think more than that, what it allows us to do is have a pool of relief officers that we can deploy very, very quickly which at the moment is a rigid system of doing that," she said.

Ms Carroll said police had faced recruitment challenges recently but this program was not in response to propping up their pipeline of new recruits.

© AAP 2023