Episode 14 Emergency Rescue Down Under

They're the Brits who race to the rescue down under.

'Multiple patients critical.'

Everyday heroes saving lives...

'12 miles to run.'

..battling fires...

Do not go out now! It's too late.

It can be extremely dangerous.

..and fighting crime...

Put your arm down.

Police! Open the door!

..from the big city to the outback...

Our policing district is bigger than the whole of the UK.

..from the bush...

He's been crushed between one of those Dingo diggers and a ute.

..to Bondi Beach.

'The search continues for a British tourist who hasn't been seen

'since he went for a swim.'

You never quite know what you're in for or what's going to happen.

3-3-2, mate, on the heading.

Very high impact. He's really quite critically injured.

Brits on blue lights

under blue skies.

Today down under, a storm causes chaos

and puts a patient's rescue in jeopardy...

We understand why you want to go to North Shore,

but obviously a storm is a storm, so...

'No worries.'

..expat policeman John risks life and limb

in the hunt for a burglar...

There he is. Come here.

-Come here, come here!

-BLEEP

We don't start like that.

Get up, get up.

..and Brits come to the rescue on Bondi Beach.

-WEATHER REPORTER:

-It's Lars Peterson in for Jason Staveley this evening,

with some showers expected for Sydney. Could even still

get that thunderstorm coming through later this evening as well.

The weather can be just as unpredictable down under

as it is back home.

Today, RAF veteran John Legge must outrun the storm.

Keep an eye on that thunderstorm as well.

That's going to be an issue for our return leg, I think.

Yeah!

He's part of a medical team racing to help

a seriously injured biker in woods north of Sydney.

-RADIO:

-People have stated patient's paralysis from the navel down.

It's not a simple mission.

Time is against them and they need to land without delay.

OK, it's 2-3-8.

OK, let's... You want to find them and then...

There they are, directly below, mate.

They're just at my nine o'clock now, Legge.

You can see them right below us, mate, really close up.

Oh, yeah, got them.

As the team's medics hitch a ride with the police,

it's John's job to help plan the patient's journey to hospital.

Thanks, mate.

The site is probably about 200 metres up the road.

So, we've just arranged for the police to come

and take our doctor and paramedic up to the scene.

And now we're just waiting to see what they want to do next.

At the scene, the medics fear the biker has broken his back.

I'll just ring Legge and let him know what our plan is.

Hey, mate, we're going to come down to you

once we're ready, packaged.

So, we'll be travelling to North Shore by air.

All right, mate, we'll see you in a bit. Cheers, bye.

Yeah, we're going to transport to Royal North Shore by air.

Royal North Shore?

Sydney's spinal surgery unit is in the heart of the city,

at the Royal North Shore Hospital.

It's right in the centre of the storm.

I don't know that going into Royal North Shore's going to be

such a good idea because there's going to be more storms

-behind these ones.

-Yeah.

-PHONE RINGS

-Yes, mate?

Hey, mate, we're going to have to make it Westmead, I'm afraid.

'Um, it's spinal, mate.'

It's weather.

-Eh, weather?

-Yeah.

-OK.

The team has a difficult choice to make.

Thunderstorms can tear helicopters apart.

We understand why you want to go to North Shore,

but obviously a storm's a storm, so...

Yeah, all right, no worries.

There's no alternative.

John and his Aussie pilot must say no.

Because it is a spinal hospital and they want to take him there,

they've decided to go by road.

So, they're going to take him in the ambulance to Royal North Shore.

The decision is made and the injured biker heads to hospital by road.

It's his best chance of being able to walk again

without risking a hazardous helicopter flight.

But if John hadn't been on hand with his medical team,

the biker's chances would've been even smaller.

This is Australia's Wild West.

The rugged outback around the gold-mining town of Kalgoorlie.

It's a place where miners earn and spend small fortunes.

It's a long way from British police officer John Doyle's old beat.

I was on a response team in Toxteth in Liverpool.

Just seemed like a no-brainer to transfer here

and I've been here for just gone four years now.

The people you're dealing with are completely different

to anything that you've been used to in the UK.

But the incidents and the type of incident you're dealing with

is just the same.

Policing is policing.

So, wherever you go in the world, policing is the same.

His Aussie colleague Toni Nicholls is used to working with Brits.

Bit of rivalry with the cricket and that. It's good.

The guys on the team do notice that Doyle-y is not from around here.

His accent's very, very thick, I guess.

Hard to understand sometimes.

I'm working on teaching them all Scouse, though.

Yeah.

No matter where you're from, police the world over

are constantly on the lookout for suspicious cars.

-Hello.

-Hello, mate.

We're just doing a licence check and a breath test today.

The driver is being breathalysed.

But one of his passengers has a bigger problem.

He's a wanted man.

I believe you've got an outstanding warrant, mate,

so if you just want to pass me your hands, please.

-What for?

-What for? Because I believe

you've got an outstanding warrant, so, I'm going to handcuff you

until can verify it.

Give me your other hand, mate.

'Right, one long continuous breath until I tell you to stop.

'Keep going, keep going, keep going.

'Yep.'

Just pass us your arm, mate.

-Pass us your other arm.

-Perfect, all zeros, thank you.

We'll sit you down, mate, and then we'll conduct some checks,

but I'm pretty happy that the warrant is outstanding.

What for?

I'm not sure, mate.

Can I just grab your name, sir, please?

Another passenger is unhappy with his treatment.

OK, can we have your name, please?

Yeah, Constable Nicholls. What's your name?

John checks the suspect's record on the police database.

He has a long list of run-ins with the law.

Date of birth, sir?

And your date of birth, ma'am?

You're getting me angry now.

By law I can ask you your name, date of birth and address.

What's your address, please?

How can you just pull us up like this and pick us up?

Because this is a random breath test.

This fella's got 11 outstanding bench warrants

that we've just put in the van.

Ten of them, from what I can look at, are for fines

and he's got one which is a warrant in the first which is

issued here if there's sufficient enough evidence to charge.

So, at the moment, he's going to be under arrest for a burglary offence

and for the ten outstanding fines warrant.

The wanted man is arrested and will be taken to the police station.

But the other occupants of the car are free to go.

He's going to be staying in custody with us overnight.

All right? And then he'll probably be going to prison tomorrow.

Yeah, go on, mate.

Hey! Mate, you can't speak to him.

You can't speak to him.

-I thought you wanted to speak to me. Just...

-Nah, I thought...

Yeah, nah, if he... You can't speak to him now, mate, he's under arrest,

so, we can't have you...

We can't open the door for you or anything like that.

What is it you need to speak to him about?

Going to the station!

He reckon you've got him locked up... Jail.

Well, he is. We're not having a conversation on the road, mate.

If you want to speak to us, then we'll speak to you at the station.

Still got it, mate.

SHE GIGGLES

I call it the copper's eye. Do you know what I mean?

You see something and you're just not happy about it.

Years of experience is what it is.

Collecting fines is a major problem for Australian courts.

Some prefer jail time.

This suspect will spend two days behind bars

as a result of his unpaid penalties.

After that, he'll face a burglary charge.

Ambulance Emergency, what town or suburb?

24 hours a day, Australia's emergency services

fight to save lives across nearly five million square miles.

So, he's crushed in between both vehicles, is that correct?

Yes.

Some casualties can be hours from hospital, even by air.

Is he breathing?

And flying doctors travel huge distances.

We can go for secondary transfers by road, by helicopter,

or by fixed-wing and that's all distance-led, essentially.

Although sometimes, if it's a specialist transfer,

we'll go a lot further in the helicopter.

We could fly the equivalent of London to Edinburgh,

but we'd have to do a refuel on the way

and you'd have a very numb bum by the time you got there.

Today at Sydney Airport, an air ambulance is being prepared

to take off on a rescue mission to a remote seaside town

on the New South Wales coast.

Numero four.

British flight nurse Susan Ankers is the medic on board.

'This morning we're going to Port Macquarie to pick up

'a seven-month-old baby who has had a choking episode.

'Apparently he was lying on the floor after his feed

'and his mum heard him choking a lot.'

So, now they're worried that he's got a foreign body

stuck somewhere, not in his trachea, which is his windpipe,

but in his oesophagus, which is the pipe that goes from

your mouth down into your stomach.

'He's drooling a lot, he's quite distressed,

'but at the moment he's fairly stable.

'That's what the nurses in the emergency at Port Macquarie

'have told me. So, we'll go and check him out and see how he is.'

269, runway, clear to take off.

Susan's young patient lives 300 miles

north of Sydney, in the seaside town of Port Macquarie.

Even by plane, it's a long way up the surfing beaches

of New South Wales.

We have an ETA of approximately 12.25.

1-2-2-5.

Susan and her pilot finally arrive in Port Macquarie.

It's taken them an hour and a half to get here.

It's feared little Jaxx Eggings has something lodged in his throat.

They've done a chest X-ray, but they haven't put any cameras down

or anything to have a look. That's what we're going...

You're going there for an endoscopy.

He's subdued and obviously ill.

And when he's crying, he's not going...

He doesn't appear to go blue or anything? He's got no...

-No.

-..synosis round his lips?

-Just when he's doing that choking thing...

-Yeah.

..you thought he was blue this morning at home?

No, he wasn't blue, he was really red, though.

Really red. So, you didn't notice any blueness

around the lips or anything?

I can't tell you cos I wasn't looking for that.

-I was just trying to...

-Yep.

Susan fears whatever he swallowed may be affecting his breathing.

The decision is taken to fly mother and baby

to the city of Newcastle, 150 miles south.

Jaxx is hooked up to a monitor,

so Susan can keep an eye on the oxygen levels in his blood.

My concerns will be his respiratory rate,

how much he's breathing, if he's in any pain,

how distressed he is and, obviously,

we don't want him to have another choking episode

on the aeroplane and going blue.

So, I need to make sure that we've got oxygen and suction

and equipment up and running,

just in case anything like that does happen.

Eventually, he settles.

He's all right, he's just distressed.

He hasn't eaten or had a sleep, he's probably hungry

and just feeling generally a bit distressed, I think.

I don't think he's in pain,

but you know, he hasn't had anything to eat and he's just a bit fed up

with people poking at him and all that sort of stuff.

All right, sh, sh, sh.

After 45 minutes in the air, the plane arrives in Newcastle

where doctors at the local trauma unit

are waiting to examine Jaxx.

The difficulty being in a plane, you haven't got a lot of room.

The obstruction in his throat was cleared

and he was soon allowed back home to the New South Wales coast.

In Australia's gold rush country,

it's the beginning of another shift at Kalgoorlie police station.

What's your Glock number, John?

1-5-1-0, mate.

Western Australia Police rely on British recruits

to help enforce the law here

and they're well equipped to do it.

All police officers routinely carry...

a Glock...

and a Taser.

If you're coming up against people who've got firearms or knives,

you need to be able to overcome whatever the threat is.

So, yeah, I mean, it doesn't bother me in the slightest, mate.

John Doyle was in the Merseyside force,

Jon Maskell served in the Met

and today he's in charge of the armoury.

So, the lads will kit up. Draw their Glocks, draw their Tasers.

They'll grab a radio, a prelim to do some breath testing.

It's just a way of ensuring that everything that does go out

is returned, because as you can imagine,

the amount of firearms and rounds, and other specialist equipment,

everything has to be accountable.

We don't want to go losing anything because that'd be a bad thing.

Ready to rock and roll now, so we'll see what the night brings.

Kalgoorlie is a town where miners are well paid,

and the first job of the evening

is to a vacant luxury home, burglary in progress.

'Caller reports the rear of the property,

'they can hear glass breaking and voices coming from inside.

'They believe someone is breaking in.'

It's clear how the burglar got in. He may be injured.

DOG BARKS

And he could still be here.

INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER

Hello, police!

Police, hello?

After checking, the house appears to be empty.

The front window's certainly smashed so we've gone in just to have a look

to make sure that no-one was in there,

but there's no-one in there.

So, whether or not they've been in, I don't know.

It's hard to say.

The two Johns get back on patrol.

But, in a nearby garden they spot an intruder.

Yeah. Spin it, mate, there's someone there.

Just saw someone in the shadows, just there.

-Where, where, where?

-He's just gone.

Thought he went in here.

There he is. Come here. Come here, come here, come to me.

We don't start like that, mate.

-I'm not going to run nowhere.

-You're not going to run anywhere,

but we don't start off like that, do we? What are you doing?

-I'm walking home.

-Where have you been?

-I've got him mate, I've got him.

-OK, all right.

-Whoa, whoa, ow!

-What's up with you?

-Whoa, whoa, wow!

-Why are you being like this?

-Whoa, whoa, wow!

Why are you being like this?

BLEEP

Don't start talking like that, don't start talking like that.

I'm walking home, bro!

Put your arm behind your back. Turn over.

Put your arm behind your back, this one.

-Put your arm behind your back.

-I am. Officer!

Sit up, stop acting like a peanut.

BLEEP

I'm trying to go home!

Stop swearing.

Well, don't turn round as if you're going to spit at us.

-Get up.

-Get up.

The man is known to the police.

He's supposed to be at home under curfew.

-Has he?

-Yeah.

Excuse me, Constable, don't carry me like this!

They think they have their man.

Claret all over me, man.

Just as they're ready to head to the station, there's a problem.

Well, that's not good, is it?

The police car's battery has run out of juice.

We've only been out the car 10 minutes!

Is there another van that can bring some jump leads out to us?

We've got a flat battery.

What the British officers didn't know

is that there's a spare battery in Aussie police cars.

Where's that?

Oh, yeah, that's a good idea.

We'll give it a whirl Ben. Thanks, mate.

Right, now try.

ENGINE STARTS

Legend!

You can tell we're poms, can't you?

It's like a disaster, we've got a flat battery,

what are we going to do about it? We're lost in the bush.

No, not that one...

They're back in action.

One problem down, but there's soon another.

John has left something at the scene.

Just keep, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going.

Stop.

Your cuffs.

Oh! That's class, mate!

That's is the biggest mistake of all time!

We've just got acting Sergeant Maskell's handcuffs,

that he decided to leave at the scene of the crime!

10,000 miles from home, old police rivalries

still re-surface from time to time.

And his keys!

I don't how they operated in the Metropolitan Police,

but this would've never happened in Merseyside.

THEY LAUGH

Finally on their way, they head to the station.

Their prisoner's going to spend the night in the cells.

But there's no proof he committed the burglary.

He's later released, and his curfew conditions remain in place.

Bondi Beach is one of Australia's national treasures,

a strip of sand less than a mile long that's world famous,

and today, the safety of the people enjoying its northern shores

is in the hands of a Brit.

So, welcome to Patrol 14 this afternoon.

We're on until 6 o'clock.

John, can you and Emily go on the southern outpost?

You'll just have to go in the tower on your own, Alex,

until I get more numbers.

Then the rest of you, if you can just be down at the water's edge.

Karen Sheppard came to Australia eight years ago from Kent,

to work for a pharmaceutical company.

She now takes turns leading the volunteers

who make Bondi a safer place.

And there's already an emergency.

'Bondi, we've just had a tasking from New South Wales Police.'

A job has come in for the team's inshore rescue boat,

known as the IRB.

'Can you please launch your IRB immediately?'

Yeah, copy that. The location is off Icebergs? Is that correct?

'Affirmative.'

The diver's in trouble at a popular dive site

at the other end of the beach.

We've sent our boat to go out and see if they can find the diver.

I think the diver was last seen half an hour or so ago.

It looks like there's a chopper also going out to look.

Karen's team is in the front-line of the emergency response

to locate the missing diver.

'We'll try a shot out in this direction, see how we go.'

'This is Bondi patrol, over.'

'Yeah, could you also have Tamarama or Bronte have a look

'off the south Bondi corner,

'just in case they've been swept around the corner?'

But, as they head to the rescue,

there's news from the other end of the beach.

'The Bondi Iceberg incident,

'please be aware that the person has been located

'and no further action is required at this stage.'

North Bondi IRB, the patient has been found,

so if you can return to shore, that would be great, thank you.

-Very good you got out there very quickly.

-I know!

-Did you see anything?

-Saw a couple of divers there.

-Yeah.

-They gave us the thumbs up.

-So the diver was found?

-Must have been.

-Yeah. Good.

Well, excellent work. You got out there super quick.

-They had the boat ready for me!

-Yeah. Yeah.

OK, good.

This location is just six miles from the centre of Sydney,

and it's home to Australia's oldest life-saving club.

And Karen's not the only Brit

guarding one of the world's most famous beaches.

Emma Guest, from Peterborough,

takes turns protecting surfers and swimmers in the waves.

Move over! Move over!

Move over!

Her job is half life-saver, half beach policewoman.

A lot of what we do is preventative.

So we're trying to address and spot incidents before they take place.

So if we see someone maybe when we're out on the boat,

maybe not looking too confident on the boards,

just being able to identify them and just check with them they're OK.

And just being able to look at risk.

So, looking at the conditions, like today, being able to spot rips,

so that we can try and keep people out of those areas,

and obviously that's where we put the flags.

Just keeping an eye on the general public, so we can manage risks

and monitor it throughout the day.

On a busy day, Bondi can attract 20,000 people, and there are rules.

They try to keep swimmers, body-boarders and surfers apart.

Only foam boards are allowed down here.

It's time for Karen to step in.

Yeah.

So fibreglass boards have got to be down at the southern end.

At this part of the beach, we don't allow fibreglass surfboards

because they do cause injury

when there are so many people in the water.

So we only allow foam boards.

Let's just work on preventions.

We're not here to stand on the beach and sun ourselves.

It's going in early, getting to the person a few minutes

before they physically need rescuing.

They do this job unpaid.

Surf Life Saving is a passion for thousands of Aussies,

who begin training for this job as kids.

Irishman Michael Boland is one of the club's instructors.

Which is plain ironic,

an Irishman teaching people life-saving on Bondi Beach!

But I come down every weekend to teach kids, 12 to 16-year-olds.

So, yeah, keeps me busy.

First off, they don't really believe

anybody from the northern hemisphere can swim, which isn't true.

And you come down here and you've got to prove yourself,

but once you get out swimming, it's a voluntary organisation

so they're just crying out for people to help.

If you're willing to get in the water and get wet,

they'll support you down here.

Bondi is deceptively dangerous,

prone to freak tides and rips, which drag the unwary out to sea.

Up to five drownings have been reported in one day here,

and even the wildlife can kill.

We get all sorts of sharks off Bondi.

Nothing we can do there, other than if someone sees one

and we're sure there is definitely a shark,

we'll set off our shark alarm, which is a big siren.

And we will evacuate the water.

Usually we have everyone out for half an hour

before we feel that it's safe and we've scared the shark away.

And then we let everyone back in.

Other things that we get?

Probably the most common is jellyfish.

We call them bluebottles.

They're a particularly painful jellyfish sting.

We get quite a lot of those.

Less common, but you can get something called

a blue-ringed octopus.

They're actually very, very small. They're only about this big.

They live underneath rocks and in crevices.

If you get stung by one of those,

again very painful, but also dangerous as well.

Sit down over here.

CHILD SOBS

Do you guys have tweezers?

-We do, we'll have to give it to you to take them out.

-That's fine.

We're not allowed to in case it gets stuck in his foot.

This emergency is rather less serious, but painful nevertheless.

Squeeze my hand as hard as you can. Good boy.

Ouch, it's a big...

One of the spikes from a sea urchin had gone into his foot.

As lifeguards, we're not allowed to actually try

and take sea urchin stings out.

That's why we gave him the tweezers to do it himself.

Obviously, if he tried to take it out and it broke off,

then it's something he's done rather than something that we've done.

As the sun fades and the surfers and serious swimmers head home,

Karen's shift is nearly over.

So, yeah, our patrol captain happens to be a Brit,

which is a little bit unfortunate.

These things go in cycles, and I'm sure we'll get a few Australians

back up where they need to be.