Episode 4 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...

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.

Three-three-two, mate, on the head in.

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

Brits on blue lights under blue skies.

Today, down under - a whole family's hurt in a car crash.

It's a vehicle into a tree, 60km an hour.

Three-year-old, seven-year-old and a five-year-old.

Outback police officer Lorena books a drink-driver...

You've been drinking. Oh, yes, you have.

..and finds she's a wanted fugitive.

There's an arrest warrant out for you.

And in the Sydney suburbs,

a British flying doctor is called to a serious industrial accident.

So that's a... open-book pelvis fracture.

24, tower on my left, cleared for takeoff.

The flying doctor is an Australian folk hero,

born in the age of the biplane.

But this is how they take off today.

INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER

And in New South Wales, he or she may well be a Brit.

Uh, rescue two-four. We're airborne out of Bankstown.

James Milligan learned his life-saving skills

on the wards of Leeds General Infirmary.

Now he's about to bring them to the scene of a major road accident near Sydney.

Rescue two-four, thank you. There is a call to Lower Portland.

One adult and three paediatric patients.

And one three-year-old patient with abdominal pain.

James and paramedic Libby Hanrahan

know that this crash could be complicated.

It's a total of four patients, two adults, two paeds.

Total of four patients, three-year old, five-year-old, seven-year-old

and adult female.

It's a vehicle into a tree 60km an hour.

Seven-year-old query fractured clavicle,

five-year-old chest pain

and a 38-year-old female with central cervical pain

and query 'lse' prior to the accident.

Landing's going to be tricky.

You've got some fencing under us directly now.

..around three o'clock.

Understood, final checks.

Landing gear's down.

Check left.

The team will have to drive the mile and a half to the accident scene.

The littlest children is the most seriously injured

as far as we're aware.

That makes life difficult

because kids are inherently a little bit trickier for lots

of different reasons but harder to transport as well.

This is the little triage centre that they've put together.

We'll go and say hello.

The family has been in a high-impact crash and doctor James knows

the children's smiles could be masking serious injuries.

The family was following dad Chris on a cycling challenge

when the crash happened.

Charlotte, aged three, and Amelia, aged seven, are causing the most concern.

And I missed your name. What was your name?

-Charlotte.

-Charlotte.

Charlotte and uh, has, has the bear got a name?

-Say what's your name?

-My name's Dr James.

So why don't you call him James?

Beautiful.

Dr James knows, as a new dad himself, it's best to keep smiling.

I do have a pink bow at home that I wear all the time.

Call it Jamie.

Now, I hear you've got a bit of a sore tummy - is that right?

Let's have a look at this tummy of yours.

Oh, wow.

He fears Charlotte may have an internal injury.

Can you blow your tummy out like it's a big drum for me?

Whoa! Look at that big tummy.

-Where's your ow?

-Um, my tummy.

-In your tummy.

And on my back.

On your back?

Children are especially difficult to treat.

They find it hard to describe symptoms

and their young metabolisms can compensate for injuries

for a long time before suddenly deteriorating.

Let me go and say hello to Amelia cos she's all quiet

and you're all chatty.

You've got a friend to talk to here.

Amelia is much quieter than her sister.

That could be a bad sign.

It looks like she's fractured her collar bone.

And I'm a doctor. Which bits on you hurt the most at the moment?

Up here?

Dr James now faces a dilemma.

He can only fly two patients to the hospital.

The question is - which two?

Amelia, Charlotte,

their brother Daniel or their mum, who may have injured her spine.

It's a difficult decision.

Australia is home to nearly half a million Aboriginal people.

Although they make up just 2.4% of the total population,

in the outback, they often outnumber their European neighbours.

They live by traditions that date back 40,000 years.

They have Aboriginal law and white man's law.

And um, Aboriginal law succeeds ours, really.

And with white man's law, they don't really pay that much attention.

In small towns like Laverton, 500 miles from Perth,

it's Brits who uphold the law.

Sarah Denny left Liverpool to become an outback cop.

We carry um, a Glock...

that... we got two magazines,

we got 15 rounds in each magazine.

I've had seven years of, of practice shooting.

That's definitely got my confidence up now.

So I do feel quite confident,

if I have got to draw it, that my aim should be pretty good.

Laverton, population 250, is so isolated,

even the appearance of a mobile phone signal is a moment for celebration

for Welsh-born senior constable Damian Eynon-Williams.

Oh, I've got some signal.

Briefly I got, I got some e-mails to do so...

He's a trained lawyer who acts as a prosecutor in the local courthouse.

It's laid out exactly like a, a normal court room.

We'll literally do something on,

on video link here down to Kalgoorlie, 330km away.

The local policing team

lives with the harsh realities of life in the Australian desert.

Summer temperatures average more than 40 degrees Celsius

and the nearest big superstore is a ten-hour drive.

So Laverton is um, very isolated in the sense that we're almost

1,000 kilometres from Perth.

It can get very stir crazy here.

Basically you want to be getting out of here

every sort of couple of months, really.

Uh, if you spend too long here you do end up going a bit, a bit la-la.

Gary Simpson is another Liverpudlian.

Burglar.

His partner in uniform and at home is Lorena Cruz-Parker.

So we're on an afternoon shift, um, so we work from four, 4pm

until midnight and then another crew start at 7pm

and they'll work till three in the morning.

BEEPING

I'm the sober driver.

Who's in the car?

-My son, he don't drink.

-Hello.

There's a major problem with drink-driving in the outback

and some of Australia's most dangerous roads are unsurfaced.

OK, one long breath till I say stop. No. Stop.

Take a deep breath and blow until I say stop.

-No, I've got asthma.

-OK. Try again.

You don't need a licence to drive off road, but if you don't hold one,

the permitted level of alcohol in your blood is zero.

-You've been drinking. Oh, yes, you have.

-No.

So when was your last drink?

I had about two cans.

-So you have had a few drinks? OK.

-I'm a diabetic...

All right, well, you're going to have to come back to the

station for a breath test, OK.

Jump in. You got anything in your pockets?

-Nothing.

-OK.

Alcohol is a central part of Aussie culture.

The woman's in town for a funeral.

Whether she gets to go to it

will depend on a further breath test at the police station.

For the people of the bush,

the flying doctor is an Aussie icon,

bringing life-saving care from the skies

to the remotest corner of the outback.

But Dr Chris Cheeseman's patients

are the people of Australia's biggest city.

In Sydney, the CareFlight helicopter is a familiar sight,

flying a highly trained trauma doctor

direct to the scene of accidents.

Chris used to do his rounds at a hospital in Staffordshire.

Now he covers 5,000 square miles of Australia's most populated state.

INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER

Today's mission is to a waste disposal site in the suburbs

where a worker has been badly injured in an industrial accident.

What have we got for a landing site near there?

There are wires on the western side.

Loose dirt on the ground so there will be dust kicked up also.

Trouble is it's all fairly high fencing, isn't it?

Yeah. Getting out of there is the issue.

Let's look for the closest option.

Golf course at two o'clock with a low fence.

Copy that. Mobilise.

The team's going to have to hitch a lift to the patient.

Three, two, one.

The police work closely with the CareFlight team.

The patient's a mile from the landing site.

How was your flight out, boys?

Yeah, not bad. Nice day for it!

One-four. The CareFlight doctor should almost be on top of them.

Yeah, there's 25 there.

I'm Chris, one of the doctors. How you doing?

-How's the pain for you now?

-It's just in the hip area.

You walked for a bit, Keith?

Yeah, I walked from one side to the other but...

Keith Haslip is 64. He was crushed by heavy machinery he was using.

He's lucky to be alive.

What have his numbers been like with you?

He was 120 systolic, I think, they got him on

and 110 heart rate initially.

Morphine, that's the only thing we've done for him so far.

Chris suspects Keith has serious internal injuries.

The first paramedics on scene

have used a brace to hold his pelvis together.

-Are you guys starting to use these now?

-We are.

A broken pelvis is agonising

and moving Keith from his stretcher

into the chopper could worsen the injury.

Dr Chris decides to drive his patient to hospital.

We'll go by road. What, 25 minutes to Westmead, yeah?

Go, go.

Keith is impressed by the speed of the CareFlight response.

How's that, sore down here is it, or? Where's that sore?

In your pelvis or in your tummy?

Yeah, across... Seems to be right in that area here. Right across.

All right, mate. Um, what I'm going to do is a bit of a scan of your tummy.

OK, we've got our little ultrasound machine there.

Right, just mainly looking for fluid, OK.

Did it crush you front the front or side?

-Side on.

-Side on.

Yeah. Ah! Hip to hip.

Yep.

-Well, I heard a crack so...

-Yeah.

Yeah, he had a bit of pain there, mate.

Might've broken his pelvis or his hip there.

Chris is giving Keith a powerful painkiller.

Yeah, well, ketamine is uh,

an excellent drug for this type of environment

because it takes away all that pain and discomfort and that anxiety.

It makes his journey a lot more comfortable.

I've only give a small dose.

SIREN WAILS

Oh, it's another one going the other way.

Who's got priority there?

THEY LAUGH

Whoever's got the most guts to just keep driving.

Keith's not today's only casualty, but a medical team is already

awaiting his arrival at the Westmead Hospital, Sydney's biggest.

Dr Chris used to work here

and his former colleagues soon confirm his hunch.

X-rays reveal Keith's pelvis is broken in two.

So that's a... open-book pelvis fracture.

Classically you see with these type of crush injuries.

That should be attached to that.

So this is a, it is quite a serious injury so the paramedics

putting on the pelvic binder at scene certainly was a very useful

and essential, um, intervention from their point of view.

And the good news for him

is that there is no blood in his uh,

pelvis there. So um, it should all

turn out to be pretty good for him

so a very lucky escape, I'd say.

Keith spends two months in the Westmead.

But he's determined that one day he'll return to work.

Western Australian Police pound the biggest beat in the world.

1.6 million square miles

covering almost half this vast continent

and Laverton is one of its most remote outposts.

Being here is completely different than being in Merseyside.

I was on um, a burglary team and a robbery team

but I've come out here in the country and I deal with

absolutely everything um, from stealings to burglaries to assaults.

Um, a lot of domestic violence.

They don't get taken off us by detectives.

We have to see the whole thing through.

For British cops Lorena Cruz Parker and her partner Gary Simpson,

a routine traffic stop has just taken a more serious turn.

We'll just see if the sergeant's got your licence details here.

Your licence is suspended. When were you last in court?

My court was here but I change it over to Warburton.

Their suspect, it turns out, is wanted for failing to appear

in court earlier this year and she's also banned from driving for life.

Well, according to our system there's a warrant, an arrest warrant

out for you cos you didn't turn, you didn't attend court at Warburton.

So the magistrate then has issued a bench, a bench warrant for you.

It means that even if she passes a second breath test,

she may not be going home tonight.

So take a deep, big deep breath.

And blow into the machine and I'll tell you exactly when to stop.

Keep going, keep going, keep going. Stop.

Perfect.

So you blew into the machine

and you gave a reading of 0.079 grams of alcohol in your blood.

OK. Now do you know what the...

It's in my blood, is the medication.

Do you know the legal limit of what you can have in your system?

Do you know what you're allowed in your system in W.A.?

-WOMAN KEEPS TALKING

-So, it's zero. Listen, it's 0.05 OK.

But because you don't have a licence, you're subject to zero.

She's going to be spending the night in the local lock-up.

Tomorrow, the drink-driver will face a court.

Do you want to contact ALS? Aboriginal Legal Service. Yeah?

OK.

Tonight, Lorena is the chef as well as arresting officer.

So the lady'll, she'll get a,

she's requested that she has some dinner so, and on an evening time

we give them a pie which gets warmed in the microwave.

That OK? Do you want some magazines or something?

Would you like a newspaper?

Her suspect is well fed but there are some unobtainable English delicacies

the British outback cops crave.

I miss fish and chips.

I miss Holland cheese and onion pies.

I miss prawn cocktail crisps.

I miss Gregg's cheese and onion pasties.

Uh, cheese and onion crisps. Skips. Wotsits. Hula Hoops.

Ah, I miss all the food in England.

In the woods around the Hawkesbury River just outside Sydney,

a family outing has ended in a serious road accident.

Flying doctor James Milligan is trying to decide

which of three children will be flown to hospital in the city.

Now I'm going to have a little gentle feel on this side, OK?

Is this is where it's sore on the other side?

Seven-year-old Amelia appears to have a broken collar bone.

Her brother Daniel has chest pain.

So I'm thinking these two.

Yep.

Possibly dad as well, two on stretchers, one on the back seat.

Yeah, we just need to work out weighting and things

but that, we would optimally take as many as we can.

So far they've been lucky.

Collisions with trees are a major cause of road deaths down under

and back home.

But their car seats appear to have saved them.

-All the kids are doing OK.

-Yeah.

All right. All this is just precautionary.

Dr James is trying to reassure the kids' mum,

who was driving, it wasn't her fault.

Charlotte's tummy now is nice and soft, OK?

Now she's had some painkiller. You can hear her talking away, can't you?

-She never stops.

-She never stops. Well, she's, she's keeping going now.

All right, so that's really pretty reassuring for us.

What we're going to do is going to get you to stand up.

Get off this hard ground.

Watch your sister and we'll just get you on to this stretcher over here.

The kids are going to be flown direct

to the Westmead Hospital in Sydney, 30 miles away.

It's getting dark and taking off from the confined landing site could be risky.

That's the worst collar I've ever put on.

That's all right. It always changes when you lay down.

Charlotte, I'll look after Mummy and you go with Dr James

-cos he will look after you, OK?

-Yeah?

And you give Jamie the bear a cuddle and we can get you a blanket.

Oh, way to go.

-On lift. Ready, steady, lift.

-Lift me high in the air.

Here we go.

I'm flying!

You're flying!

Best day ever! You are the funniest kid.

Shall we get rid of this one, yeah?

A house.

In a house?! No.

So this helicopter is very noisy.

OK, so it's a bit, it can be a bit loud.

But that's not something to be scared of, is it?

No.

There's going to be a couple of little bumps.

The team's brought intensive care

direct to the woods where the crash happened.

A bit bumpy, Amelia.

Now it's time to fly.

Rescue two-four will be taking off

with three passengers, including Dad.

They're all doing great. This is all precautionary.

But, but, uh, it's... It's...

I haven't seen worse but I know there is worse.

Yeah. They're pretty trendy glasses.

Don't get them stuck on your nose.

It's getting a bit loud now, OK.

Rescue two-four will have the family in hospital

in less than half an hour.

Uh, we'll come up to 200 uh, feet, uh, any problems, we'll abort.

Otherwise continue airborne.

I'm just going to kill the lights.

Thank you.

Yeah, just, if you could bring that down.

But there's no margin for error in terrain like this.

OK, and lifting.

Time two two.

Trees are feet from the rotor blades.

-I'll just get a little bit higher...

-You're clear of obstacles on the left.

Rotate left.

Power lines off to our right.

Yeah, got that visual.

And on the nose there.

Dr James and paramedic Libby

must get used to monitoring their patients

in almost total darkness.

Any bright lights could blind the pilots.

We are loaded with two paediatric patients and a parent.

Tracking to Westmead kids' and we'll be on the ground there at 18:36.

Libby's alerting doctors at the Westmead

to be ready for their young patients.

Their brother is being driven to A & E, as is their mother.

Be soon on descent into Westmead. Weather's good.

Beautiful night for flying.

Sydney's cityscape is spectacular by night

but the team's focus is on the landing ahead.

Rescue two-four is touching down within yards of A & E.

They'd like us to...slide right.

Over the next two hours,

doctors will be assessing the kids

and scanning them for internal injuries.

This is Charlotte. She's three years old.

She was a restrained passenger in the back in a good child seat.

No significant injuries found.

She just had one vomit in the helicopter as we came into land

so be careful when you're feeling around.

Only real thing, little bit tummy pain, little bit of lower back pain.

Amelia is Charlotte's big sister. She's seven years old.

Again in the rear in a good car seat.

Um, she self-extricated but had some pain in her left foot

and had some difficulty walking on it.

Nothing much to see there.

And she also complained of some pain in her right shoulder

with a very obvious seat belt mark there and a query of a clavicle fracture.

Thankfully, nothing serious is found beyond Amelia's collarbone.

And it looks like brother's just arrived.

So patient number three's here.

And they're sent home to recover

from what's been a very frightening ordeal,

made more bearable by their British flying doctor.

It's a new dawn in the red desert of Western Australia.

So I'll just print that out for you

just so you've got a copy of it in case you need it.

Come on now, up you get.

The woman arrested yesterday is due to appear in court via CCTV.

But there's an unexpected problem.

The prisoner is complaining of pain from an ankle injury.

-You right?

-No, my ankle is broken.

-Really?

-Yeah.

-When did that happen?

Can't be broken, then. Just sore, is it? Right.

Come on, then.

Come on, then, let's get you to hospital.

Damian and Sarah have sought medical advice about their prisoner's ankle.

She's off to the local clinic for a check-up.

Laverton's largely Aboriginal population

has relatively poor health by Aussie standards.

Life expectancy is 10% shorter than their European neighbours.

Diabetes is another health problem

that afflicts many indigenous people out here.

Their suspect is a sufferer.

What she doesn't apparently have is an ankle injury

and she's soon back in court for her virtual appearance before the bench.

Her fate is in the hands of a magistrate

more than 200 miles away in the gold-mining town of Kalgoorlie.

Senior constable Damian is doubling as prosecution counsel.

I am a qualified lawyer here in Western Australia and um,

I've, I've actually done a prosecuting course

and spent some time at Perth prosecuting.

Um, so it, it is a bit different obviously in the UK you have um,

the Crown Prosecution Service, so you have own, own solicitors

and um, barristers there that, that actually do, do this kind of work.

But we're obviously expected to do it as well.

It's a short hearing and the verdict is bad news for the suspect.

She's basically been remanded in custody.

It wasn't as simple as I first thought

cos it was actually two JPs as opposed to one.

So they could've actually granted her bail today

but being the fact that um, I put forward a good argument,

yeah, she's been remanded in custody.

The woman is on her way to jail

via one of the world's most unusual prison transport vehicles.

The main custody area is in Kalgoorlie

which is, like, 330 kilometres away, approximately.

So we're going to take her now and put her on the plane

and they'll fly her down to the prison.

Australia operates its own fleet of "jailbirds" - twin-engined planes

shuttling detainees from the outback to big city jails.

We've got bitumen roads leading out uh, from here down to,

down to Kalgoorlie um, but general, it basically just takes too long.

It's just started to rain.

Horrendous.

And it's very windy.

This is not actually typical of Laverton.

I mean, it does rain a little bit in the winter which is now.

But generally it's about 46 degrees in the summer.

Last day in work today and then um, then I'll be flying out to uh,

nice sunny Bali.

Get a bit of uh, bit of sun.

Bit of a tan.

Thank you.

Holding a prisoner means they have little time

for upholding the law and it's finally time to get back on patrol.

Despite the isolation,

neither Damian nor Sarah would return to the UK.

Just 6,000 officers

maintain the thin blue line in Western Australia.

Hundreds are Brits

and there's no shortage of recruits wanting to join them down under.