Episode 8 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.

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...

there's another casualty on a road with a fatal attraction for bikers.

A lot of motorcyclists when they come off, they slide in

and they hit the trees and they have a lot of trauma.

There's trouble in the outback for cops Lorena and Gary...

Can you not close the door, please, while my partner's in the yard?

This is my yard!

..and flight nurse Steve flies 200 miles to rescue a tiny patient.

For the parents, it's probably one of the biggest medical things

will have happened to them.

It's a scary situation.

-RADIO STING:

-'WSFM. Pure Gold.'

In Australia's biggest city,

the rush hour traffic is building...

We've got Lions Road closed and we've got traffic back past

the River Road for eastbound traffic this morning.

..and for the ambulance service, the emergencies are backing up too.

PHONE RINGS

Ambulance emergency. What town or suburb?

Got three ambulances coming to you right now under lights and sirens,

so we're going to be there as quick as we can.

British flying doctor Ed Burns has been scrambled

to a bike crash on a country road north of Sydney.

'Rescue 23. Thanks. Good afternoon.

'We're responding to the report of a motorcycle accident.'

The road's called Poppy Road. It's popular with motorcyclists.

We've been to a few motorcycle collisions there this year.

At the moment, all we know is that there's one person off this bike

with a fractured leg.

But, at this time, there's no medical resources on the scene.

Really, this is the ideal job to respond to by helicopter.

The accident has happened deep in the bush.

The crew of Rescue 23 must rendezvous with a police van

in the dense woodland below.

This is at Colo Heights. I don't know if it's Colo Park.

But this is Colo Heights, anyway,

and obviously there's this little settlement here.

I've got a bit of a park down here in the one o'clock low,

looks like a bit of an oval.

Now I think I saw, like, a paddy wagon,

police paddy wagon in the back of a property

just backing out six o'clock now.

'22 Rescue, 23 Rescue, 23.'

Thanks, Rescue 23. Prepare a smoke flare.

Yeah, I've got a police car, I think,

down here at three o'clock low.

Rescue 23, thanks, we've just identified the police vehicles

and we'll prepare to come into land.

1,000 feet below,

36-year-old Kim Percival desperately needs Dr Ed's help.

She came off in a freak accident

caused when a bottle jammed in the spokes of her bike.

-Can we give you some gear to carry?

-Yeah, we'll carry your gear.

Do you want to throw your stuff in the back or...?

Yeah, sure. Are we all going in this car? Yeah, all right.

-Yeah, we can go in either one.

-Yep.

-Have you guys been down to the scene?

-Yeah.

-Yeah?

So, what it looks like is, um...

they've got quite a few motorbikes on the road today.

One of the ladies, she's hit an item on the road

and she's come off her bike.

You guys see a few crashes on this road?

-Yeah, quite a few.

-Oh, dear.

Just as the weather's starting to warm up, you know,

there's people are out on the road a bit more,

especially the motorcyclists.

Hi there. Nice to meet you. I'm Ed. I'm the doc.

OK. Peter Grant. I'm the inspector.

This is young Kim. She was riding that cycle there

when a water bottle got caught up in the front wheel.

Bike went mostly on the left-hand side on the leg.

The impact of the ground was most on the left side.

She's complaining of left flank pain,

left hip pain.

Pain from the knee radiating down to the ankle.

We're just putting a short splint on her leg at the moment.

It looks like she's fractured her leg

but she also has pain in her hip and chest.

Her boyfriend, David Parker, has been trying to cheer her up.

We just went for a ride up to the Grey Gums Cafe

and we were just coming home and, er...

a water bottle came off

one of the motorcycles, got caught underneath her front wheel.

She braked and just went down on the gravel.

-How you going?

-All right.

-Yeah.

-Been better.

-Could be better.

-Yeah.

-How's your pain going at the moment?

-Ah...

-Still pretty sore?

She's only had it for about a year,

so she's just on her Ps, it's all very exciting.

So, yeah, it's a pity it's happened but she'll get over it.

She'll bounce back.

It was a low-speed accident

but that doesn't mean that Kim isn't seriously hurt.

Was there any deformities to the left leg or just pain?

Not that I can see. She's moved her toes, wiggled her toes.

-There's a distal pulse.

-Yeah?

-From the patella down, the pain increases.

-Yeah.

Looks intact, but we splinted just in case.

Yeah, of course, yeah.

We do know about the masking pain on the hip

so we're just playing with that at the moment till we get...

Dr Ed has immobilised Kim's neck.

He's concerned she may have a spinal injury.

She needs X-rays.

No, you're not, we've got you.

You're only going to have one fall today.

Do you have any pain actually in your back, in your spine?

Or is it all just down that left side?

Yeah. It's pain on the left back.

-OK.

-Yeah.

-All right.

So, primarily, a bit of midline C-spine tenderness

without any sort of clear deformity or bruising.

Other than doing a quick, fast...

I don't think we necessarily need any more intervention.

She's a long way from being the first casualty on this road.

It has all the attractions riders love the world over.

About 100km of continuous windy road.

That's why the bikes love it.

The bikes love coming here and going through these windy roads.

It's a great ride for them,

but it's a rough old road, this one.

A lot of motorcyclists, when they come off,

they slide in and they hit the trees and they have a lot of trauma.

So she's lucky. She just rolled off the side of the road.

Didn't hit the trees, so she didn't have that major impact.

Rescue 23 carries much of the diagnostic equipment

Dr Ed is used to having back in hospital.

-It's a pretty good chopper you got here.

-Yeah.

-Going to do a quick ultrasound on your belly, OK?

-Yeah.

What I'm going to do is just sneak this under here.

Dr Ed's looking for the telltale signs of internal bleeding.

So no free fluid in the right upper quadrant.

It shows up clearly on an ultrasound scanner.

Happily, he can't find any evidence of it.

Kim may have been lucky.

OK, that looks good to me.

Just going to pop a little needle in your arm, sweetheart.

Yeah.

Kim has no fear of biking, but choppers are a different matter.

I'm scared.

-No need to be scared.

-You'll be fine, beautiful.

Doesn't look like she's suffered any life-threatening injuries.

It's quite sore all down her left side

and I would be concerned that she may have cracked a few ribs

and possibly even have a broken leg.

But I think, all being considered, she's been very lucky.

Rescue 23's speed cuts Australia down to size.

Sydney city centre is just 20 minutes away at 160mph.

A stable approach. Final checks - landing gear, three greens.

Landing site's identified and it's clear

and cabin on secure front right.

The trauma team at Westmead Hospital, Sydney's biggest,

are awaiting the helicopter's arrival.

We're here.

Yay.

It's hard when you're on your back cos you can't see anything, can you?

You don't really know what's happening.

Kim turns out to have a broken leg and some cracked ribs

but she's otherwise fine and is back on her bike within weeks.

Laverton is one of the world's most isolated towns.

And it's the centre of a police beat

that covers an area the size of England and Wales.

That's the town and everything around it is just bushland.

If we get a call out, we could be driving for a good hour or so,

maybe two hours to actually get to that job.

British officers Sarah Denny

and Damian Eynon-Williams are the law around here.

Hi, Sam, all right?

They're two of six ex-pats in a team of 12 policing the outback.

This style of policing is completely different

to anything I've ever experienced before.

I've actually been policing about 12 years now.

I was in Islington, North London.

Damian was in the Met, then Gwent Police.

Sarah policed Merseyside.

You don't have any time away, do you?

If you want to go for a walk,

or you need to go to the shop or whatever,

you're still around the people that you've been dealing with,

like, every single day.

I think Laverton is a place

that's either crazy or nothing happening at all.

Today's case for Sarah and Damian involves a missing Aboriginal woman

who disappeared after a domestic incident.

Somebody called the police two days ago

to say that she'd been assaulted

and they believe it to be her and she's not been seen since then.

But searching for missing persons in a landscape like this

has its hazards.

There are few road signs in the desert they call the Big Red.

And now I think I've got us completely lost.

I took the wrong track, didn't I?

When you go off into the bush like this,

it's strange because there's tracks absolutely everywhere.

The Aboriginal people are really, really good

at finding their way through the bush tracks.

But if you stick us on a bush track,

-we haven't got any idea where we're going.

-No, we just get lost.

It just looks the same to us.

Fire's burning.

A remote camp linked to the missing woman is deserted.

But the police have a clue, thanks to her mobile phone.

All right, thanks, Mel. All right, bye.

OK, so that was Mel just saying that this missing girl,

her phone's been pinged,

so they've obviously got authorisation for that,

and she's in Laverton.

So we need to... need to track her down.

We're looking for Karen to see if she's heard from her,

cos she's not done anything wrong.

We just need to make sure that she's OK.

-Are you related to her?

-Yeah, it's my cousin.

It's your cousin. OK.

-She's got three kids as well, hasn't she?

-Yeah.

Yeah, so I think they're a little bit worried,

cos they've not heard anything from her.

'They're generally really good.

'We find that a lot, when we're looking for somebody,'

you can go up to anybody and just say,

"Where's such and such?" and they tend to know where everybody is.

If she came to Laverton, would she come to see you? Yeah?

We're looking for...

Yeah, yeah.

-I haven't seen her, but she's...

-I know, yeah.

The fact that we're all getting negatives from everybody

makes me think that she's not actually here.

The fear is the woman may be missing in the two million square miles

of outback that lie outside Laverton, and night will fall soon.

Everyday Aussies put up with the realities

of living in one of the world's biggest nations,

and distance is the biggest enemy of the NETS team -

the Newborn and Paediatric Emergency Transport Service.

Car 16 departing base in the air ambulance.

British nurse Steve Face and his colleagues

are on the first leg of a long-distance rescue mission

to a small town on the edge of the outback.

So Wagga is about 450 Ks south-west of Sydney

and we've come out to retrieve an eight-month-old little one

who has a condition called bronchiolitis.

Among the jumbos touching down at Australia's busiest airport,

a much more important flight is being prepared for takeoff.

We've checked that we've got all the equipment that we need,

we've got all our bags, our drugs, our supplies that we may need.

So we always carry our full equipment -

regardless of what the job is, we take the same gear.

This intensive care pod is designed to keep tiny patients alive

long enough to reach specialists in the big city.

Steve used to work at Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Today, he'll be covering the equivalent

of flying from London to Glasgow.

Even though this may be something that we're doing very regularly

and it's quite a common thing for us,

for the parents, it's probably one of the biggest medical things that

will have happened to them in their child's life and possibly in theirs.

So it's often a very scary situation,

so we try and make sure that we explain

what's going on for the parents,

try and have the parent by the child as much as possible.

And we think today that we should be able

to take the mother with the child so that they can both travel together.

Journey's end is Wagga Wagga Hospital.

The team's tiny patient is little Avery Evola.

Her mum and dad are Americans living down under.

Maybe Rufus will come down.

Avery's seriously ill.

Mucus is filling her lungs,

preventing vital oxygen reaching her brain.

So she's had bloods, she's had a chest x-ray,

she's on a PAP of seven, and an FIO2 of 30%.

She's stable, but not much improvement in...

No, not in my time this morning.

Avery's dad, Frank, knows his daughter is struggling.

I'm a, er, nurse in emergency here.

Yeah.

And, um, I did my nursing at Sydney Uni and came out here to work.

Um, the, the intercostal recession

and the subcostal recession's a bit worse.

Um, the tog is a bit worse. Um...

Even now when I'm watching her stomach,

it seems like she's really slowing down right there.

You want to go with daddy? Cos when you're fidgeting,

it's hard for mommy to hold you with all this stuff.

I'm Dad right now, I'm not nurse.

That's for sure.

Nurse, there's plenty of people around to help her.

They don't...they don't need me.

Treatment was started at approximately 6.30 this morning.

And does she look better having started that?

It's a very mild improvement.

Doctors are pumping oxygen under pressure into her lungs.

We'll give her a bit of a suction of her nasal passages

just cos the, er... They tend to be very thin.

As soon as you get a little bit of mucus there,

they either block off totally or they're very narrow

and it just makes the breathing a lot more difficult.

So we're just going to give her a good hoovering out.

Um, which often makes a big difference.

You're all right, I know, not nice.

I think about a quarter change in diameter can make it about

16 times harder to breathe through the airway, something like that.

Sometimes smaller hospitals are reluctant to do quite deep suction

just because it can make them gag.

BABY CRIES

OK.

All done. All done.

For the next two hours, Avery's survival will depend

on the lifesaving skills of NETS, nurse and doctor.

It's a new day in the outback and at Laverton Police Station,

500 miles from Perth in Western Australia, there's some good news.

So we've come back on duty today, um...

and it appears that the missing person from yesterday,

she was found about 400km from us and with another family member.

So we won't need to look for her today.

In a town of 250, finding a missing person should be easy.

But for the Aboriginal people, who make up much of the population,

roaming the outback is a way of life.

I mean, the Aboriginal people are used to surviving in the bush

and just every now and again, they'll go back to Kalgoorlie

and pick things up, um, like food and stuff.

But generally, you know, they'll go and hunt, um,

and they'll you know, catch... catch kangaroo, catch iguanas

and then they'll set a fire up and that's what they'll survive on.

This is a sad day for the community.

One of its leading members has died and the town is in mourning.

Relatives will trek hundreds - sometimes thousands - of miles

to attend a Sorry Camp.

When a person passes away, they have to move out of the house

that that person was living.

They'll stay a few weeks.

They'll stay up until the funeral

and then they'll also stay after the funeral.

We're just going to go to the Sorry Camp.

Um, I'm hoping that one of the ladies is there

that I need to get a statement signed.

They're visiting the sisters of the dead man to pay their respects

and deal with the inevitable formalities.

Hello. Hello, Tanya.

Can I just get you to sign a statement about what, what happened?

I wasn't there but I was inside there.

You were inside the house.

Inside, inside the house.

OK. All right.

So, Tanya, if you can just sign the bottom of all the pages.

-They're coming in today.

-Oh, are they coming in today?

-Yeah.

Oh. How many people are coming in today?

SPEECH UNCLEAR

From Warburton?

The family have asked police to enforce an alcohol ban at the camp.

Was there any problems last night or was everyone good?

-SPEECH UNCLEAR

-Yeah?

There's been a run on alcohol at the local pub.

Hello.

Hello.

Just want to touch base with you in terms of what's gone out today.

-So quite a few bottles of Jim Beam...

-Yeah.

-..go out.

The pub's out of beer and a lot of spirits have been sold.

-All right, thanks, John.

-No worries.

They suspect some of the locals are already drinking...

Oh, my God. There's loads of them.

..which will make enforcing the mourners' wishes much harder.

What's going on at Diane's place?

-Diane. Looking for a fight with us.

-You can't do that.

-Eh?

You can't do that.

Despite the chaotic nature of outback policing,

Sarah wouldn't go back to her beat on Merseyside.

You know, I am living somewhere that's remote,

that's got no facilities -

the policing side of it is much more enjoyable.

It's much more varied.

I've just been back to the UK a couple of weeks ago

and I've not been back for, um, six years.

I just felt a little bit overwhelmed by the volume of people

and the volume of traffic.

Good to go back and see people, have a holiday, but this is...

this is definitely home for me now.

But, tonight, some of the outback Brits could be working harder

for their Aussie lifestyles as the number of mourners grows.

SLURRED SPEECH

High above the Blue Mountains of New South Wales,

British nurse Steve Face is heading for Sydney at 250mph.

His tiny patient, Avery Evola, has a serious respiratory infection.

She desperately needs the specialist care

of Australia's biggest children's hospital.

She's been very settled. She slept most of the way.

Um, she's been very stable.

For mum Christine, this has been an anxious flight.

It's nice just to be landed but, yeah, it was pretty easy,

she just slept, so...

Bronchiolitis is a common condition in babies,

but it's rarely as serious as Avery's case.

Over the next few hours, specialists will attack the infection

flooding her lungs with mucus by using intravenous antibiotics.

At the same time,

they'll be trying to raise the levels of oxygen in her blood.

For Steve, his job is over - another patient safely delivered

from a small town to specialists in Sydney.

We get to fly in helicopters and small planes

and we also do a lot of work in ambulances

and I must say, I enjoy the flying.

It's a great way of seeing a country.

Er, and we get to see things

and do things that many people wouldn't get to do.

And for that to be part of your everyday work is a real bonus.

Two months after her first flight, baby Avery was back in a plane,

in good health and on her way to America to see her grandparents.

At Laverton Police Station, deep in the outback, British officers

Gary Simpson and Lorena Cruz Parker are expecting a busy night.

When you get 150 people together, add alcohol and emotion

and it can be quite difficult to police.

In a tradition that dates back 40,000 years,

the local aboriginal population

is preparing for the funeral of a neighbour.

But alcohol could bring trouble in its wake.

So we're just going to do a check on the pub just to see how many, um,

how much alcohol's gone out today.

Cheers.

Cos what normally happens is the amount of alcohol that's been sold

throughout the day will determine how busy our night is tonight.

So we like to check.

For Gary and Lorena, who are partners at work and at home,

maintaining relations with the mourners is vital.

SHOUTING

How old is he? Your baby, how old?

Ah, he's big. Funny, isn't he?

That's what it's all about, innit?

We are best friends to you, we welcome you into our cultural...

-Midst.

-Yes.

-Cultural way.

-Yeah.

Hello. Hello.

See you later.

The community knows us anyway.

So they know us as individuals rather than police officers.

So we get to build a rapport with them and they know how we work

and we get to know how they work, so I think that helps.

It's not like policing in a city - it's...

You've gotta get on with... You know, you police by consent.

Er, because if you're alienated, then you'll get nothing.

And if they're...those 50-odd people turn on us,

we've got no backup. There's, nine times out of ten,

just two officers on duty. Our nearest backup's 130km away.

So I think the best thing is to just stay on side.

-Where we off?

-Er, village. There's someone kicking off.

It's the first incident of the night -

a triple-0 call to the police, the Aussie equivalent of 999.

There's a person causing a disturbance

out the front of the house, so we've been asked to go there.

Mostly, we go through jobs that we don't really know what's going on.

There could be weapons involved.

There's a lot of screaming going on in the background, so...

But, when the police arrive, there's a mystery.

A woman sounding very like the caller says there's no trouble.

-What's going on? Did you call us?

-I didn't call you.

Hey, stop shouting, stop shouting.

I didn't call you. I don't have a phone. I'm locking them out.

-Who called us, then?

-I did not.

-Who called us?

-I don't know.

Yes, you called us, so stop lying.

She did. It was her on the phone.

It was you on the phone, so don't lie to me.

So you tell me, where's my phone?

Lorena and Gary must watch each other's backs.

Can you not close the door, please, while my partner's in the yard?

Move away.

This is my yard! Now move!

I didn't call no cops!

-I'll move when my partner's out of your yard.

-Aw, come on!

-You going to be told soon...

-OK.

-..by some other people here.

I've spoken to the adults and they've told me what's going on.

Oh, my gosh! Can yous move? Cos I never called you.

They decide, this time, the best solution is to walk away.

You just try and make sure that everything's OK,

no-one's been injured or anything like that.

Just gotta pull away because staying there just exacerbates it.

Alcohol-fuelled incidents are beginning to come in thick and fast,

although their next call is hardly the crime of the century.

So there was a report from the manager of the pub

that, um, some Aboriginal males were trying to steal petrol

from a vehicle in the rear car park.

-Let's have a look in your backpack, mate.

-What?

Let's have a look at your backpack.

-Someone's just been stealing petrol out of one of the cars.

-Come on.

-What can of petrol?

-I dunno.

People sometimes use petrol for sniffing.

Mate, take your hat off for me. Take your hat off for me.

Hi, Sam, it's Lorena. We've got these guys.

One of 'em's got a carton of export I'm sure they've just bought it.

But the others haven't got anything on 'em. OK, then. Bye.

Guys, just going to take your names down, then you can be on your way.

The indigenous people of Laverton

live at the margins of Aussie society.

Their tribes have their own legal codes

and their way of life is officially respected.

But they live ten years less than their white neighbours on average,

and their lifestyle is different from anything

the British police have seen before.

Inner-city policing in the UK

is a, you know, completely different animal to it being out here.

A lot, yeah... A lot of them'll just straight away hear your accent

and tell you that you're not from here

and you can't tell them what to do.

But I think, as soon as they realise that you're not a pushover

and you're not going to let 'em walk all over you,

they sort of back down and listen to what you're saying.

It's a case of trying to get their trust and then saying,

"Yeah, we'll help you if we can,

"but if you cross that line and break the law,

"then you'll be dealt with, er, by the law,"

and it seems that a lot of them respect that

and they... You know, they don't tend to hold grudges

because you've arrested them on a Saturday night.

They'll still talk to you on Sunday.