Episode 9 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're never 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, flying doctor Tom is scrambled

to a freak accident in the bush...

I've been called to just two guys

who collided head-on on motorbikes on a property.

..outback policeman Kurt tackles trouble at the big game...

If I see you pick it up again I'll charge you for going armed, OK?

No picking up weapons.

..and nurse Juanita flies a patient who could

go into cardiac arrest any second.

We're taking him as a matter of urgency.

I'll be monitoring him very closely

in regards to his blood pressure and his pulse rate.

100 miles north of Sydney in the port city of Newcastle,

the local rescue helicopter is being called out on an emergency.

OK, no problem.

British Dr Tom Wallis is a key member of the team.

Yeah.

Tom trained in Manchester but now he's an Aussie icon -

a flying doctor.

I've been called to just two guys

who've collided head-on on motorbikes on a property.

One's got a head injury and then one's got a fractured leg,

so that's what we know at the moment.

Take off, please.

RADIO CHATTER

The accident has happened near the remote town of Taree -

an hour's flight away.

RADIO CHATTER CONTINUES

On a remote track in the woods, two bikers are lying badly hurt.

Crewman Mike is calling up a friend of the victims.

PHONE RINGS

'Hello.'

Hello, how are you? This is Mike on board the rescue helicopter.

OK, now, what's the major problem with them?

Is there any leg fractures?

'We think so.'

OK, so they've both got broken legs?

'Well...'

OK, no worries, we'll be there in about 20 minutes, OK?

-Stand by. There's a...

-Yeah, I've got it.

-Cool.

RADIO CHATTER

A paramedic on the ground is guiding them in.

They're touching down in a clearing.

Seen the accident?

No.

So, we're a good 20 minutes' flight away from any hospital.

So fairly remote, which is pretty typical

for where we are in Australia.

It's believed the bikers have multiple injuries.

The fellow without the helmet's hit the other fellow's helmet

as they've collided, so he's a bit sore in the head and neck, back.

The other fellow's got deep lacerations to his right knee.

-All right, mate?

-I've just managed this guy down here,

his name's Taylor. He's 24 years of age.

-Coming up the hill about 40 or 50 Ks an hour.

-Yeah.

Collided with this man, got a deep wound to the right knee.

He's able to flex it, move it, push, everything.

Got good movement in it. He's got a tender right side wrist as well.

-Does have a headache.

-OK.

-But it's now diminishing.

Yeah. All right.

And this is Lee. He's 30, he was doing about 50 Ks an hour

-coming down the hill.

-Yeah.

-Denies any central neck pain

-but he does have some right-sided lateral neck pain.

-Yeah.

Head and neck pain can be a sign of a spinal injury.

I heard him yell out from the house.

We've driven down here.

I've seen what... Lee was already on the ground.

The other fellow was standing up.

We told him to sit down because he was not wary of where he was

and got him on the ground and went and called the ambulance.

Any pain down the back of your neck there?

No. Feels good, actually.

Let me know if anywhere hurts when I squeeze, OK, buddy?

Oh, just that wrist.

Whereabouts in this wrist?

Just...I don't know, just there somewhere.

I think I've just sprained it, I think.

Lee and Taylor are friends.

They weren't riding together,

they just happened to be on the same dirt track at the same time.

They've been long-time mates so...

One's actually got a...

I've got a family member kid with one of them, so...

Yeah, the other one's my good mate, so, yeah.

It's an hour since the accident.

The decision about which biker should go to hospital first

is in the hands of Dr Tom.

It's a critical judgment to make and there's no time to delay it.

In the heart of Australia's vast red desert, it's the FA Cup final

and the Championship play-off all rolled into one.

It's the annual Aussie Rules Football Carnival

in the isolated community of Blackstone

and British policeman Kurt Weedon is in charge of crowd control

with his Irish colleague Michael Noonan.

Give me your knuckles. Good man. Ah, look at this.

Back in the UK, Kurt policed Millwall Football Club.

But Aussie rules is a whole new ballgame.

Do they have two referees in the normal match?

They have heaps of them.

-REFEREE:

-Clear!

-Nice.

Is he allowed to do that? He just blocked...

-MICHAEL:

-Yeah, you can take them out.

You're allowed to smash into each other.

Do you know how you win it, though?

They'll play until their home team kind of win it.

-OK.

-Most of the time.

Community policing is the name of the game in the outback.

Haven't seen you for ages!

When backup is 150 miles away, you need the public on your side.

-What?

-What's your name?

Kurt.

What are you eating? Is that chicken?

-This is tail.

-Oh. What is it, what tail?

It's kangaroo's tail.

-Kangaroo tail.

-Yeah.

Lady. Look at this one.

Devil.

What is that thing?

-What thing? In there?

-Yeah.

The book to write.

If anyone's naughty their name goes in the book.

Goes in the book then go to jail, if you're naughty.

But one local youngster is already in Michael's book.

He's wanted for questioning.

Aussie rules football creates just as much passion as soccer

and it looks like there may be trouble.

Jesus, where's he going with that shovel?

I think that's his son, like, the big bloke.

The man with the spade is about to get the red card from Kurt.

How are you going, all right? Shovel.

You won't be getting it back either. If I see you pick it up again

I'll charge you for going armed, OK, and you'll end up going to jail.

So no picking up weapons.

To be honest, to be brutally honest, he was probably

just like a peacock trying to display his feathers.

But we didn't want to take any chances so we took it off him

and as soon as we went over there he threw it on the floor.

Like I say, he didn't threaten anyone so it's been left.

It's just a little bit childish, really, over a bit of football.

Australia's aboriginal people still travel huge distances

to visit extended family, often staying for months

and, as in any family, there are disagreements.

-Do you know what they're fighting over?

-Don't know.

They're fighting over a funeral that he didn't go to.

He's shouting and screaming at him,

saying that he didn't go to this funeral.

-Yeah.

-That's what it's about.

Some football carnivals last several days

and as the evening draws on, play continues.

But Kurt won't be here to see the trophies presented.

His tour of the outback is coming to an end.

Tomorrow he returns to town.

Back in the woods of New South Wales,

Mancunian doctor Tom Wallis is under pressure.

-Any pain across your chest, buddy?

-No.

Have a quick look at your stomach, mate.

He has to choose which of two injured bikers

is most in need of a flight to hospital.

-Have you ever been in a helicopter before?

-No.

-Do you get travel sickness?

-No.

No?

Can you let me know if you get any pain in your neck, all right?

-Already done that.

-I know, but I've got to do it again, mate.

One patient has a knee injury,

but he'll also need X-rays of his head, neck and back.

-No pain across there?

-Yeah, a little bit there, yeah.

Just on the end there.

This terrain means Aussie medics must work more independently

than their British counterparts, as help is a long way away.

80 Ks, 90 Ks from hospital.

Yeah, so a fair way up in the mountains.

Can you chuck us that towel there?

I can put it under his head a little bit

cos his head isn't neutral there.

That's it. Rest back, mate. That's the way.

One, two, three, lift.

Dr Tom decides Lee, the biker with the broken leg, is most in need

of urgent treatment and a flight to the trauma unit in Newcastle.

Then we're going to take you in the helicopter,

-to John Hunter, all right?

-Yep.

We've got two here today -

we only can transport one in the chopper safely

so we have to make a difficult call on who's the most appropriate

to put in the helicopter and then who can go by road.

Ready to go?

By road from where we are it's probably about an hour,

an hour and a half to the local hospital.

And those little hospitals aren't particularly well staffed

for traumas so you've got to make sure you get the right patient.

INDISTINCT

Being from England you're not really used to that environment as much.

But that's where the paramedics really come into their own

cos they have much better local knowledge,

and then obviously the experience of the pilot

and the crew as well.

They obviously assist in locating the patient and then

some of the logistics around getting them out of that area.

-Just going to put some ear muffs over you, all right, mate?

-Yeah.

-That comfy enough?

-Yeah.

Yeah? Good lad.

Oh, he's looking pretty stable at the moment.

His pain's pretty well controlled.

He's relatively comfy, given what's happened to him.

Not feeling too nauseated, mate?

OK, what we'll do, we'll come up a little bit to my right,

then we'll bring the tail your side.

Over the track, vertically up and out towards

the south east, following the road.

Coming up.

And 30% there.

Move right,

and we're all clear left.

98%.

It's pretty hilly terrain, quite isolated

and lots of little farm hamlets, basically,

so very different to what we'd experience in the UK.

There you're often quite close to hospitals

so transport isn't as much of an issue

and finding them's a lot easier.

Do you want the heater on in the back, are you happy?

-We're both shaking our heads, mate, we're comfortable.

-Sure.

Many hospital doctors in New South Wales like Tom take turns

to leave A & E and fly on the rescue chopper.

Good afternoon, this is Westbank Helicopter Retrieval 1.

We are inbound with a 30-year-old,

been involved in a head-on motorbike accident today.

Tom's talking to a colleague he will be working with tomorrow.

Our ETA to you is 17:05.

They've flown 120 miles -

the equivalent of travelling from London to Bristol.

RADIO CHATTER

The biker was assessed soon after his flight.

Apart from surgery on his knee, he needs no further treatment.

His friend has also escaped lasting injuries.

Senior Constable Kurt Weedon's manor used to be the streets of Dartford.

Now it's one of the remotest beats in the world -

the town of Warakurna, 1,000 miles from the nearest city.

I've got a very serious problem.

Seriously, we phoned you earlier to get it but there was no answer.

Yeah, come through.

This is the important part of community policing.

This is Darryl, who works for the health service

and we came in the other day when we was dealing with a job and he'd made

a cheesecake and it's probably the best cheesecake I've tasted.

So now I'm doing the important stuff and getting the recipe

so I can make one later.

But Kurt isn't getting the recipe for nothing, there's going to

be a power cut and the medic who runs to local clinic wants a backup plan.

-We've got a blackout between 11 and 4...

-Sunday.

-Friday.

-Friday.

And I've got to look for an alternative place

for emergency care.

It gives you an idea of the isolation out here.

They've got backup generators

but they need to keep them there for their immunisation drugs.

So what he's asking there is can they use the police station

as a place where he can take all his equipment up

and treat someone if there's emergency

and keep them stable until the doctor flies in?

Kurt rarely had time to exchange cheesecake recipes back in Kent.

Now he has plenty of time on his hands in his room

close to the police station.

Yeah, you've got to be quite a strong character

and you certainly have got to be independent

cos there's long periods of time where you're literally by yourself.

Other than work, you know, you get a couple of days off

if it's quiet and then you're sitting here, you're by yourself.

So you need to be able to entertain yourself, quite strong minded

and certainly got to like your own company as well.

If you don't like your own company

and you're out here, you're in trouble.

Kurt likes to keep fit.

Policing in 50 degrees Celsius requires stamina.

If you're applying to come here you do a psych test

from the internal psychologist,

mainly for the agency to reassure themselves that they're not

putting someone up here that doesn't understand where they're going.

A lot of people apply for these positions,

they don't actually realise how alone you are

and how solitary the existence is.

The difficulty of coming to one of these remote locations

is that there's only two officers here.

So there's always going to be the issue of

whether you get on with that person.

You're with someone minimum eight hours of the day.

But even outside of work you're the only two people really

in the community other than maybe some health workers.

So, kind of, you're each other's support

and it's a difficult thing to do, is try and match two people up.

Two different personalities come together and, you know,

things don't work which, you know, it is a problem.

You all right?

After five weeks, this is Kurt's last day in Warakurna.

He's about to head back to the town of Laverton,

250 miles up the road, and a bigger station with 12 officers.

Absolutely love it.

It's completely quiet - you're literally in the middle of nowhere.

I've been policing for 15, 16 years now

and by far the best group of people I've ever had

the pleasure of working with and I genuinely mean that.

I mean, they're such nice people. Welcoming.

You probably won't hear a police officer say this that often,

but they're so honest.

Working in the UK, someone can do something in front of you

and you witness with your own eyes and you ask them about it

and they'll deny it.

The things I miss from back home from the UK...

First and foremost - it sounds sad -

is I miss what I call Western Chinese food.

Obviously you miss your friends.

And I've got to be honest, I do have a soft spot and I do miss London.

I used to enjoy going out in London.

But if I weigh it up, all in all, I made the right decision.

Ambulance emergency, what suburb, please?

OK, I'm organising the paramedics to help you now

so stay on the line and I'll tell you exactly what to do next.

It's the evening rush hour in New South Wales.

All we know so far is a 24-year-old who's had

a collision in a motor car.

We don't know much else about him at this stage so we'll

hopefully get some more information en route from the radio comms.

RADIO CHATTER

Flying doctor Sue Parkinson, originally from the Wirral,

is heading out into the bush, west of Sydney.

Her patient has crashed on a remote country road.

It's 100 miles away and controllers are using

the signal from the victim's phone to try to find him.

I believe we have the rural fire service on the line here now

giving us location details and perhaps a GPS.

What's the information we've got?

Have we got any information on the injuries of the driver?

No, no, just single male occupant of a car, rolled into a tree.

This is Sue's second mission today.

My experience here so far...

Like, the first time I've been on scene was actually earlier today,

and then the road crew arrived

pretty much as we walked up to the patient.

So I've not actually been the first on the scene as yet,

but I know other people have.

Get some packs out just in case we are first there.

-All good in the back, guys?

-Yeah, cabin's all set.

That might be it there, just coming three o'clock now.

There's an emergency vehicle on the road

-and to the left there's a car and a...

-Yeah, I've got it.

The team's prepared to deal with this incident alone,

but local paramedics have beaten them to it.

Car rollover.

There was three persons in the vehicle, quite foreign accent

so they're very, very hard to be able to communicate.

Right, jump in, kids.

The crash has happened on a steep hill, too steep for the chopper

to land, so Sue and paramedic Monty are getting a lift.

The story is that he got thrown or ejected from the vehicle

whilst it was rolling.

The other two managed to get themselves out of the vehicle

-when it stopped rolling.

-Yeah.

It's rolled a distance roughly about 100 metres.

Not too sure how many times it rolled.

As I said, we've got some language barriers.

-And it's struck a tree and that's where it's come to a stop.

-Yeah.

Thank you. You all right for PPE?

Hello, Warwick, came to give you a hand.

This fellow, rear seat passenger,

-got a bit of a language barrier on the Korean.

-Yep.

Querying LAC, very much a big query.

Query some generalised neck pain.

His main complaint of pain is generalised pain

to the left shoulder.

Little bit to the right shoulder and a little bit of sternal.

Yeah.

There were three people in the car when it left the road,

rolled down the ravine and hit a tree.

The airbags did their job.

Two occupants escaped with bruises,

but the third is in severe pain.

What I want you to do is tell me if it hurts when I press.

-OK.

-Here.

-Here, pain?

-More up, up, up.

-OK.

-Here?

-Down.

-Yeah, here.

-There.

Dr Sue continues her assessment.

Let's have a look at your chest.

So, he's got some bruising here, looks like seatbelt marks.

-Did you have on a seatbelt?

-Yeah.

Yeah?

-Any pain down your leg?

-No.

If I lift your leg up...

-..does it hurt, any pain?

-No.

Does that hurt if I push?

Oh, I'm OK.

Yeah, but is it sore? Any pain, yes or no?

-No.

-OK. If I straighten your leg, OK? Any pain?

Sue and paramedic Paul Monty decide the man's injuries aren't serious

enough to require a helicopter flight to the major trauma unit.

Central sternal pain is quite mild

and the same on the left shoulder.

I think if anything was going to show up that was going to be

sinister it would've showed up by now.

I'm happy that he goes to the local hospital.

We're not going to take you in the helicopter.

We're going to take you in an ambulance to the hospital nearby.

-OK.

-It'll be 40 minutes in the ambulance, OK?

You may have a bad injury. It's unlikely,

but we want to make sure you don't.

Prepare to roll on the count of three. One, two, three...

'He was the rear seat passenger.

'The car's rolled.'

He seems to have been ejected during the roll, so before the car stopped,

and that's a pretty significant mechanism of injury.

What we look at with mechanism of injury

is how much energy is involved.

Because if there's energy involved in the car movement,

that can be transferred to a person's body.

And the higher the energy involved the more likely

the injuries are to be serious.

He's been very fortunate.

In Australia, the victims of accidents like this often go

undiscovered for hours or even days.

There are a lot of areas where there are these high-speed roads,

these highways where if you're travelling at 100 Ks per hour

or faster, and they pass through areas

where there's very little population and they can be pretty quiet,

especially out of hours and at night.

So if somebody rolls a car, for example,

especially if they're on their own and they're seriously injured,

they could disappear down the side of a road, down a ditch

and they may not be discovered for a long time.

And that can then result in things like exposure being a problem,

or they could even die because they're trapped in their car

and nobody's found them.

The man's travelling by road to hospital

in the country town of Goulburn.

He recovers well and is soon allowed home.

160 miles from Sydney in the town of Orange,

one of Australia's outback ambulances is about to take on board

a passenger with a critical medical condition.

It's an 89-year-old man and he presented to hospital

and he only had a heart rate of 20.

His life will in the hands of British flight nurse

Juanita Ameghino.

All right, David, a bit like a sack of potatoes, over towards me.

You lie there and do nothing, David, and we'll do it on your count, yeah?

Yeah, everybody happy?

They gave him some isoprenaline,

which is a drug to bring his heart rate up,

and that came up nicely and now they put transvenous pacing wires in

and he's going to Sydney for insertion

of a permanent pace maker.

Are you warm enough, mate? It's freezing in Orange.

Yes, it's...very cool.

For now, 74-year-old pensioner David Sackett's erratic heartbeat

is being maintained by tiny electric shocks.

We're taking him as a matter of urgency

because transvenous pacing wire are a little bit precarious

and we don't want him dropping his heart rate down to 20 again.

But there's a high risk he could go into cardiac arrest.

Say when, Ian, I can't see the top of it any more.

My main concern is to make sure that those pacing wires

remain in situ and that we maintain a heart rate.

I'll have him stretch... On that stretcher, yeah.

I will be putting him on the cardiac monitor just to make

sure that he maintains that heart rate.

When he drops his heart rate he drops his blood pressure as well,

which is why he collapsed

when he came in with his initial presentation.

I'll be monitoring him very closely

in regards to his blood pressure and his pulse rate.

RADIO CHATTER

John, it's Juanita. We should be in Sydney by 12:40.

Flying can put extra stress on heart patients but in Australia

it's the only way to get them to specialists in the big cities.

David also has a partially collapsed lung.

The thinner air up here could be a problem.

I am a little bit worried about him.

He looked terribly cyanosed when I picked him up.

He's quite blue around the lips so I've given him some oxygen.

He's come good on the oxygen

and the temporary pacing wires are

working quite well at the moment.

His heart rate's 50 and his blood pressure is maintained well on that.

Juanita has no medical backup.

If something goes wrong in flight, she's on her own

and the plane is climbing.

Where we picked him up from, Orange, is quite high in elevation -

it's 3,000 feet, anyway.

He should cope with the flying quite well, hopefully,

and the pneumothorax shouldn't worsen,

because that's always a risk with the aviation physiology.

He's a little bit overwhelmed by it all, actually, I think.

Cos he collapsed this morning,

he's had lots and lots and lots of things happen to him

and now he's in a plane with me, poor man!

Juanita's older patients down under are in many ways healthier

than those she treated back home in the NHS in London.

There's a lot of farm workers out in the country and I think they do

tend to keep themselves healthier to a certain degree.

Although they never take themselves to hospital,

these old country boys.

But there's certainly an element of work hard, play hard.

The risk of coronary artery disease is probably

lesser in Australia because of the healthier lifestyle choices.

I think there's less smoking on the whole,

I think drinking's probably about the same between the two countries.

After an hour in the air,

David has almost completed his journey to Sydney.

His heart's still beating just 50 times a minute.

50, 40, 30,

20...

10...

He's on the list for surgery at the Royal Prince Albert Hospital

tonight where they'll give him a permanent pacemaker.

How are you feeling, David?

Not too bad.

Not too bad, good.

We're in... We've just arrived in Sydney.

We're just going to take you into the hangar

and I'll take you out and we'll get you into an ambulance

and straight into the arms of Dr Wilson so he can sort you out.

David's surgery in Sydney is successful

and he's soon ready for a flight back home from the big city,

this time with a pacemaker maintaining the rhythm of his heart.