TRAVERSE 181
twisted leg, shallow breathing, blood soaking through his jeans. There’ s no signal on the phone. He hits the SOS button on a personal locator beacon and waits, the endless quiet suddenly oppressive.
That beacon signal travels upward to a satellite and then down again to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority in Canberra, which relays the coordinates to state emergency services and the nearest RFDS operations centre. Somewhere in Port Augusta or Alice Springs, a dispatcher’ s phone rings. Within minutes, the call has been logged, triaged and assigned a case number. The flight coordinator checks weather, daylight, available aircraft, fuel load, distance and the likely medical needs based on the incident report. A pilot, flight nurse and retrieval doctor are scrambled.
In the hangar, engines whine to life as the Beechcraft King Air, the workhorse of the RFDS fleet, is fuelled and loaded. Inside, the aircraft looks more like a compact intensive care ward than a plane. There’ s a ventilator, cardiac monitor, suction unit, defibrillator, infusion pumps, oxygen tanks and a full stock of trauma equipment. Every inch of space is planned for efficiency; every drawer labelled and secured. As the crew runs through pre-flight checks, ground staff coordinate with local police and station owners to find a landing site. Sometimes it’ s an established airstrip. Sometimes it’ s just a stretch of graded dirt road cleared of cattle and debris, marked out with the headlights of waiting utes.
The flight to the scene might take an hour, sometimes two. From the air, the outback is a map of colour and texture, red dunes, dry riverbeds, ghost gums clinging to creek lines. The pilot drops altitude, scanning for the makeshift strip. On the ground, the friend waves frantically as the aircraft touches down in a swirl of dust. Within moments, the flight nurse and doctor are at the patient’ s side, moving with calm precision.
Their first job is stabilisation. Airway, breathing, circulation. They check for spinal injury, administer oxygen, insert IV lines, splint the fractured leg and control the bleeding. Pain relief is given, often ketamine or morphine, and vital signs are monitored continuously. The patient is loaded onto a stretcher and secured inside the aircraft, his helmet placed carefully beside him. The nurse reassures him with a steady hand as the doctor calls ahead to the receiving hospital, giving a rapid assessment over satellite radio.
The Beechcraft roars back into the sky. At altitude, the cabin hums with the rhythm of machines: the beep of monitors, the hiss of oxygen. The nurse adjusts fluid rates and checks vitals, while the doctor administers antibiotics and keeps the patient stable. They are flying at 300 kilometres an hour across a sea of red and gold, heading for the nearest trauma centre, maybe Port Augusta, Alice
TRAVERSE 181