Story and photographs by Big M

This may come as a complete surprise to most of the patrons of the Pigs Arms; I’m not a professional writer. I’m a Nurse Practitioner in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

A frequent part of my job is to head a team, which travels to regional hospitals in our area health service to retrieve sick or preterm infants. We often travel in our own ambulance but this is impractical beyond about 200 kms, so, we need to fly. Today we had a call to pick up a thirty-four weeker (born about six weeks early) with Respiratory Distress, in a Special Care Nursery around 400 kms north.

The first thing we did was to have a sandwich and a quick cup of tea, empty the bladder, and change into our flight suits. The equipment is in a constant state of readiness, so there’s very little to prepare, except for driving down to the helipad and loading the chopper.  The pilot and crewman are usually happy to do an inter-hospital retrieval as there’s never any winching of personnel out of surf, sinking ships, fires or flood, just a scenic trip!

Kooragang Island and Stockton Beach.

Whilst the whole concept of flying sounds exciting, it’s pretty tedious, and takes about an hour and a half. We arrive at out destination where wardsmen help move our equipment to the nursery whilst the crew refuel the aircraft, as well as themselves.

The baby is pretty stable; as her doctor has requested she be transferred to our unit before she becomes more unwell, and the nurses have done everything to enable us to swap over to our ventilator, monitors, etc, then move back out to the helicopter. Naturally we talk to the parents, who seem to take everything in their collective stride. Mum is not stable enough to come with us, so will be transferred later.

Retrieval Unit loaded into the back of Bell 412 Helicopter - with purse-carrying nancy-boy installed.

The trip back to Newie is unremarkable, except for the baby trying to disengage herself from her respiratory support. We have a tailwind, so the homeward trip is slightly quicker. The terrain from above is remarkable. One can imagine huge glaciers carving out the various valleys along the coast, with rivers, and creeks ‘tidying up’ eons later. Some towns naturally evolved into a kind of ‘inland port’ on riverbanks where logs were sent downstream. Other towns formed next to various bays and harbours, no longer loading produce onto ships, now providing accommodation for holidaymakers.

I’m happy when we land back at the helicopter base, for two reasons; the baby has done well during the worst part of the trip, and my neck aches from the weight of the helmet. We return to our hospital to admit the new patient whilst the crew refuel to take an adult retrieval team to another location on the north coast.