Speaker 1: We'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land
Speaker 1: on which this podcast was produced, the Galliger people of
Speaker 1: the Orination. We pay our respects to Elder's past and present.
Speaker 1: This episode contains discussions of domestic violence. If this raises
Speaker 1: any issues for you, support is available through the links
Speaker 1: and phone numbers in the show notes.
Speaker 2: Hi, and here.
Speaker 3: I'm taking a short mid season break and we'll be
Speaker 3: back soon with even more great interviews for you. In
Speaker 3: the meantime, I thought I would take a moment to
Speaker 3: reflect on some of the moving conversations I've had with
Speaker 3: some incredible frontline workers. In this special episode, you're here
Speaker 3: from former police officer Alan Sparks, former firefighter Greg Mullins,
Speaker 3: and paramedic Sally Gold. My first guest is Alan Sparks,
Speaker 3: with a career spanning over twenty years. As an operational
Speaker 3: police officer, Alan was no stranger to high pressure situations
Speaker 3: for murders, to robberies to rescues. Alan had to confront
Speaker 3: intense and difficult cases on a daily basis, but this
Speaker 3: took a harsh toll.
Speaker 4: Then we went back to the station. We're just having
Speaker 4: a cup of tea, and I remember we were standing
Speaker 4: in the mill room near the sink, and when the
Speaker 4: police issue like an urgent job, you get two distinct
Speaker 4: beeps over the radio and then it said any car
Speaker 4: in the vicinity of whatever street it was. Boy swept
Speaker 4: into a stormwater pipe. And normally that's a job that
Speaker 4: uniform would attend, not detectives. It's not a storm or
Speaker 4: a drain, which is a large thing you can actually
Speaker 4: walk into. This is a narrow pipe. So I remember
Speaker 4: Gave and I we just looked at each other and
Speaker 4: just threw our cups in the sink, raced downstairs, jumped
Speaker 4: in the car, took off up to this street and
Speaker 4: we got there and we'd have five absolutely torrential rainfall
Speaker 4: at Cops Harbor, so everything was flooded. And we got
Speaker 4: to the scene. There were two little boys. They were saturated,
Speaker 4: and there was a workman there, an adult male, and
Speaker 4: we said to the kids, what's happened. They said, oh,
Speaker 4: gives gives disappeared. I said, where's he disappeared? Mate, and
Speaker 4: they pointed to this whirlpool and I've gone, oh.
Speaker 2: Shit, were they playing in the whirlpool?
Speaker 4: Yeah, they've been playing on their boogiey boards in the
Speaker 4: flooded creek and the whole thing was flooded, and this
Speaker 4: whirlpool was massive, was just swirling around, and I thought, great,
Speaker 4: what are we going to do? And then the workman said, look,
Speaker 4: you can actually get access to look down the drain
Speaker 4: across the road.
Speaker 5: So we ran across the.
Speaker 2: Road and there's just two of you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So we lifted up the concrete covers. We took
Speaker 4: our guns and handcuffs off through those in the car,
Speaker 4: jumped into the into the drain, and we looked down.
Speaker 4: We could see what we thought was a little boy's
Speaker 4: body down the pipe. And I think the workman he
Speaker 4: gave us a rope gave wanted to go down, and
Speaker 4: and I said to Gav, look I'll go down. I'll
Speaker 4: grab him. I'll give you three tugs and I've got him.
Speaker 4: Pulled me back. So I started to go down and
Speaker 4: I realized this rope is going to snap and then
Speaker 4: I'm down there. So I tugged on the rope gave
Speaker 4: pulled me back up to the surface. And I've only
Speaker 4: gone down a few meters and by that stage, the
Speaker 4: State Emergency Service are there, other cops are there, and
Speaker 4: I say this lot of thank God, the professionals here,
Speaker 4: they'll take over. And they just gave me a bigger
Speaker 4: rope and put me.
Speaker 5: Son.
Speaker 3: I went, you committed anyway.
Speaker 4: And I still remember I'm not a small man. I
Speaker 4: think at that stage, I was probably punching one hundred
Speaker 4: plus kilos. I'm six foot two, and this water literally
Speaker 4: just carried me down.
Speaker 5: Like a leaf. I was. I was weightless the power
Speaker 5: of this water.
Speaker 3: So in fact then that to you, were you thinking, wow, yeah,
Speaker 3: I've done to this little boy.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And our reasoning was if if we get him out,
Speaker 4: if he's dead, we'll we have a chance of reviving him.
Speaker 4: If he's alive, we've got to get him out before
Speaker 4: it rains again and he.
Speaker 5: Gets washed away.
Speaker 2: And what was going through your mind.
Speaker 5: I'm a very positive person.
Speaker 4: I thought, now he's alive, we'll get him out and
Speaker 4: we'll get him, get him, get him back home.
Speaker 5: It'll be right. So the focus was get to him.
Speaker 4: And I had a torch with me, like a maglight,
Speaker 4: I think, and there's been an estimate. I went down
Speaker 4: eighty meters down the pipe, and by the time we
Speaker 4: got to where we thought it was him, the light
Speaker 4: shot up was just like it was a branch that
Speaker 4: was giving these weird shadows. So what you thought was
Speaker 4: the boy, Yeah, this is not good. So I've tugged
Speaker 4: three times on the rope. Thank god, Gavin was in
Speaker 4: the drain. He could see what was going on, so
Speaker 4: as soon as I tugg him the rope, they stopped
Speaker 4: the free flow. So I've stopped and my bulk, I've
Speaker 4: actually damned myself in. So suddenly I am I'm engulfed
Speaker 4: in water and this water is so powerful. And my
Speaker 4: first thought was I hope the guy that tied a
Speaker 4: bowline tied a good bowline around my waist, because all
Speaker 4: I had was just a rope on my arms. So
Speaker 4: then they started to pull me back and I'm not
Speaker 4: in a good position here. I thought, I'm going to
Speaker 4: die here, I'm going to drown.
Speaker 3: And so you've got this this this backwash just engulfing you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm pretty well submerged under the water, being pulled
Speaker 4: backwards by all the all the se s guys that
Speaker 4: cops up on the surface point.
Speaker 2: No proper equipment, just a rope around your boy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I remember sort of sometimes I'd like create
Speaker 4: a bit of an arch, make an air pocket, grab
Speaker 4: a quick breath, get under the water, and go back
Speaker 4: under the water again. And then we got back. I've
Speaker 4: got back to the surface, thankfully. And then we were
Speaker 4: just standing around, going we have to find ways into
Speaker 4: this drain. We've got to try and reap frog down
Speaker 4: the drain to try and find him. And then a
Speaker 4: call came over the radio to say they can hear
Speaker 4: a child screaming down the Pacific Highway. Mentally, I'll go on,
Speaker 4: that's a long way away. That's a seriously long way away.
Speaker 4: And it turns out from where we were it was
Speaker 4: about as the craveflis five hundred meters.
Speaker 2: It's like a maze down there, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's this pipe. I mean, I know it went
Speaker 4: to a certain direction. But when we got down to
Speaker 4: the highway, the Pacific Highways all blocked off. There's people everywhere,
Speaker 4: and we jumped out of the car and got to
Speaker 4: hear the screams of a child.
Speaker 2: What's going through your head when you're hearing the screams?
Speaker 4: Confusion, absolute confusion. Like I thought the kid was dead.
Speaker 4: I thought we were looking for a body recovery. Yeah,
Speaker 4: there's no way this kid can be alive. I thought
Speaker 4: he's trapped against a great somewhere is dead. But then
Speaker 4: to hear the screams, No, he's actually alive. So my
Speaker 4: brain's going dead alive and he's alive. But Michael mar
Speaker 4: the paramedic. Michael was laying on his tummy with his
Speaker 4: head down into this manhole, and we ran over and
Speaker 4: the water was bubbling up on the manhole. But the
Speaker 4: screams are coming up through the water. I'm even more
Speaker 4: confused by this stage, so I called. I said, I
Speaker 4: want a scuba tank. I want to regulator because I
Speaker 4: had done some scuba diving. I said, there are the
Speaker 4: two things I want, And somebody produced a ladder and
Speaker 4: plunked it down the manhole, and there's actual TV footage
Speaker 4: of Gavin trying to squeeze his way down.
Speaker 2: The camera cruiser.
Speaker 3: Yeahound up the emergency services. You've got everyone that's now
Speaker 3: over watching this.
Speaker 4: And at some stage, I don't know when, but I
Speaker 4: took my soup pants off and I'm there and boxes
Speaker 4: stah my ppees. Anyway, so Gav's we're all there. But
Speaker 4: there's these screams, and these these are terrifying screams. A
Speaker 4: child screaming for their life. It was terrifying. So they
Speaker 4: put another rope around me and don't want that. Gav
Speaker 4: went down straight down the ladder. He disappeared under the water.
Speaker 4: I followed him down and the water is not clear,
Speaker 4: sobu it's floodwater, it's filthy money. Gav disappeared. I went down.
Speaker 4: I'm under the water trying to film a way around,
Speaker 4: and we both came up in the junction of six
Speaker 4: of these pipes which were pouring in.
Speaker 2: On top of head torch on is it down there?
Speaker 4: No, it's pitched black. We haven't got a torch, we've
Speaker 4: got nothing. And we weren't communicating. We just just knew
Speaker 4: what we thought we had to do, and that was
Speaker 4: to search to try and find which pipe is up?
Speaker 2: Followed the voice, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: And we searched a couple of pipes each and then
Speaker 4: when I went up, I thought it's this one. I've
Speaker 4: got to take a punt. I think it's this one,
Speaker 4: because we were conscious if it rains again, we're all dead,
Speaker 4: because downpour, we're dead. We're not going to get out.
Speaker 2: You're done.
Speaker 4: So I said to Gav, look, I think it's this one.
Speaker 4: Can you try and find it a way into this pipe?
Speaker 4: So I regret that decision in hindsight, but Gav should
Speaker 4: have been there with me to rejoice in the success
Speaker 4: we eventually had. Gab deserved to be there for that
Speaker 4: moment in life. And I've always regretted that I asked
Speaker 4: Gab to leave the drain system.
Speaker 2: And why did you make that decision? What was going
Speaker 2: for you head? Was his safety or.
Speaker 4: No is to try and get to this kid as
Speaker 4: quickly as we could. If I couldn't get to him,
Speaker 4: maybe up some other way. Unbeknownst to us, the council
Speaker 4: was bringing down a backo. They were going to dig
Speaker 4: up the highway to try and find this kid. That's
Speaker 4: how desperate it was. And so Gave went up, and
Speaker 4: then Michael Marlin, paramedic, came down and he gave me
Speaker 4: a torch, and I think he insisted I put a
Speaker 4: rope around my tummy. But this time I'm on my
Speaker 4: fingernails and toenails, crawling up this pipe to try and
Speaker 4: get to where I think the kid is.
Speaker 5: And again these screams are.
Speaker 4: Just doing my head and I'm crawling up, literally crawling
Speaker 4: in amongst the concrete and the crap that's in a
Speaker 4: concrete pipe, and it's.
Speaker 5: Shoulder with the part.
Speaker 4: I was watching your show the other night where they
Speaker 4: did the exercise being in the water pipe. Yeah wow, okay,
Speaker 4: I know that's like yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, so I'm
Speaker 4: crawling up the pipe. Michael mar is behind me, screaming
Speaker 4: at me. If you got him out, I've got him.
Speaker 4: Have you got him?
Speaker 2: How long have you been down there?
Speaker 4: Ah?
Speaker 2: You're cold, your well.
Speaker 4: I'm freezing him miserable. We're freezing and ol. Hears this
Speaker 4: kid screaming. Michael's screaming. So I'm screaming at Michael, like,
Speaker 4: shut the f up. I'm trying to call the kid.
Speaker 4: It's okay, mate, I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming.
Speaker 2: Could he hear your voice? Was he responding?
Speaker 5: No, he was.
Speaker 4: He was just he'd lost it. He was hysterical, he was,
Speaker 4: no doubt, hypothermic. He's been in there for forty five minutes,
Speaker 4: hanging on for dear life, because he's just hanging on
Speaker 4: to a log that's stammed across the pipe. If that
Speaker 4: log wasn't there, he was dead because he would have
Speaker 4: got washed down to a great there was no way
Speaker 4: that he would have survived. So he's been hanging on
Speaker 4: there in the pitch dark, with his water just houring
Speaker 4: onto his body, screaming and screaming for his life, and suddenly,
Speaker 4: no doubt he can see torchlight. But I don't know
Speaker 4: whether he understands what it is. And I really wasn't.
Speaker 4: I wasn't thinking about does he know? Does he know?
Speaker 4: I'm just trying to get to him. I'm absolutely desperate,
Speaker 4: and I started to pray, like, please, God, let me
Speaker 4: get to him, Please don't let him get washed away.
Speaker 4: And I kept crawling and crawling, crawling, and I can
Speaker 4: picture it to this absolute moment in time. My torch
Speaker 4: light finally picked up his face. That's all I can
Speaker 4: see was just his face and the illumination of the
Speaker 4: torch hitting his face. It was like I saw a ghost,
Speaker 4: and it is so vivid in my memory. And I
Speaker 4: coaxed him to come towards me because I thought I'm
Speaker 4: not going to get to him.
Speaker 2: How far were you away from him when you swim? Oh?
Speaker 4: And probably ten meters and I was about thirty meters
Speaker 4: up the yeah, yeah, So I'd crawl thirty meters on
Speaker 4: my guts to get to him.
Speaker 5: And then he did.
Speaker 4: He got washed down to me and I've got hold
Speaker 4: of him. And I was like, you've got him, and
Speaker 4: out of the blue, I just said, say thank you God.
Speaker 4: And I'm not a religious person and I'm a very
Speaker 4: spiritual person, but I said, you say thank you God.
Speaker 4: And this little boy he just said thank you God.
Speaker 4: He started to bail his eyes out, and I did.
Speaker 4: I started to bore my eyes out.
Speaker 3: So you have this moment where you've got him in
Speaker 3: your arms, he's gripping news. He is he calming down
Speaker 3: or is he just still?
Speaker 4: He had basically just collapsed with exhaustion, with emotion, with
Speaker 4: a sense of his I feel safe. Now this man's
Speaker 4: got me. I feel safe. And then I somehow pushed
Speaker 4: him under me and then he got washed down to
Speaker 4: Michael mar the paramedic. Michael's got him, assessed him there,
Speaker 4: Michael swam him under the water, got to where the
Speaker 4: manhole was. Michael climbed up the ladder then and the
Speaker 4: TV foot cameras rolling and they reached down and they
Speaker 4: pulled this little kid out out of the drain and
Speaker 4: he just comes up like a drowned rat. And they
Speaker 4: put him on the ambulance gurn He wraped him up
Speaker 4: an emergency blanket. His mom's there, she's been there through
Speaker 4: the whole thing. She was hearing her child screaming for
Speaker 4: their life. They wrap him up in the blanket. Her
Speaker 4: mum's just hugging him and hugging him. And I get
Speaker 4: out of the pipe. I go to the car and
Speaker 4: I'm sitting in the passenger seat of this car, and
Speaker 4: I was cold. I remember being really cold.
Speaker 2: How long have you been down there for?
Speaker 5: And I don't know how long.
Speaker 2: Had he been down there for.
Speaker 4: At least forty five minutes, at least forty five minutes.
Speaker 4: And halfway down the pipe, he saw some light and
Speaker 4: he reached up and he grabbed hold of a grate
Speaker 4: in the side of the road. Because his vision impaired,
Speaker 4: his glasses went flying as soon as he got sucked
Speaker 4: off the boogie board. Evidently, he tells me that he
Speaker 4: could see shapes and he just started to scream and
Speaker 4: screen for help, and then the water just washed him
Speaker 4: away another three hundred meters, So he's been washed six
Speaker 4: hundred meters down the pipe.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: And then I'm in the car and just I mean,
Speaker 4: like I'm in shock. I remember going back to the
Speaker 4: police station.
Speaker 5: Dad.
Speaker 4: My wife, she was a cop there. She's in her office.
Speaker 4: She isn't doing she's in a chop protection unit. So
Speaker 4: she's in the in her office and they had for
Speaker 4: some reason, I had the radio turned down, so she
Speaker 4: didn't know anything was going on. And she saw the
Speaker 4: car pull up and she looked out. She saw Gavin
Speaker 4: get out in his pants and shirt saturated, holding his
Speaker 4: gun on handcuffs.
Speaker 5: She's going, oh, it's strange.
Speaker 4: Then she saw me get out in my box of shorts,
Speaker 4: holding my gun on handcuffs, had a lot of blood
Speaker 4: in my back and other stuff. I've just gone, yeah,
Speaker 4: from a look like cutting myself on the concrete pipe
Speaker 4: because it was so narrow and trying to get it
Speaker 4: squeeze myself around. So I went into the crime scene
Speaker 4: and I've just jumped straight in the shower just to
Speaker 4: wash all this felt filthy and deb found me. I
Speaker 4: just just curled up in a ball on the bottom
Speaker 4: of the shower. A sist just sobbing my.
Speaker 3: Heart straight after the incident, Yeah it's affected you straight away.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've had a serious, a serious how'd you say?
Speaker 4: Looking at it scientifically, I think I went from being
Speaker 4: a sympathetic, nervous state into a massive power, sympathetic. I'm safe,
Speaker 4: I'm warm, I'm okay, and my body has just shut down.
Speaker 3: My next guest is Greg Mullins, who is widely known
Speaker 3: as a legend in the firefighting community. In our interview,
Speaker 3: he took me back to the Black Summer of twenty
Speaker 3: nineteen and shared the impact of that awful time.
Speaker 6: Every state and territory had major fires, so and that
Speaker 6: had never happened before. There used to be sequential they
Speaker 6: come from the north and we'd share fire fight across borders.
Speaker 6: All of a sudden we're in the fight of our
Speaker 6: lives and couldn't help each other. The aircraft we needed.
Speaker 6: California still had fires and they wouldn't let a lot
Speaker 6: of them go because a big aircraft we don't have
Speaker 6: any in Australia, or didn't have any in Australia. Then
Speaker 6: we had to lease them, and so they were saying, no,
Speaker 6: we've got our own problems, you can wait. So the
Speaker 6: fires got bigger and bigger. The weather it was the
Speaker 6: worst weather ever recorded, so for months and months and months.
Speaker 6: There's a whole lot of things that contributed to that,
Speaker 6: in the Antarctic and the tropics, and the unusual weather patterns,
Speaker 6: but we had drought, so we had strong westerly winds
Speaker 6: coming off the desert, off the interior the out back,
Speaker 6: hitting the coast, very low humidity, very high temperatures. I
Speaker 6: was fighting fires one day twenty first of December twenty nineteen,
Speaker 6: it just about reached fifty degrees in western Sydney. I
Speaker 6: did a twenty six hour shift and ended up in
Speaker 6: bed with the hydration, pretty sick, and you know, we
Speaker 6: saved dozens of hams that night, but it nearly didn't
Speaker 6: make it home. And so it was horrendous weather. And
Speaker 6: as a young firefighter, I remember thinking, oh, you know
Speaker 6: the old one hundred degrees fahrenheit, that's thirty eight degrees.
Speaker 6: That's about as hot as it would ever get. But
Speaker 6: then we were fighting fires regularly in forty five forty seven.
Speaker 6: It was just horrendous. And it took off in November
Speaker 6: again and I was actually in California at the Kincaid
Speaker 6: Fire in Sonoma County. So I went over with the
Speaker 6: Climate Council. The ABC Australian Broadcasting Commission tagged along and
Speaker 6: I went out to this fire and they did a
Speaker 6: little special and it went to where I think it
Speaker 6: was the seventh of November. Sorry, I'm a nerder, remember dates.
Speaker 6: It's a roundabout then and on the and me saying, well,
Speaker 6: look at this fire in California. Here's what's changing with
Speaker 6: climate change. They didn't get big fires like this than
Speaker 6: California this time of year, but now they do same
Speaker 6: in Australia and this build up, this is the worst
Speaker 6: I've ever seen. And I'm really frightened about what's going
Speaker 6: to happen. So the next day after they ran it
Speaker 6: across Australia, the fires went wild and lost dozens and
Speaker 6: dozens of homes, some lives, and you're.
Speaker 3: Back to back at this stage, you know, every man
Speaker 3: and his dog is out. Are you undermanned as a
Speaker 3: fire service? So all your these resources stretched?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 6: Well? It was just relentless and relentlessly and it was
Speaker 6: just you know, you're going from August and just.
Speaker 2: There was no rest months and months, and.
Speaker 6: People who lived in the fire areas and I was
Speaker 6: really lucky. I thought, if Sydney gets hit, you know
Speaker 6: that's where the real property losses have traditionally happened, as
Speaker 6: on the outskirts of Sydney and the Blue Mountains near Sydney,
Speaker 6: but we were losing hundreds of homes in regional areas
Speaker 6: which had never happened before, and it just showed how
Speaker 6: big the fires were. But yeah, people were exhausted and
Speaker 6: you couldn't get the interstate assistance because they had their
Speaker 6: own fires. You didn't have enough aircraft, you know. I
Speaker 6: remember watching a drop on the south coast of New
Speaker 6: South Wales, thinking great, and then it was two hours
Speaker 6: before the next one because it had to fly back
Speaker 6: to Sydney and relaid and come back, and it was
Speaker 6: just there was no point, you know, And it was
Speaker 6: and the small aircraft couldn't fly because wind was too strong.
Speaker 6: So we'd get days of catastrophic fire weather, which was
Speaker 6: a new rating we'd brought in because of climate change
Speaker 6: because the weather was getting so bad. But most aircraft
Speaker 6: couldn't fly in those days because the wind was too
Speaker 6: gusty and strong, and there was a bad air crash
Speaker 6: a see one thirty hercules went in on one of
Speaker 6: these days.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I heard about that.
Speaker 6: It was just, yeah, horrific. So look, it just got
Speaker 6: worse and worse and worse and culminated on New Year's
Speaker 6: Eve twenty nineteen, the South coast of New South Wales,
Speaker 6: which is hundreds of kilometers long, beautiful beaches. Tens of
Speaker 6: thousands of people go there for their Christmas holidays. It
Speaker 6: was evacuated and there were dozens of huge fires, and
Speaker 6: I remember being down there on Newyear's Day. We left
Speaker 6: Sydney about four am. Would have been hundreds of fire
Speaker 6: trucks heading down there, and we just couldn't do a
Speaker 6: thing because we had what we called a pyro convective
Speaker 6: storm above us, and that means the fire was so
Speaker 6: hot the convection column pushed into the stratosphere and brought
Speaker 6: gale storm force winds to the surface this incredibly dry air,
Speaker 6: and huge trees next to us were just getting snapped
Speaker 6: off like toothpicks and thrown around. And I didn't think
Speaker 6: it was coming home again, I thought, but you talked
Speaker 6: about the animals and this is I was back to
Speaker 6: my psychologist over this one because I couldn't talk about
Speaker 6: I can talk about it now without sort of tearing up,
Speaker 6: but it took a lot of work to get there.
Speaker 6: I remember being on a highway and there's factories burning
Speaker 6: and homes burning, and we didn't have any water and
Speaker 6: the power had gone and we couldn't get any water.
Speaker 6: I saw something over on the side of the highway
Speaker 6: through the smoke. What's that And I thought it was
Speaker 6: burnt hay bales, And then some of them started to
Speaker 6: move and went over closer, and it was a mob
Speaker 6: of kangaroos who had been caught in the forest and
Speaker 6: just caught fire and come out on the raid and
Speaker 6: just died on the raid. And I've never seen that,
Speaker 6: because kangaroos know how to get away from fires. And
Speaker 6: I just, yeah, i'd cry if I talked about it
Speaker 6: for months, and it just said everything to me. I
Speaker 6: just thought, my grandkids are going to grow up this.
Speaker 6: You know, millions of hectares have been sterilized for decades.
Speaker 6: Animals will come back, but nothing like when I was
Speaker 6: a kid. My parents took me camping and you'd see
Speaker 6: kangaroos and koalas and kidnaps and goannas and well, this
Speaker 6: beautiful wildlife it was wiped out.
Speaker 3: I had a sense of worthlessness when you just said,
Speaker 3: I was stood there. You're looking around, everything around you's
Speaker 3: on fire. You can't do your job because you've got
Speaker 3: no resources. And I can imagine me being in a
Speaker 3: in a war zone, you know, with no weapon. Just wow,
Speaker 3: that must be some Yeah, sort of had space to
Speaker 3: be in.
Speaker 2: What was going for your head?
Speaker 6: I'm not good, certainly not good. And look the mental
Speaker 6: health issues with firefighters since then, and thinking you're going
Speaker 6: to die is you know, as you know, it's not
Speaker 6: a good thing, and you do that too many times
Speaker 6: and plays with the head a bit. That's an understatement.
Speaker 6: But just not being able to help was so destroying.
Speaker 6: You know, I'm a five fighter, but I can't fight
Speaker 6: your fire. And sorry, I can't help you because I'm
Speaker 6: just dodging trees and I don't know if I'm getting
Speaker 6: out of here, you know, I don't know if I'm
Speaker 6: going home from this.
Speaker 5: So and it was just.
Speaker 6: It's just like having your legs cut off out from
Speaker 6: under you.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 6: It was just the whole reason for being and he
Speaker 6: couldn't do it, and it brought it home to me.
Speaker 6: And I've got to say I was so pissed off
Speaker 6: with the government that day, and a couple of days
Speaker 6: later the Prime Minister had a press conference and so
Speaker 6: I'm going to fix it all. I'm going to give
Speaker 6: them money for aircraft. I was pretty angry and I don't.
Speaker 6: I actually don't talk about that much because I think
Speaker 6: it serves no purpose. But the other thing was he
Speaker 6: went overseas on a holiday and didn't tell anyone. You know,
Speaker 6: if he told people, fine, but he kept it secret
Speaker 6: because he knew he should have been there providing leadership
Speaker 6: during a disaster, but he took off.
Speaker 3: And so all that also motion, there's anger, resentment, yeah
Speaker 3: you know, worth you don't feel like you can do
Speaker 3: your job. Well, you can't do your job negative emotions.
Speaker 6: Yeah you can't.
Speaker 2: But how did you deal with that? Well, you got
Speaker 2: to go home and crive. How did you deal with that?
Speaker 3: Was was there a look at the moments that you
Speaker 3: sort of just broke down and was just.
Speaker 6: Like, yeah, well yes, but look in my book, I
Speaker 6: talk about it. A day I was going out on
Speaker 6: the fire line again. It was that forty nine degree day,
Speaker 6: and but two days before I'd been fighting fires down
Speaker 6: to the south of Sydney and two young dads were
Speaker 6: killed when a tree fell on their truck. And that's
Speaker 6: my trigger, you know, the big one. And I went
Speaker 6: to a cafe before I was going on shift. I
Speaker 6: thought I'll have breakfast and I walked in I had
Speaker 6: the newspaper and I opened it up and there they
Speaker 6: are on the front cover, and.
Speaker 5: I've the tears started.
Speaker 6: I've I've had to pull myself together, people sort of
Speaker 6: looking at me because I'm in a uniform and back
Speaker 6: in the car, and I thought, okay, deep breaths, deep breaths, right,
Speaker 6: all the all the techniques right. So I go to
Speaker 6: the counter and autumn at breakfast, and then I just
Speaker 6: remember the barista came over to the girl and the
Speaker 6: on the cash register. And then the girl said it's fine,
Speaker 6: it's taken care of and I said what and she said,
Speaker 6: on a flow, he has paid for your breakfast. And
Speaker 6: she said, thank you so much for what you do.
Speaker 5: And I just.
Speaker 6: And that I just thought of those two young dads
Speaker 6: and I just and I lost it and it was
Speaker 6: so embarrassing, but I just sat tears and't it. Yeah,
Speaker 6: so brought it back. But how nice people are and
Speaker 6: how good but these two young blakes, their families would
Speaker 6: never see them again.
Speaker 3: And also the appreciation that that, yeah, I went of
Speaker 3: kindness amongst the chaos.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have to let it out. And
Speaker 6: I learned that.
Speaker 3: My final guest today is Sally gould Sally is a
Speaker 3: paramedic and experienced a lot very early on in her career.
Speaker 3: She shared that in her interview with myself.
Speaker 7: Yeah, there have been a few times when the scene's
Speaker 7: not as been as secure as I'd like it, and
Speaker 7: often they come out of nowhere, and again, you think
Speaker 7: you're prepared, you think you've done your scanning and you're
Speaker 7: checking your egress points, and then something unexpected will happen
Speaker 7: and you just feel like the rug's being pulled out
Speaker 7: from under you and you've put yourself in a really
Speaker 7: dangerous position. I was working with a partner and we
Speaker 7: attended this young female who had her mother on scene.
Speaker 7: And as we entered the property, it just looked fairly benign,
Speaker 7: a tidy ordered house. The people greeted us respectfully. She
Speaker 7: was holding her face as if she'd had some sort
Speaker 7: of injury underneath it, and I started introduce seeing myself
Speaker 7: and my partner and speaking to the patient, and the
Speaker 7: mother just looked a bit unsettled and uneasy, and her
Speaker 7: eyes sort of started diving across the room, and obviously
Speaker 7: I started tingling, you know, feeling uncomfortable. Something's going on here,
Speaker 7: And the next words out of my mouth were going
Speaker 7: to be you know, is anyone else home? But before
Speaker 7: I could say that, a door opened across the other
Speaker 7: side of the room, and a young male who looked
Speaker 7: completely furious, stormed out and then pinned his mother up
Speaker 7: against the wall by the throat. And I remember just
Speaker 7: freezing in that instance and just thinking, this is not
Speaker 7: what I'm here for, This is not what I'm paid for,
Speaker 7: this is not in my job. This violent man I
Speaker 7: don't know. I don't know anything about him. I don't
Speaker 7: know anything about these people, and now I'm in their
Speaker 7: house watching this unfold. Thankfully, he wasn't targeting us, and
Speaker 7: we made it out safely and okay, and managed to
Speaker 7: treat the people and they were also okay in the end.
Speaker 7: But that feeling of being completely blindsided, out of control, unsafe,
Speaker 7: and then for me, when I reflected, it was also
Speaker 7: the concern that, you know, what would I have done?
Speaker 7: Would I have been able to defend myself, would I
Speaker 7: have was I aware enough of my exits? All those
Speaker 7: types of things, And yeah, I think that was a
Speaker 7: wake up call. Just you know, the next few weeks months,
Speaker 7: I was you know, had my eyes everywhere. I was
Speaker 7: asking people who's home. You know, all these types of things,
Speaker 7: because it just all these little jobs that don't go
Speaker 7: the way you planned, a little reminders that you carry
Speaker 7: with you probably for the rest of your career.
Speaker 3: And does it change your your approach, that change how
Speaker 3: you operate and how you function.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think it. It ups your vigilance for every
Speaker 7: job from then on, you know. And that's the beauty
Speaker 7: of the way we learn as paramedics in sharing our stories.
Speaker 7: You know, you go back to the station, you tell
Speaker 7: your mates this happened to us, so that they can
Speaker 7: also carry that with them and keep themselves even safer
Speaker 7: on the next job.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I suppose as well.
Speaker 3: Looking just hearing that story, you're entering people private spaces,
Speaker 3: aren't you. You're intruding into people's personal space. It can
Speaker 3: feel like that, right.
Speaker 7: And we're also coming on a day that's high stress
Speaker 7: for them. It could be the worst day of their life.
Speaker 7: And everyone responds so differently to trauma and stress, and
Speaker 7: often for some people them feeling out of control and
Speaker 7: scared comes out as anger and violence. And you can't
Speaker 7: always predict who's going to act that way. But you know,
Speaker 7: parents with young children are a big one. You know,
Speaker 7: they panic, they feel out of control, and for some
Speaker 7: of them, the only coping mechanism they've got is to
Speaker 7: turn that into fear, you know, and anger, and we
Speaker 7: often cop the brunt of that, just trying to de
Speaker 7: escalate that and care for the child or whoever's injured
Speaker 7: and for the people that are there having an emotional response.
Speaker 3: To hear more from these three amazing guests. You can
Speaker 3: listen to the full episodes now are linked the details
Speaker 3: in the show notes. I hope you enjoyed this special
Speaker 3: episode of head Game. If you did, please consider leaving
Speaker 3: me a review. I'm at Middleton, see you in the
Speaker 3: next episode.