And in with the new
Posted on Saturday 7th February 2009
There is something special about being a founder member. I was privileged recently to be one of the first members of the spanking new GoodLife gym in North Adelaide. Yesterday I had another unique moment – my first shift with the South Australian (Statewide) Retrieval Service.
Cue the fanfare and drum-roll being followed by an awkward silence. Although we have changed name, in reality very little has changed. We are still in the old base at the Royal Adelaide and using Mediflight equipment. The threatened red suits are also absent, fortunately. We have been promised that they will arrive soon. I already have the hat with a pompom, and know of a shop that sells clip-on beards, so full Santa effect will can be achieved. Some photos will follow soon – if I can bear the shame. We’re already anticipating the jokes. “That’s a funny looking sleigh” and “Have you got any presents in those bags” will quickly wear thin. Perhaps we should paint most of the helicopter brown and the nose-cone red for full effect.
The idea of the Statewide Service is to provide a homogeneous provision across South Australia with considerable redundancy factored in. We can field anywhere up to 5 teams during the day, 3 at night and even flex up to 7 teams in a disaster situation. Otherwise very little has changed about the day to day work as detailed in my previous posts. The only significant difference is that we will be attending more primaries and upscaling our trauma response, so expect to be far busier than before.
To finish, I would like to encourage you to look at some of the photos taken by other people that I have “borrowed”. Some of them are very striking and definitely worth a look. The gallery can be found here. As a taster, here is an example of the photographic cornucopia:
If you want higher-resolution versions of any of the photos, let me know and I’ll oblige.
