13 years in the Air Wing

The Police “Air Ambulance” originally was a contract under a commissioner, Mick Miller, back in the mid-80s. We bought a police helicopter and wanted to buy another one to get 24-hour coverage, but it wasn’t financially viable. But the ambulance wanted to have aero-medial retrievals as well, so they got their heads together and said, “Why don’t the police force buy it, and stick a paramedic on it with our crews so they can do ambulance work as long as we can do our police work?” We could have an air ambulance going out to a fatal accident at 2am with the police crew, and if on the way back there was a car chase with a stolen car, we could do that too because there a copper on board. 

The Air Ambulance Victoria partnership began in 1989 and ended in 2017, two years after Cameron Hardiman left the workforce. The helicopter, call sign Dauphin Air 495, fitted for both aeromedical needs and policing. The co-operation operated from Essendon Airport. After the agreement ended in 2017, the Air Wing Dauphin reconfigured to becoming solely a police helicopter.

My father was in the Air Force, and I loved going to the base and seeing the aircraft, especially the Iroquois. When I joined the police in 1985, I didn’t even know they had an Air Wing, until one day I heard the helicopter on the police radio. That rekindled those memories I had as a kid and from then on, I just had to work there. I spent 13 years working in the Victoria Police Air Wing, which back then had three helicopters; one air ambulance crewed by two police and an intensive care paramedic, and a police helicopter crewed by three police.

One story stands out in the early hours of a pitch-black morning, in Bass Strait, a few miles off the township of Sorrento. We were looking for three fishermen and their boat had sunk. I was working on the air ambulance helicopter, which meant I had a police pilot flying and a paramedic in the back. A big tanker on its way to Tasmania heard a “mayday” call on the marine radio seconds before and they heard some voices but didn’t know the direction of them. We searched for more than an hour using nothing but our Nightsun spotlight when my pilot, Jason Walburn, said, “I’ve just seen two heads in the water,” so we turned the spotlight around and there they were, floating on a life ring. About the luckiest men alive, I think.

I reckon it was minutes before we were going to pull the pin and go home because we were running out of fuel, so we had to decide whether we would get relieved by our other helicopter back at Essendon, or refuel and come back, but you know, if we had gone to refuel and came back, they might not have been there.

I think it was a tanker that had come to the last known position that boat was there. The guys were out the side of the boat saying they heard voices, but we said it could be the engines running or the rumbling and creaking of the tanker and we never heard them. All of a sudden, about 10 or 15 minutes later, the pilot says, “I’ve got them!”, and I didn’t actually believe him, so I went to look and there they were.

The men were safely rescued through the rescue vessel but were located by the helicopter after over an hour of searching. The fishermen suffered from hypothermia after being in the water for hours, and they lost over six tonnes of cargo on their ship, but a retrieval mission was never initiated. Cameron said it was now the most rewarding mission he had ever done, after being sure his team would never find the men. 

We would go to a lot of car accidents and industrial accidents, but I suppose the worst job to go to was anything involving kids because there’s a lot of emotion there. A lot of people said, “You know, when you’ve got kids that makes it worse”, but I’m not sure if that is really true. You know, anyone that has any sort of empathy would find it difficult to treat a child when you’ve got the other parents in the family around and they’re all grieving. It’s a really a high pressure, highly stressful and emotional job. 

People with PTSD find it very difficult to accept any success I suppose. They think they’re a failure and their self-worth really take a big beating. They might feel they failed or let people down and they weren’t as strong as what they thought they were or what people expected. So, it was good to actually write the story in full, rather than just remember the bad bits. Even though someone may have died during this job where you couldn’t get them out of the car, or you couldn’t find them, and they eventually were found or deceased, you realise you gave absolutely everything you could at the time, and you weren’t a failure. 

The thing about writing and publishing a book about your struggle with PTSD is there are a few thousand people that will read it, so there is no hiding. I’m glad I made it because I have had a lot of feedback from people that are in the same situation or have family members that are going through it. Anyone with PTSD, I wouldn’t recommend investigating all the trauma you went through without seeking professional help first. But I found it worthwhile to look into data because when you’ve got bits and pieces of memory that you remember all the time, it’s nice to know that there is actually a positive outcome out of it, or if there wasn’t an outcome, that you did your job well.

Ten Feet Tall and Not Quite Bulletproof: Drug Busts and Helicopter Rescues is out now.