With caravan rollovers and general road accidents still a way too common occurrence, there are mounting concerns over what is said to be the extremely thin level of ambulance cover on long stretches of the Nullarbor.
At the start of the western end of the Eyre Highway in Norseman, there is one ambulance staffed by two professional paramedics, and the next available volunteer ambulance is at Eucla, 710 kilometres to the east.
According to a report on the ABC, there is currently no volunteer ambulance stationed at the WA roadhouse communities of Balladonia, Caiguna, Cocklebiddy or Madura.
About 18 months ago St John Ambulance (SJA) withdrew the last volunteer ambulance stationed at Cocklebiddy, citing a lack of sufficiently trained volunteers to operate the vehicle in event of an emergency.
Troy Pike, manager of the Cocklebiddy Roadhouse and a former volunteer ambulance officer, said it was only a matter of time before something bad happened.
“We haven’t had any major accidents, we’ve been very lucky, very lucky,” he told the ABC. “There’s a whole lot of interstate drivers, there’s a lot of overseas drivers, it doesn’t take much to have an accident and no-one’s going to get to them and they’ll just die in the car.”
He said the initial reason the ambulance was taken away was because there had been a long spell with no accidents.
“The ambulance was changed out twice by St John and they said, well if you are not going to use it, and you don’t need it out here then we will move it to somewhere else where we can use it,” Mr Pike told the ABC. “Now if there’s a rollover you’ve got one ambulance at Norseman and one at Eucla, but the Eucla ambulance isn’t allowed to come anything further than 100 kilometres away in case something happens at Eucla.”
The company directors of the remote roadhouses are currently negotiating with SJA to train staff at the roadhouses. In the meantime the Royal Flying Doctor Service can provide transport, but the service is limited by where the planes can land, and road crash victims still need to be transported by road to the aircraft.
SJA spokesman Simon Hughes told the ABC that it could take until the end of the year before staff were trained and a volunteer vehicle made operational again.
“The challenge along the Eyre Highway is that staff are quite short-term hire people and that provides issues of training for us,” he said. “It’s not just a simple three-hour training course … it’s an ongoing program that runs over a year because we are providing an ambulance service rather than a first aid service.”
And, as far as Troy Pike is concerned, it can’t happen fast enough.
“We are always keen to work with St John, same as the local police and anyone else, because when you’re out in the bush you’ve got to stick together or you’re stuffed,” he said. “I will always drop everything to go and help someone.”
So what do you want? a couple of ambulance outstations in the middle of nowhere on the Nullabor, completely fitted out with accommodation for six (can’t expect staff to be on duty 24 hours a day), Then there is the highway from Adelaide to Darwin. A couple more stations. . . Who’s going to pay for it?
Good on you Tony. You see this sort of thing, where by if it is not used much, what ever it may be. The thought is, lets just get rid of it. In this case just one bad accident that “if” there was a chance of saving some one. Then it would return. Crossing the Nullarbor in May, will stop in and shake your hand Tony.
We experienced this first hand a couple of years ago when we stopped to assist at a car versus truck collision just west of madura pass. The police who attended from Eucla, said the Eucla ambulance couldnt attend as all volunteers were away (on holidays), so it was a 4 hour wait for the ambulance to come from norseman! it then took 7 hours for the injured man to be transported by road back to kalgoorlie. Lucky for the injured man his injuries were not life threatening.