AVIARIUM

Not much but ramblings about my last incident call-out I need to note down somewhere before they fade. TW for death, suicide [not mine] and nonhuman stuffs if it ain’t your cuppa tea.

Last Friday I was approached by one of my DC’s and asked to be part of a six-strong crew for a Search and Rescue. Now I’m still the probie of the brigade so I felt a little excited to be asked this but at the same time calm and serious- this was a situation where somebody was potentially lost, hurt and enduring some seriously bad weather [wind gusts of 60kph+, rain starting early and setting in hard, turning to sleet in flurries]. It was also possible that they had gone out there with less good intent. That was the only information we’d received and until we got to the search area that is all we would know.

So I rolled out of town at an ungodly time, into the Cat 7 and off we went. As we came on air, so did the team handling the SaR, relaying info for us. It… It wasn’t a lost bushwalker. The person had been gone from home since earlier that month and their car had been at the search area for a week at the least. We were under the control of Police Rescue, to be aided by a team from the SES, two dogs and PolAir.

I was pretty excited for the dogs, mainly because that’s my life goal: working with service dogs, be it in the Police or the Defence Force. I was also pumped for PolAir- they’d be showing off some serious flying skills doing low-and-slow over our heads, quartering, dropping for close inspection and as it would turn out, a recovery, all in some hectic weather. But the circumstance was not to be forgotten.

We were tasked a 4km track heading down a gully to the escarpment edge, and let me tell you: There are certain times in the bush when being short works to your advantage. This was not one of them. I was pushing through scrub that was mostly chest height, but on occasion it was over my head. The ground was a sharp slope, rocky and filled with rotting logs and little hidden gullies. Most of the time I wasn’t actually walking on the ground, I was suspended a few centimeters above it on twigs and slick leaf-litter.

But I wasn’t complaining, I love that kind of bushwhack. I love working as a team, moving forwards, keeping an eye out for the search subject and each other. It got better yet: the dogs were moving freely, doing what they do best and PolAir was sweeping overhead.

Not even halfway into our search sweep I saw PolAir sweep overhead for the umpteenth time in the morning. Flight like that was not searching, it’s the flight you see pulling out teams fast. It said to me: pack up and head out, we’re done here.

Minutes later the call came through to the search team leaders and we did just that- turned and started the trek back up the slope.

When we returned to the rally point we all knew what had happened. Nobody had said it directly because nobody needed to: the search subject had been found. All teams, ours included, were released but one to do a body recovery.

As we headed home our Crew Leader was filled in. The search subject had been located not by the ground team, but by PolAir at the base of an escarpment commonly and bitterly ironically used by BASE jumpers as a launch point. It made me think of what it is to jump.

I learned a few things that day. Some lessons like it’s a rule of the brigade that if you pack to keep yourself running on a day’s worth of trekking, including enough to support another person entirely [because I have a larger pack and don’t mind carrying more. Workhorse complex or some such bull, I just go where you tell me to, with what you tell me to], you’re only on the ground for the morning. Those that pack for a light few hours of easy grade track, they get that day of grueling scrub-crawling.

On the drive back to the station house I started thinking: at one point or another we stand on the edge of a cliff and toy with the idea of jumping. I’ve continued thinking these past days on that and realized that the search subject jumped- but for a closing act. The BASE jumpers jumped- but to live.

Why would I jump?

Sometimes I’m afraid to jump because the wings I have, the wings I need, aren’t there to catch me. But I’d still want to jump.