Thursday, April 30, 2009

.... and boats too!


Just to prove that we have enough water here in Port Augusta to cater for bigger boats at times..... here's a photo of the sail-training ship "One-And-All" when she was in port about two months ago for a few days.


It's finished... and now flying!

A bit bright don't you think? However, it certainly can't be mistaken for anybody else's aircraft, and as and when the decision is made, we'll have 11 of them all the same...

Sunday, February 08, 2009


And here's our new colourscheme. My design - one of fifteen I submitted to the CEO, and the most conservative too. It is being applied to one of our aircraft in next month or two, so we can see that it works ok. Once that is done, all the fleet will be painted up the same and the five new aircraft coming from Switzerland will be done the same of course. We're trying to convince the other sections to repaint their aircraft the same so ALL RFDS aircraft will have a common scheme, but so far Queensland is holding out. I'm not sure what will happen there - the bananabenders have always done things differently!



This photo shows one of our crews unloading a couple of patients in Whyalla. Note that each patient gets his/her own ambulance as the vehicles are only configured for one stretcher patient. They can take a "sitter" if necessary though. We get more and more "repat" patients lately, especially in the warm weather as a long ambulance ride would not be too pleasant for them, and would also tie up the vehicle for a much longer time.


This photo show some of the Pt Augusta crew and was taken back early last year just before the new base was fully operational. I'm in there too, if you look carefully.

Roulette visit


These photos were taken in early November, when the Roulettes came through for fuel on the way to Perth for the Red Bull Air Race. The weather that day wasn't too good, and they couldn't make it into Ceduna, so they turned around and came back to Port Augusta for the night. I helped them move the aircraft around as our tug was set up for the standard Pilautus nosewheel, and these were after all the little brothers to our aircraft.
The PC9 is a wonderful little aeroplane to fly, and I've been lucky enough to have flown one back in 1994. It was lovely and aerobatic. Essentially, they have the same engine as we do, but they only weigh about half of our aircraft, so they of course go VERY nicely thank you very much....


This is just a nice photo of one our aeroplanes departing Marree in the far north of South Australia, with my aircraft in the foreground. I was up there for a clinic, and the other aircraft had brought up the Allied Health crew - Physiotherapist, Dentist, Dietitian etc.

Real RFDS work!


I recently went to a motor vehicle accident in the far north of South Australia. It occurred a few miles north of a small town, and we flew one of our doctors up for this retrieval. We were on the ground for an hour and a half, and with the temperature hovering around 48 degrees C, it was close to my personal limit. Also, it was pretty close to the engine start limit (50 degrees) and we almost had to wait until the temperature reduced to we could start up and take off.
Anyway, in this case, there were three people involved, but only two were seriously injured and they had been strapped in the seats in front. The passenger in the rear was unsecured and came out "shaken but not stirred". We had to get the driver out of the vehicle as she had a broken ankle, and had been left there for over two hours while we were advised and activated. I should point out however, that we were there within an hour of being told to -GO!


Overall, as you can see, they were extremely lucky to be alive. The vehicle left the road at high speed, swapped sides (no traffic to hit - fortunately) and then re-crossed the road to then hit a drainage culvert and rolled three times. Not too much fun.