Thomas’ Journey

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At seven weeks old little Thomas got very ill and began struggling to breathe. What happened to him can happen to any baby in the world.

There’s no more beautiful a sound than the gasp of a newborn drawing its very first breath. And no worse than the shallow rasp of a very ill child who’s fast approaching his last.

For Brooke and Lachlan, hearing their seven-week old baby trying and failing to suck enough air into his badly infected lungs was almost unbearable.

In just four days, little Thomas had gone from having what seemed like a mild cold, to a hacking cough, to a raging fever, to violent projectile vomiting, to struggling to breath.

To make matters even worse, they were in the small town of Roma, 500km away from the intensive care that Thomas needed urgently.

Brooke and Lachlan feared their baby’s little body might not have the strength to survive the eight-hour drive. And so they were overwhelmed when doctors at their small local hospital called Retrieval Services Queensland to their aid. Retrieval Services worked quickly with the RFDS to make sure help was on its way.

Mum Brooke will never forget the moment our aeromedical team arrived on the scene:

“It was the first time I felt safe in four days. Watching them hook Thomas up to their monitors and high-tech ventilators- I knew that my baby was in the best possible hands.”

Brooke was right to feel comforted. Because not only are the Flying Doctors and the Queensland Health aeromedical team they work with some of the most well trained and highly experienced emergency personnel in the world. They are also among the best equipped.

Shortly after receiving the emergency call for help, two paediatric emergency specialists from the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital and a highly experienced RFDS Flight Nurse were in the air and speeding their way to Roma.

Once there, they placed Thomas in a Humidicrib to help ventilate him and regulate his temperature on the journey. They also attached him to a Propaq monitor so that they could keep an eye on his vital signs.

They then loaded Thomas and mum Brooke on board their aircraft and, just over an hour later, they touched down in Brisbane where an ambulance waited to rush him to the paediatric intensive care unit.

It turned out that Thomas had a severe, life-threatening viral lung infection. He was extremely ill, but thanks in no small part to the speed and experience of the Flying Doctor, and the exceptional medical equipment we carry on every flight, he pulled through. And just five days later he was ready to go home with mum and dad.

Millions of people living in remote communities around the world would dream of having an exceptional, airborne emergency service to keep their children safe. But here in Queensland, we don’t have to. And that’s in no small part down to the generosity of people like you.

First flight after dangerous fright

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A remote airstrip unused for 14 years becomes a critical asset for young Clare and her family

One afternoon in February, Ric jumped on a quad-bike with daughter Clare for a short ride back to the house. The family had been working on their 54,000 acre property in south-west Queensland and had just finished in the yards, after a day of mustering.

Ric’s wife Larissa was driving the truck back with the horses aboard, but Clare wanted to come home with her Dad.

“It was getting on close to 4pm and I was finishing up, so I told Larissa, Clare could ride back with me on the bike,” Ric said.

Like any dad, Ric was driving carefully but the dirt road was rough, the result of some recent heavy truck traffic.

“There was a lot of bull dust and before I knew it, the tyre of the quad bike bit into one of the truck tracks and flipped on its side,” Ric recalled.

Ric took the brunt of the fall, breaking a rib as he tried to save Clare from serious injury.

“I was so worried about her, I did my best to keep her off the ground as we tipped over, holding her out in front of me as we fell off, but she hit her head.”

Ric was 10kms from home and with Clare getting sleepy and no one answering the 2-way radio, he had to keep driving.

“I just wanted to get her back home so we could call the Flying Doctor,” Ric said.

“I knew I had to keep her awake so I was asking her questions on the way.”

Larissa, 32 weeks pregnant with their third daughter, was unsaddling horses at the horse shed when Ric pulled up at the house and yelled out.

“That blood curdling cry-out from Ric about Clare being injured… I will never forget. It was the scariest day of my life,”

“I called the Flying Doctor straight away but I was in shock, so handed the phone over to a friend who took over the conversation.

We were in constant contact with them until they landed about an hour-or-so later.”

“We have an RFDS medical chest at home and while we had called the Flying Doctor for medical advice before, we had never needed them to fly out to the station until that afternoon,” Larissa said.

Nurse Diane Dowrick, Doctor Emma Leu-Marshall and Pilot Leonard Nicholas from the RFDS Charleville Base where working that day when the call came through.

“As soon as you hear about a quad bike accident you fear the worse, so I packed all the medical supplies we might possibly need and rushed to the aircraft,” Diane said.

Once the crew were airborne Pilot Leonard Nicholas contacted the homestead via the aircraft satellite phone to check on the condition of their landing strip.

“There was a record of the station having a landing strip but no one from the RFDS had landed there for some time, so I didn’t have many notes on what to expect,” Nicholas said.

“To their credit, the family were really well organised, they were up to date with airstrip maintenance and had already sent two men on motorbikes down to clear wildlife and cattle,” Nicholas recalled.

“I was able to give the station an accurate time of arrival and when we touched down, just before 6pm, the family were waiting at the strip.”

With nightfall quickly approaching, Doctor Emma Leu-Marshall tried to minimise the time on the ground and after some initial checks decided it was best to take Clare back to Charleville for overnight observation, pain relief and some stitches.

“We were airborne again within 15 minutes,” Emma recalls.

“During the flight, Clare rested in Larissa’s arms, and we kept monitoring her for signs of more serious injury,” Emma said.

“Fortunately, Clare seemed to have sustained only superficial injuries but overnight observation was important, particularly given the isolation of the property,” Emma said.

Miraculously Clare was released from hospital the next day with a black eye but no permanent injuries and Larissa and Ric couldn’t be more relieved.

“We are so grateful for the care the Flying Doctor team provided,” Larissa said.

“For the past 14 years we have been maintaining the Flying Doctor airstrip on our property and it had never been used. Then one afternoon it became the most important 1,000 metres on our property,” Larissa said.

A fishing trip which could have been his last

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With a bag full of fish and his mates in tow, Cliff Packham made his way back to his accommodation on the Tranquil Sweers Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria. However, his fishing trip – more than 10 years in the making – was cut dramatically short.

As he rested in his cabin, he began to feel unwell.

“We’d been fishing all morning. I can’t even blame the fact that I was fighting a big fish and it put strain on me. There was no pain, no shortness of breath, nothing at all.”

Cliff’s mates had alerted Tex, one of the owners of Sweers Island, that he was feeling a bit unwell. Tex decided to monitor Cliff’s blood pressure as a precaution. He also alerted the Flying Doctor.

It was then that Cliff’s heart stopped beating and he went into cardiac arrest. But the fact Cliff is alive to tell his story today is testament to a number of incredible people who came to his rescue.

One of Cliff’s mate’s began performing CPR, before Kody, a young worker on Sweers Island took over, carrying out CPR on Cliff for more than 20 minutes.

Tex and his team also fortunately had a defibrillator. It had never been used up until now, however they had always carried out regular checks to make sure it could operate in an emergency such as this. This was crucial in saving Cliff’s life.

“They raced down with the defibrillator, immediately they realised that I was in a full cardiac arrest, which apparently I had been for a number of minutes, and they applied it to get my heart beating,” Cliff said.

All the while, Sweers Island staff were on the phone the Royal Flying Doctor Service who were providing advice.

After landing on Sweers Island, Cliff was stabilised and flown to Townsville Hospital, about 1,000km away. Stating clearly that he remembers nothing of the flight is probably a good thing for Cliff, as he suffered another cardiac arrest during his transfer.

“I believe that on the way to Townsville I went through another cardiac arrest, but I have no recollection of that at all. Nothing other than telling my mate I was unwell, and I didn’t even know I’d collapsed until I woke up in the hospital in Townsville about 24 hours later.”

It took Cliff several months to work out that his survival had less to do with luck, and more to do with his friends’ quick thinking, the Flying Doctor’s speedy response and Townsville Hospital’s excellent cardiac surgeons.

Today, Cliff is recovering well at his nephew’s home on the Sunshine Coast. Every day he is feeling a bit stronger, and although it’s only been five months since he almost died twice, he’s already planning for the day he’s well enough to return to Sweers Island and pick up the pieces of his once-in-a-lifetime holiday.