Midnight Hole Cave rescue

Every year the National Search and Rescue (NATSAR) Council presents awards for outstanding courage, endurance and selflessness in saving the lives of others.

The Professional Commendation Award was awarded to the rescue at Midnight Hole Cave, Mystery Creek.

Successful inter-agency operation: Midnight Hole Cave, Mystery Creek Tasmania rescue of a 47-year-old French national.

Image supplied by Ola Löfquist

This award acknowledged the determination and skill of a rescue crew who executed a complex 12-hour rescue in one of Tasmania’s deep caves to bring an injured 47-year-old French national back to safety.

The stranded woman had fallen into the Midnight Hole Cave at Mystery Creek, breaking a femur. The challenge for the rescue team was immense: the Midnight Hole Cave is a six-pitch vertical system almost 200 metres deep. It is located on the side of a steep hill—a 50 minute walk from the nearest road.

Sergeant Damian Bidgood said that in his experience it was the biggest and most difficult vertical rescue in recent years.

‘We were working in dark, wet and cold conditions,’ he said.

‘The passageways were narrow and confined, sometimes with barely enough space to get the stretcher through. Taking the rescue stretcher down into the cave, helping paramedics to secure the woman in it and working with the team to set up the rigging that got her out safely was an experience I will never forget.’

A ground party at the top of the cave then carried the woman approximately 800 metres down a steep, slippery hill, where a rescue helicopter performed a night stretcher-winching operation to transfer the woman to the nearest hospital.

The cave rescue was an excellent example of how inter-agency training resulted in emergency services and volunteers all working well together in performing a rescue in challenging conditions.

Recipients:

Sergeant Damian Bidgood, Senior Constable Josh Peach, Senior Constable Ingrid Pajak (Tasmania Police),

Anna Ekdahl, Han-Wei Lee (Ambulance Tasmania)

Alan Jackson, Stefan Eberhard, Michael Packer, Serena Benjamin, Andreas Klocker, Ric Tunney, Janine McKinnon, Gabriel Kinzler, Amy Robertson, Darren Holloway, Ola Löfquist, Loretta Bell (Southern Tasmanian Caverneers)

From: Working Boats, December 2018