If you're lost in the bush, stuck on the side of a cliff or stranded out at sea, there can be no more welcome sight than the red and white ambulance rescue helicopter.
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"When we come in and pluck up people who are lost or stranded, people who thought they were going to die, they quite often give you big hugs and kisses and thank you for saving their lives," Special Casualty Access Team (SCAT) paramedic Wayne Cannon said.
Saving people from the most isolated and extreme environments was the best part of the job for the specialist paramedic of 24 years, who worked out of the Albion Park rescue chopper base.
It's a job that could include saving an abseiler hanging from a rope off the edge of a cliff one day, transporting a critically injured patient after a car accident the next and conducting a rescue from a boat 40 nautical miles offshore soon after.
Mr Cannon, an Illawarra resident, had been at the Albion Park base for three years conducting rescues and inter-hospital transfers all over the region, and other areas of the state. He was even part of the search and rescue effort after the 2011 tsunami in Japan.
It was the unpredictable nature of the work that attracted him to the job as a helicopter paramedic in 2001, after training as a SCAT officer in 1999. Prior to that he'd worked as an intensive care paramedic on the Far South Coast and Sydney.
"There's 62 SCAT officers across the state - they all have to undertake an intensive eight-week course in advanced roping, canyoning, caving and navigation among other things," Mr Cannon said.
"Working on the helicopter which can drop me into some of the most hostile environments, some of the most rugged terrains, gives me the opportunity to really use those SCAT skills along with my intensive care paramedic skills.
"The environment we work in is really broad, from the bush, canyons and cliffs to the ocean, and the type of work we do can range from car accidents to stabbings to drownings to transferring the most critically ill patients between hospitals.
"But I love the outdoors, I love the unknown. Some people want to drive fast cars, I want to go to these kind of jobs."
The Illawarra provided a unique environment for the rescue chopper crew to work, both geographically and historically.
"The region is unique, positioned between the escarpment and the sea, so we do a lot of cliff and water rescues," Mr Cannon said.
"There's also a fair bit of industrial work with the steelworks and the mines, and we do a lot of work on rural properties like tractor fall-overs and other farming accidents."
Mr Cannon said the Albion Park based chopper provided an "invaluable service" to the region.
"It doesn't make a difference when an accident happens in the main street of Wollongong, but it does make a difference when an accident happens in a remote or rugged environment and we provide the fastest link to hospital.
"In a way, we take the hospital to the patient too as medically we have a highly experienced and specialist team, which includes a pilot, crewman, paramedic and doctor who are the top people in their fields.
"On a normal week, it's nothing for us to do two or three primary [rescue] missions and two or three inter-hospital transfers."
