Rescuers have come to the aid of two dogs that became stranded on a cliff face at Gerroa.
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The silky terriers were walking at an off-leash area around Black Head Reserve on Thursday morning, when they disappeared from the view of their owner.
The dogs had run over the cliff, but had luckily fallen onto a ledge and spared the full 15-metre descent to the rocks below.
The woman found the hounds stranded part-way down the cliff face, unable to make their own way back to the top.
NSW SES Kiama Unit and Illawarra Police Rescue Squad brought abseiling equipment to the site at about 9am as a retrieval plan was hatched.
Andrew McCullough, a volunteer with the Kiama SES unit, said one the dogs was a near to the top of the cliff when rescuers arrived.
“One of the dogs was close to the top, and was brought back up fairly easily,” he said.
“But for the second dog, what they actually did was abseil with the dog the whole way to the bottom of the cliff.
“That was the easiest way to rescue it.”
The dogs were reunited with their owner at the top of the cliff.
They jumped into the woman’s arms.
“I think the owner was pretty relieved too," Mr McCullough said.
“She was excited to see them.”
Kiama SES unit is the primary rescue agency for the Kiama area.
This means its volunteers are often called out to attend jobs outside of flood and storm events.
“We do land rescues, vertical rescue, animal rescue and any of those situations that in other areas might be serviced by another agency like Fire and Rescue NSW,” Mr McCullough said.
In one of their more colourful call-outs, volunteers used ratchet straps and hydraulic tools to free a blind sheep that had become stuck in the fork of a tree at Kiama Public School in May.
The hapless ewe, a resident of the school’s agricultural yard, became lodged in the tree after a failed hurdling effort.
Mr McCullough said some of the service’s volunteers had 30-40 years experience.
Some were employees of Fire and Rescue NSW or NSW Ambulance, who volunteered with the SES in their free time.