INTHESPOTLIGHT By Jen Boyer
Graham Nickisson, Media and Emergency Service Liaison, Westpac Rescue
Helicopter Service Reflecting on a 40-year career and the changing face of HAA operations in Australia.
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USTRALIA’S LONGEST-SERVING AIRCREW OFFICER, GRAHAM NICKISSON, started in the field as a volunteer, more than four decades ago, for Surf Life Saving Australia, a volunteer rescue organization. In the years since, the helicopter air ambulance (HAA) service has evolved significantly. What Nickisson has seen and experienced in that time has changed his life
as well. Today, he no longer flies but continues to advocate, both for Surf Life Saving Australia and the importance of seeking mental health support as a first responder.
ROTOR: Tell us about your duties and your crew. Nickisson: As an aircrew officer, I’m often in the left-hand front seat, assisting with navigation, mission details, and such—basi- cally, a nonflying copilot. Our job as aircrew officers is safety in and around the aircraft. We do a lot of confined-area landings, day and night, so we help guide the pilot in. We also work the winch. Our crew is the pilot and the aircrew
officer. We also have a critical-care doctor from NSW Health and a critical-care para- medic from New South Wales Ambulance, for a crew of four.
What attracted you to this career? When I started, Surf Life Saving Australia was using helicopters. The idea came in 1973 from New Zealand, where they thought helicopters might be able to rapidly get to people in distress in the surf. We introduced our service in Australia in
1975. It was purely a surf rescue helicopter when I joined, running up and down the beach doing surf patrol and rescues. That’s all done a 360 now—we have Jet Skis and all the fancy stuff that can beat a helicopter. Our helicopter then evolved into the emergency medical service field. We now
18 ROTOR MARCH 2022
have a contract with NSW Health to pro- vide rapid-response critical-care helicopter services to people throughout northern New South Wales. I’m a plumber by trade. I started volun-
teering for Surf Life Saving Australia in 1981, when I was 17. I loved aviation and helicopters, and that was the natural pro- gression for me. I volunteered for eight years and then became a full-time paid employee in 1989. When I was volunteering, the service only ran on weekends and on call. In 1982, once we started working with NSW Health hospitals and New South Wales Ambulance, we went 24/7. We first started carrying pagers while off duty, and then we went to living and working on the base during our shifts. I don’t think anyone envisioned when
they started the surf helicopter service that it was going to develop into the service it is today.
What stands out from your long career? Well, it’s probably not a good impression. The catalyst that made me leave the ser- vice was the trauma associated with Australia’s biggest road accident, the
Kempsey bus crash. It happened on the mid-north coast of New South Wales. Two tourist buses collided in the early hours of Dec. 22, 1989. It killed 35 people and is still Australia’s worst-ever road acci- dent. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my post-traumatic stress and downhill spiral began there. It was the start to many traumatic jobs
we went on. Not that everything was bad; we had some beautiful experiences. I walked a young lady down the aisle whom we picked up when she was a new- born. The Kempsey bus crash, though, was really something that has dogged me right up to today. The trauma and the death when we
arrived, it was just like a holocaust. It was definitely something a bloke of my age at the time should never see and never expect to see. It was a catastrophic situation, likened to a major airplane crash with the amount of death and destruction that happened that morning. I guess it was emphasized so much more because it was three days from Christmas. There were a lot of people who were going home or traveling and a lot of Christmas presents scattered around the
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