Although many rural SES units do vertical rescue, you only get the opportunity to train in it if you are a member of one of those units. However, situations arise in general rescue where some of these skills could come in handy. This is where the value of the “Wellington Wombats” weekend lies.

Organised by the Wellington SES and held at Wellington Caves, it gives members of other SES units a chance to practice their general rescue techniques in confined and difficult spaces. We started out with using a “self lowering technique” to enter the caves (for some reasons “abseiling” is a naughty word in the SES), followed by some basic cave exploration and finishing off with rescuing casualties from deep underground.

The weekend fills both days and the evening in between is a great opportunity to meet members of other units and swap “war stories”.

If you ever have an opportunity to go on this weekend I can thoroughly recommend it

When you are in the State Emergency Service, you are never quite sure what is going to happen during what is normally your spare time. On Friday night I came home and was settling down to a quiet beer before the TV, when the call came through about a collapsing veranda in Randwick.

We went out to the job to find a first storey veranda that was structurally sound in the middle but completely rotten around the outside. We ended up demolishing half of the veranda before it could fall down.

Then on Saturday there was a call about another house in Randwick that had slate tiles falling off the roof. It was a steep slippery roof on a two storey building so we had to call in the aid of a cherry picker. Once it arrived, the job was cleaned up fairly quickly, but the cherry picker took forever to arrive. It is always interesting to go back to my normal job on Monday and be asked “What did you do on the weekend?” and show them the photos.

Well, what a way to start a blog, today I have been cleaning up a chemical spill (of the deadly substance “Neverwas”), rescuing a worker trapped under a pipe of pipes, fighting fires and rescuing a worker from the roof of a warehouse.

Although it sounds dramatic it was all a training exercise put on for the Randwick State Emergency Service by the site safety team at Qenos in the Botany Industrial Park.

Although the SES is not the combat agency for fires and chemical spills in our area, it was still good experience to get to “play” with the serious rescue equipment and find ourselves in situations out of our normal comfort zone.

More photos are available at the Randwick SES Gallery