The day of the St John Ambulance First Aid Competition is always a day of nerves, exhilaration and anticipation followed by a bell and a timekeeper yelling “time”. It is at this moment that a round of applause occurs and the competitors can finally breathe their first real breath since leaving the relative calm of isolation.

This year of course was no different.

With the day starting relatively early with breakfast, the evidence of lack of sleep and nerves were already evident on a number of competitor’s fa ces, not excluding the girls from the NT.

As time began to tick towards the closing of isolation each state’s competitors got last minute hugs and tips from Team Managers as well as words of encouragement from fellow cadets.

Just as the last competitors entered the room the door closed and it was announced that “Isolation is now CLOSED”… the start of the day had began.

The first half an hour or so passed by relatively quickly.

Food was ordered for the day and teams pinned identification on their sleeves. The day’s entertainment was opened by the whole room taking part in a Happy Birthday song to a fellow competitor who was then strongly encouraged to take part in the next activity, a multi-state version of the Hockey Pokey. This was followed by several games of Twister. As the day went on, many lollies were consumed and much more fun was had by all including a melody of “We are the Champions” performed by the two last teams to compete, the NT and Victoria.

After lunch it became obvious that the finish time of 4:00pm would not be achieved and given the NT was competing last, a long wait was still ahead of us.

By the time the Victorian competitors had left isolation all of the NT girls were quite nervous and started walking in circles around the room. We decided to change this ‘game’ into a tag team with two of us going clockwise and the other two going anti-clockwise. This was a lot more fun especially with the involvement of all of the fantastic isolation managers.

These poor but lovely members had to put up with our nerves, which were particularly obvious as the time ticked on. The last hour passed quite quickly and as the door opened we realised that the day was nearly over, as was our time in the wonderful but equally now, quite familiar room of isolation. It was time.

We were taken outside and told that we would be waiting in post isolation until it was our time for the scene and to have a seat.

So we did and had quite a nice chat to a gentleman named Bruce. He made us feel quite relaxed as did the breeze and hot sun.

It was just a relief to be out of isolation after approximately 8 and a bit hours in one room.

After 20 minutes or so we were briefed about the situation and told that we would be required to set up and man a first-aid station at Neerim East which was now isolated from a fire for at least 2 hours.

When we walked on to the scene, there were already two patients. One was lying in a bed and needed help to take medication and another with abrasions. Rachel took the abrasions while Claire, our individual competitor took the elderly man. While this was happening, Alex and I explored the room to find what materials we had on scene and wow, did we find a lot! We found boxes, stretchers, saline, ice packs and many other assorted first-aid supplies.

Then the “fun” really began.

Throughout the next 25 minutes, we as a squad of 4 received a total of 12 casualties. These casualties had injuries ranging from serious to minor; from a head injury and major burns to a nose bleed and fractured arm. Once time was called we breathed a sigh of relief, but it wasn’t over.

After giving a handover to the head adjudicator and each receiving a cup of cold water, we were told to have a seat until the adjudicators gave the go ahead to send us to the next scene…the end was near.

If we thought the first scene was difficult, little did we know what this one had in store.

At arrival outside the next scene we were told that we would be running the bushfire command post and that each of us would be given a particular role to play.

These roles were Logistics, Planning. Liaison and Administration and for the next 25 minutes we as a group had individual and group tasks to complete. These tasks included a situation report/fire brief, staff roster for the coming 24 hours, a prepared media release, a statement to other emergency services and a list of required equipment and where it was going to come from.

This was quite interesting to say the least as we didn’t really have a clue what we were doing. With some little jokes to make each other feel better, the scene was over with a few sheets getting filled out and each of us feeling quite let down and disappointed. We were, however given a debrief by an adjudicator who was very encouraging and stressed that the scene was more about team work and gathering information, not actually producing professional reports.

As the competitions had run many hours late, the ending presentations were quite quick and informal with everybody out of uniform and into civvies for the contingent dinner.

Competitions are such an emotional day for all and I would just like to say a BIG thank you to everybody who was involved in our training as well as to all the adults who were involved on the day in Victoria.

Everybody did a great job and I can’t wait to compete again this year.

Article by Amy McKay