By Arthur Gorrie
There was not a lot of real organisation in the search and rescue procedures made necessary by increasing use of the Cooloola Coast bushland for hiking, including by children, according to the Gympie-Maryborough region’s first national parks ranger Ron Turner.
In his recent book, First Ranger – A Memoir, Mr Turner recalls 1978, when student groups were increasingly accessing Teewah Beach or Freshwater via canoes or walking tracks from the near-Tewantin area. Some reportedly were getting into trouble.
There was little liaison at that time with police or the State Emergency Service, he recalls.
“The area of greatest alarm concerned the ratio of adults to students and the question of what could go wrong, a teacher becoming incapacitated or separated from the group, for example.
“The reaction time in case of emergencies such as snake bite was a real concern,“ the area’s inhabitants including deadly snakes like the taipan, eastern brown, death adder, tiger and rough-scaled snake.
“On one occasion, an exhausted person, swimming down the Noosa River, said he was among a small group who had left the Cooloola Sand Patch to walk directly to the river.
“Unaware of the swampy terrain, they had found the going extremely heavy. Becoming dehydrated, the party split and had to be rescued.
“Another group, consisting of three staff and forty students, set off to hike from Elanda to Harrys Hut with a good briefing on the route to follow.
“They missed the Kin Kin Creek crossing and headed west before realising their error. Turning back, they again went too far, reaching Kinaba, where they received further guidance. Returning to Kin Kin Creek, they headed north along the Service Road, but at Harrys Hut Road they turned west instead of east and had to retrace their steps.
“They must have been very tired when they finally reached Harrys Hut!
“Next day, despite warnings, they crossed the river and headed directly towards what seemed to be the tantalisingly close Cooloola Sand Patch.
“Up to their waists in swamp water, the party had a disagreement and split, leaving one adult with 20 students. Fortunately they had marked their route and all were able to return to the river.“
Rangers followed up by finding the only viable trail and building the present walking track.
After “various debacles“ they produced a “Teacher’s Guide to Southern Cooloola“ about what to expect and what was expected of them. “This guide was keenly sought by many schools.“
One night, about 1am, a ranger was woken by two men who had paddled down the river to advise that two hikers, headed for the Cooloola Sand Patch earlier in the day, were missing.
They turned up safe, with a story to tell.
“Having reached the top of the Sand Patch, they decided to descend to the beach for a swim. Too late to traverse the sand mass again, they hitched a lift north to Rainbow Beach.
“Another kind person drove them to the police station in Gympie. Police drove them to their campsite.“
Another happy conclusion came when a primary school group in canoes became scattered across wind-swept Lake Cootharaba.
“Two children were posted missing and a helicopter was called to search for them. Unable to paddle against the wind, the missing children had decided to walk around the lake’s perimeter outside the search zone, towing their canoe. Walking in the lake is always risky, as the warm shallows are popular with basking stingrays.
“I thought of the ex-convict John Graham, who walked a similar route in August 1836 to rescue the castaway Eliza Fraser.
“On a mid-afternoon in March 1984, Grade 11 and 12 students from a Brisbane high school were practising capsize and rescue techniques on Lake Cootharaba, when a sudden 30 to 40 km westerly wind arose. Students, teachers and boats were scattered across the lake, and it was dusk before all
the students were rescued. This shallow lake is not to be underestimated.
“In May 1985, I flew to Melbourne and on to the Counter Disaster Organization training centre at Mt Macedon for a week’s instruction in emergency situations and procedures.
“I subsequently invited Jim Campbell, the helicopter pilot, to advise us on landing sites and two were cleared by hand near Harrys Hut and further north along the Log Landing Road.
“We also formulated an emergency plan, containing essential information such as the names, addresses and telephone numbers of QNPWS staff, our radio frequency and grid references for the two helicopter landing sites.
The response to my enquiries about police and SES liaison (initially) came in the form of a police officer who tried to convince me to ‘take it easy, everything’s under control’.
In September 1985, he surprised me by saying he had prepared an emergency exercise in the national park. The SES intended to launch their trailer boats at Log Landing or Camp Site 3.
“I pointed out that Log Landing Road was temporarily closed due to wet conditions, and it was not possible to launch trailer boats into the river at either point because the steep river banks rose almost 3m above the water.“
Access was also blocked by a dump of old logs.
The exercise did not go ahead.
“A breath of fresh air arrived when Cavill Heywood was appointed police-SES liaison officer in Gympie. He listened to my concerns and asked whether he could carry out an exercise involving a crashed aeroplane.
“I suggested a suitable site.
“In January 1988, out attention was drawn to an unattended vehicle at Elanda that no-one had been seen near for some days. I alerted the police.
A searcher took a boat up Kin Kin Creek, then walked upstream along the southern bank.
“He found a woman sitting naked on a log in the creek. She was ‘Quite all right, thank you’.
“I could think of better places to commune with nature than the mosquito and leech infested rainforests of Kin Kin Creek in summer, even if I were fully clothed and liberally supplied with insect repellent.“
