In their striking red scrubs, Karen and Greg Bath can’t be missed — and it’s a good thing too.
The couple travel to many remote campdrafts, rodeos and races in the outback event calendar to respond to medical emergencies.
In dangerous sports like bull riding, sometimes thousands of kilometres from the nearest hospital, the pair play an essential role in keeping everyone safe.
They also help ensure the events that connect isolated communities can go ahead.
“I really do enjoy it,” Mr Bath said.
“My whole life is taking care of patients, trying to assist people.”
Ms Bath, an advanced emergency medical technician, said their role was very important.
“We are there for the safety of people who are doing their social thing, especially in the Northern Territory, where campdrafts and these type of events is their social outlet,” she said.
“They travel for hours and hours to meet up, and to see the kids get together with other kids.
“Importantly, we watch over them to ensure that if they hurt themselves, we’re there to take care of them.”
‘What I’m doing keeps me mentally sane’
Ms Bath said her work also helped her focus on the here and now.
She is living with a terminal breast cancer diagnosis, but caring for others keeps her spirits high.
“Doing what I’m doing keeps me mentally sane, because I think you have to have a positive outlook, otherwise you’ll just sit at home and dwell on it,” she said.
“If you’re focused on helping others, you’re thinking about something outside of your own world a little bit.”
She said living and travelling remotely with the disease helped her better connect with her patients’ experiences of accessing health care in the bush.
Endless injuries
The medics have cared for patients with everything from sunburn to spinal fractures.
“The list is endless,” Mr Bath said.
“We get femurs fractures, we get [tibia-fibula] fractures, we certainly get pelvis fractures,” he said.
“And we need to be able to treat internal injuries … a hole in the lung, spleen, liver, internal problems … all those type of things we come across on a fairly regular basis.”
Mr Bath, a paramedic, said sometimes, spectators also needed assistance.
“They can present with various medical issues … cardiac events, respiratory events, and that’s fairly common that we finish up with a patient that that’s actually not from the event,” he said.
A long way from help
When they’re not travelling, the duo base themselves in Queensland.
But so far this season, they’ve been to events at Brunette Downs, Harts Range, Pussy Cat Bore, Douglas Daly, Timber Creek, Ban Ban Springs and Borroloola in the Northern Territory, as well as events in their home state.
Ms Bath said sometimes the remote work was daunting.
“But we’ve been doing this for a number of years now, so we have all the equipment that we require with us,” she said
“Our job is to keep somebody in a stable condition until we can get somebody else here to assist.”
Mr Bath said they needed to be resourceful and capable to keep people alive.
“It’s very different when you’re working on a major event in a city somewhere and you’ve got easy access to hospital, easy access to a government ambulance system, where they can be there very quickly, maybe in ten minutes,” he said.
“In these remote areas it could take several hours to get assistance.
“We’ve had critical patients where it’s taken up to five hours to get an aircraft in.”
Care returned
Though it’s hard work, Ms Bath said their care was often returned by former patients, who greeted the couple with familiar warmth.
“We got a flat tyre on the side of the road and a ute turned up with two girls in it, offering to help,” she said.
“They said we looked after them at Tennant Creek last year.
“People walk past us and say ‘Hi, Karen. Hi, Greg’ … we’ve become a little bit of a household name, in that everybody knows us — we’re the medics.”
