Life skills

A little training can go a long way when lives are at stake.

Story + Photo Mark Muller

There’s a healthy mix of good humour and close attention to the task at hand as the staff on Harvest Road’s Springvale station in WA’s Kimberley set about practising CPR on an array of medical mannequins on the lawns in front of the dining room. They’re all taking part in a mandatory full-day first aid course as part of their training at the start of the mustering season.

For some it’s a refresher of skills they already have, for others it’s their first hands-on run-through of things they’ve spent the morning learning. Watching on with a keen eye is Grant Streeter. He and his wife Katy are the principals of KGB Marine – their Broome-based business that specialises in providing maritime qualifications and remote-area first-aid training.

“It’s important to give it the proper context,” Grant says. “That’s why I ask at the beginning for people to think about the sorts of medical emergencies they might face – they’re dealing with large animals in a remote environment, in harsh conditions. There are power tools, electricity, fuel, firearms – there’s a lot to be aware of.”

Grant started crayfishing as a teenager, spent his 20s as a pearl diver and worked in the oil and gas industry as a ship’s officer, gaining qualifications over the years that saw him as the master of large vessels in both the commercial and tourism sectors. He started lecturing at TAFE in 1998 and has developed a range of courses that are now deployed through KGB Marine. Katy is a local Yawuru/Jabir Jabir woman whose administrative and business experience keep the engines running. Their son Ben (the ‘B’ in KGB) handles logistics.

Grant’s background gives him a combination of command presence and real-world experience that cuts through without being dictatorial. The course rolling out on Springvale is underpinned by examples of emergencies he’s had to deal with, and the program is created with a clear eye to the environment and conditions that people on stations are actually working in. There’s a morning of theory, punctuated by a couple of breaks, then it’s outside to the mannequins to put some of that theory into practice. This includes filling a rubber arm with red-dyed fluid and then recreating an arterial cut in order to demonstrate the efficacy of a torniquet. Several rounds of CPR are administered, and the defibrillators are hooked up and set off.

The Springvale crew members work together with a combination of laughter and focus underpinned by the knowledge that these skills could very necessarily come into play in their daily lives. For station hand Nate Smith – whose lightness of touch while compressing the ribs of the baby mannequin was well noted by his peers – this training can make all the difference. “It’s important for us to know this stuff,” Nate says. “It can save lives. Out here we need to rely on each other, and it’s good to know that the people you’re working with have some training.”