New Zealand pilot Michael Adair had only just started working at LifeFlight when he was involved in rescuing the couple. Photo: Supplied / LifeFlight
A Kiwi pilot who rescued a couple in Queensland near crocodile infested water after spotting a giant SOS sign from the air says it was an emotional day.
A couple in their 50s was found after two days in the outback after their four wheel drive car was hit by a wave of floodwater as they tried to cross a river in the Staaten River National Park.
They were forced to swim out the passenger window through croc infested waters to escape.
The driver went back for their two dogs, but the couple was without food or fresh water and their phones in 40 degree heat with crocodiles in the region.
They scratched a couple of large SOS signs in the dirt and that paid off.
New Zealand pilot Michael Adair was the first on the scene and less than a week on the job for LifeFlight.
After searching the area for about half an hour they came across the couple, he said.
"We started having a look around for the description of the vehicle they had been driving ... expecting to see a big four wheel drive parked up on the side of the road somewhere and instead we came across a couple of large SOS's sort of scratched out in the dirt road and a couple of people jumping up and down and waving frantically for our attention."
The pair were extremely relieved to see their rescuers and became quite emotional once they realised they had survived their horrendous ordeal, he said.
"They'd been out there for a good couple of days, had a fairly stressful time, it was one of those out of the frying pan and into the fire type situations, just managed to escape out of the water in the car and then stuck on the side of the road in the Aussie outback for a couple of days."
Adair said he had his eyes peeled when he was flying the rescue helicopter and saw plenty or crocs and other wildlife in the area.
"It's pretty remote out there - Staaten River National Park - so you know there's crocodiles and kangaroos and dingoes and all sorts out there."
The couple did a very good job of keeping themselves safe, he said.
"The husband he was an ex-navy clearance diver for the Australian Defence Force so he had some good understanding of survival skills, they were from the area so they sort of knew what to watch out for and ways to protect themselves but they did a fantastic job."
The two dogs would have made a nice morsel for a croc and so the pair stayed pretty close to where they had lost the vehicle on the basis that was where they figured any search team would start looking, he said.
"[They] set themselves up with some shelter and tried to keep out of the sun where they could and then took turns at night just making sure that they were keeping the crocs away."
Adair said the heat was intense registering up to 40C.
"Unbelievably hot for a fresh Kiwi in the Australian outback, they were sort of a little bit more used to it. But they literally escaped with the clothes on their back so they managed to find a couple of old beer cans which they sort of managed to rip in half and use as cups and they were getting fresh water out of the flooded river which was old muddy and pretty grim so it wouldn't have tasted very good and probably contributed to a bit of dehydration for them."
The two would remain in the shade during the hottest part of the day and at night they made a little shelter and would curl up with the dogs to stay warm, he said.
It was great to see that giant SOS signs could actually work, he said.
As an experienced rescue helicopter pilot who was trained to look out for signs or signals that people were in distress, he said until now he had only ever seen ones that kids had jokingly written on the beach.
"This is the first time that I've ever seen it in reality and it was great to see that it works because you see someone writing huge big letters in the road and you go 'oh that's new, that's not normal' and it was great to sort of train our eyes in and then see them come running out of the bush."
Adair said since the rescue his former Kiwi workmates had been giving him a bit of a hard time saying "it's pretty standard ops for me to try and get my face in national media in my first week in the job", while his new Aussie workmates were jealous saying "it's not fair that a Kiwi's come over and poached a big job like this right out the gate".
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