Overcoming aquatic obstacles

Right at this moment I'm sitting in my motel room enjoying solitude, clean everything and order. Earlier this afternoon I was having a bit of a moment. I've just finished day 2 of the Royal Life Saving Society's Lifeguard package. Yesterday consisted of our First Aid and Bronze Medallion. First Aid was quite straight forward, bandages, scenarios, and all that jazz. Bronze Medallion was a little more challenging. We had to complete a number of different tasks to pass including a 400m swim in under 13 minutes (killed it), a 100m rescue, thats 50m as fast as you can and 50m back cross chest towing an unconscious person and a number of other tows and rescue methods to learn.

These methods came in handy at the end of the day when we were all given different initiatives to tackle. We imagined ourselves as a team working at our local pool (using the dive pool, which is segregated from the others which were in use). One of us recognised the emergency and the other was instructed to help in what way the person who recognised the problem saw fit. Again, I got fairly good feedback about how we handled it. We have a couple of great actors in our group so had a great pair to portray the scenarios quite accurately. Ours involved a blind man who tripped and fell into the pool and a man doing laps having a heart attack. It trains you to decide on a pinpoint which is the more critical patient and how to help rescue them. It could be a case of simply throwing a flotation device to help the person in less trouble to float and calm down while you can organise rescue of the more dire case.

Today we changed from being those who are covered by the Good Samaritan Act and having the skills to preserve life if required but being able to refuse responsibility to help to taking the place of the lifeguard and actively taking it on as a duty of care to rescue anyone in trouble*. Today we spent most time on how to create good rapport with patrons of the places you will guard, supervision and risk identification. We also put a considerable amount of time into perfecting our spinal rescues in a team of 4 or 5. This was all done indoors to avoid the breeze which would only freeze the 'victim' on the board more than they already had from drifting in and out of the meniscus of water while on the spinal board.

At the end of the day we moved outside to the dive pool where our trainer had placed 4 or 5 blocks wrapped in towelling material and tape to hold it together at the bottom. If we are to be guarding at a pool with a deep end more than 3m deep we have to duck dive to grab one of the blocks. I say have as I haven't as yet attempted it. Our town's pool has 2 dive boards, requiring a depth of 3.5m. That 3.5m is a place an unconscious person could possibly sink to. Now I have asthma which growing up was a pain and jumping off the big board into deep water gives me anxiety as a result. It feels similar to claustrophobia. Adding in the past experiences of having trouble breathing, and the ability to hold a good, wholesome breath for longer than a few seconds being out of my grasp for the majority of my lifetime and you end up with, I think, a more rational understanding of why I find plummeting yourself to the bottom of hundreds of tonnes of water to pick up a block intimidating. Remembering I've only in the past 5 years grown my fins and taken up the enjoyment of swimming. I learnt to swim at a young age, I could barely escape it as an Aussie and my mum and all my siblings love being in the water but it never meant that I enjoyed it. It's a purely psychological issue and I need to get over it. Tomorrow I'm gonna do the best I can, now that I've weeded out the specific reasons behind why I felt paralysed when she told us 'Now jump in and pick up one of those blocks'. I'll just have to harden up and practice some good Buteyko sessions tonight in preparation.

Wish me luck!


EDIT: Update! I made the 3.6m to pick up a brick wrapped in towels. It's heavier than you think it's gonna be but I made it! Yay!

*Side note: The Good Samaritan Act covers you to do your part in preserving life to the level of your training or refusing to do anything at all, but once you've taken the responsibility to help you must see it through.

*Another note: Buteyko breathing is a training method used to improve breathing functioning in people who have trouble with respiration, including asthmatics, people with sleep breathing disorders and others. Can recommend.

Blue Mountains Mid summer adventures

So recently I've been flat out at work (currently on day 9 in a row). My last day off was well spent with the other half and family. It was Valentine's Day so what better excuse to get out and soak up the sunshine, a bit more of a taste of a proper Aussie sunshine with temps up around 33 degrees Celsius. 

In the morning, after a well deserved sleep in, I was swept away for a drive into the bush to a secluded look out by my love. We sat on the cliff top admiring the beauty of Bathurst, west of the mountains, as it was beginning to become somewhat of a heat sink for the day. We finished off the fruit salad we brought with us and headed home to our house among the forest again. 

My parents called to ask if we'd be interested in joining them for a walk up the mountains around lunchtime. We're about an hour west of Katoomba so it's a perfect spot for a short day trip. We ended up at the Comservation Hut at Wentworth Falls. There are a few walks that bypass or start or end here but we chose the short walk to Empress Falls and back. It was a real pity we forgot our cossie's because once we got down the bottom every man and his dog were jumping into the deep hole that the falls descend into. Dad didn't care whether or not he had his swimmers and took his shirt and shoes off and jumped in anyway for a quick dip. We could only take the liberty of dipping our feet in. While we were there at the bottom we noticed some abseilers turning up at the top of the falls and they promptly began descending the falls. It looked as if the water was coming out of a canyon itself so as you can imagine it was quite a shady little hollow. Then began the climb back out.

(Quick snap of Vaughan and I)

Turned out a lovely day though and managed to get quite a bit done!

Travel update!

So the other half is now feeling really positive about the Diploma he's just started. As a result he's determined to complete it to the best of his ability. This means we're postponing our plans of an extended stay in Europe together. While this is a bit of a pity, I'm determined to get back over and explore some new places. Luckily, my youngest sister is finishing high school this year. She has told me she'd prefer to save more money and give 'schoolies' (Australian end of school tradition of going away for a week to get drunk and party) a miss to fly to Europe and do a bit of backpacking. Mums not too keen on her going alone so I dutifully have put my hand up. This means the next 10 months I'll be trying to save for a short trip to waylay my travel bug until we're both ready to head off on that extended trip. Let's just hope Australian/British visas are still just as easy to get as they are today.

Otherwise, at the moment I've been divided between the new casual job, shifts here there and everywhere and the Forestry, spraying weeds with my singing supervisor (he's currently singing 'dancing with you in the summer rain' as he takes the weather readings before we start spraying again). And to finish the post I'll grace the page with some little snapshots our gorgeous weather over the past week has delivered us with. 

(Taken in the backyard of the work Depo one morning at the start of the day)

(The sun shining through a stand of old eucalypts-taken just today before smoko, heading for a top of 31-36)

Catching Up

Once you have a bit of a break from blogging it is rather hard to know what exactly to say, even though one has done so much. Regarding our long term plans I've had the pleasure of contacting old references whose houses I minded while they were away for around a month at a time. Experience with dogs, cats, small animals and alpacas come to mind. Especially a tender memory of contacting the owners on their last night away because of the condition of their ageing, well-loved dog. Poor old Rufus.

Back to the present, an old school friend is returning home from abroad where he has travelled Europe broadly over the last 14 months. A simple post on facebook alerted me to the end of his travels and provided a map pinpointing a number of his stops along the way. It got me pondering my own plans of travel and provided my workmate with a rather thoughtful and quiet workmate to spray weeds with this morning.

Part of being flat out has consisted of getting a new job (which I'm working into the end of the Forestry season, and getting called to fill shifts left right and centre), re-registering vehicles, passing my Lifeguard course and getting my motorbike licence (fingers crossed, wish me luck!). The lifeguarding I'm hoping will help in the long term if we can hold down somewhat of a home while o/s. My cousin (who I need to sit down and chat to about her adventures living and working in the UK) taught swimming, among other things while she was away for 2 years, returning just last year. The local pool has scored me a grant to re-complete my training in hope that the weather holds out and they can induct me to their pool. The weather has to hold out a bit better than what it would need to for other pools as it isn't heated, which makes it a chilly dip at the start of Autumn. Here's to keeping my options open though!

In my spare time I've managed to finish off the back room, well enough for now. The ceiling is still visibly water damaged and if we had a longer term of occupation than the 12 months we have it might be worth spending more time finding leaks and fixing the source but for now the room is much friendlier and inviting than it used to be.

After

As an endnote/reminder for next time I'm planning a post all about different animal markers while out in the forest. We always see them, in the form of diggings, scratchings or different paw or hoof prints and its such an interesting little tidbit from my everyday I can share.

Thats it for the moment I'm afraid. Bed is calling and it look incredibly inviting. Til next time!