About Us

The Northern Region SLSA Helicopter Rescue Service Pty Ltd commenced operations in December 1982 as a surf patrol service in Ballina.
28 years later, our community-based, not-for-profit service undertakes vital rescue, medical and search missions throughout northern NSW, and has completed more than 6000 life-saving missions.

Our crews
Experienced pilots, crewmen, specially-trained paramedics and doctors make up our rescue crew.
Our on-duty crews live at the helicopter base in Lismore and are ready to respond to an emergency 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Their tasks can include searching for and/or rescuing people in distress (e.g. swimmers, bushwalkers and abseilers), attending motor vehicle, rural or industrial accidents, and providing emergency medical treatment to people who don’t have immediate access to a hospital waiting room. We also transfer patients between hospitals.

Our flight area
Our flight path covers more than 60,000 square kilometers from the Queensland border, south to Nambucca Heads/ Macksville and west to include Tenterfield and Glen Innes.
Should the need arise, the service can be tasked to any location in New South Wales.
The very nature of our vast region – expansive, rugged, isolated and with long distances to major hospitals – makes our service vital. In many instances, the rescue helicopter provides the only means of accessing and/or transporting the patient to higher medical care.
And, as more and more people migrate to the north coast, demand for our service is growing rapidly. In our first year of operation we recorded 68 missions. Over the past year, we conducted 309 missions, an average of six missions per week.

Our partners
A wholly-owned subsidiary of Surf Life Saving Australia Ltd., our organisation works in partnership with the NSW Government, Ambulance Service of NSW, Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), and a multitude of other police, fire and rescue services.
The cost of maintaining our vital community service in 2010 is $6.5 million. As a registered charity, we rely on the generous support of the community and corporate sector for approximately half of our annual operating budget. Our service is dependent on individual and corporate community donations, income generated by bequests and in-memoriam gifts, and the tireless efforts of our volunteers and fundraising support groups throughout the region.

Our helicopters
We fly Dauphin N2 helicopters. This helicopter has a longer range, is more technically advanced and has a retractable under-carriage. It enables our crews to reach the scene of an accident faster, cut down the time of hospital transfers, and fly further out to sea for search and rescue missions.

Types of Missions
We perform three types of standard missions:

• Primary – Tasked to retrieve a patient from an accident scene and transport them to more definitive care. Standard crew consists of a pilot, crew person and two ambulance paramedics.
• Secondary – Transfer of a patient from a regional hospital to a major and/or specialist hospital, e.g. Grafton to Brisbane. Standard crew is a pilot, crew person, paramedic and doctor (or midwife in the case of a premature labour). For inter-hospital transfers, the rescue helicopters can be quickly set up with intensive care facilities.
• Search & Rescue – The mission may be over water, bush or mountainous areas. Crew includes a pilot, crew person and may include a ‘down the wire’ rescue crew person and a paramedic. There are also missions where the Westpac Life Saver Rescue Helicopter may be called upon to assist with food drops in times of flood, to undertake aerial fire fighting or to deploy emergency personnel into rough terrain, e.g. Police, Bush Fire or SES personnel.