- Published:
- Tuesday 22 September 2026 at 3:33 pm
Three divers have safely returned to land after they met trouble in rough seas, thanks to the exceptional work of the Air Ambulance Victoria helicopter crew.
It was not an unusual start to the day for three friends heading out to a dive in the Bay of Islands, near Peterborough along the Great Ocean Road.
As experienced divers and fishermen, they checked the weather and set out early with their gear and spearfishing guns last month.
“We’d been out for a few hours. The day was very much at its end for us when our anchor winch broke and the boat went into the wash zone,” one diver explained.
“Our boat capsized under a breaking wave.”
The three men and their boat were spotted by walkers from the clifftop above, who immediately called Triple Zero (000).
The caller used the What3Words app, a geo-locating system that assigns a unique three-word combination to any location on the earth’s surface, to help emergency services find them along the coastline.
It took nine minutes from when MICA (Mobile Intensive Care Ambulance) flight paramedic Heath Butler’s feet hit the water for the last diver to be pulled into the hovering Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS).
“Although this rescue was over and done within a matter of minutes, as MICA flight paramedics, there's a rigorous training that leads up to that point for all sorts of scenarios,” Heath said.
“We train for people who may be injured on a boat and having to winch a patient from a moving vessel, we train for getting people out of life rafts and we train for this – people in open water requiring rescue.”
Heath said the rescue was a team effort, especially in the face of such challenging terrain.
“The Southern Ocean is an unpredictable environment. It only takes, as we saw on this day, one rogue wave to capsize the boat and you go from perfect conditions to potentially a life-threatening emergency,” he said.
“While I was on the end of the winch wire, it took incredible skill from our helicopter pilot to maintain the aircraft so perfectly still in quite challenging conditions from an aviation perspective, with vertical cliffs close by.
“It took expert skill from our aircrew officer, who was operating the winch, in delivering me exactly where I needed to be in the water. It really was a team effort that made the rescue so successful.”
All three divers were flown to the nearby Peterborough airfield where they were assessed by awaiting paramedic road crews, but no hospital transport was required.
The men expressed their appreciation for the Ambulance Victoria team’s approach.
“Everybody was 100 per cent professional. Not only at the rescue, but they we so considerate of us. It’s a traumatic experience. They took that into account, how we must have been feeling,” the diver said.
“I couldn’t have anything nicer to say about the Air Ambulance Victoria crew. I’ve had experiences with emergency services before, and this really stood out as exceptional.”
As Victoria moves into peak boating season, Ambulance Victoria is encouraging all Victorian boaters to complete their water safety checks before heading out to reduce the risk of serious injury or drowning.
“Regardless of how good the conditions are, be adequately prepared if you're going boating with things like making sure everybody is wearing a PFD (Personal Flotation Device) and making sure that there's an EPIRB (Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon) that's accessible,” Heath said.
About Ambulance Victoria’s Air Ambulance service
- Ambulance Victoria’s HEMS and highly-skilled MICA flight paramedics and crews can reach the most remote places, and with winching capabilities can perform retrievals in the most hard to reach locations across the state.
- Air Ambulance Victoria helicopters allow patients requiring life-saving treatment to be transported as quickly as possible to the most appropriate hospital.
- Air Ambulance Victoria retrieve and treat around 6000 patients per year.
- Babcock Australasia provide Ambulance Victoria with pilots, aircrew officers and engineers, to help ensure 24/7 coverage of Victoria and surrounding waters.
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