Feel awful to have someones elses misfortune to be big news on our blog... but we had big dramas at Browns Beach!
But back to that in a minute...
Our last full day in Adelaide we spent the day in Hahndorf, a quaint little German village on the outskirts of the city. This place was charming and full of great little shops to explore. We sampled the local Bratswurst sausage for lunch complete with sau... that stuff like cabbage that goes on top. It was yum, even the kids enjoyed it.
Spent the day driving into the Yorke Peninsula, the big "leg'' of SA. We thought it would be really easy to find a spot to camp for the night but it wasn't to be. As Emshia put it ..."Mum and Dad you are so fussy when you are looking for a campsite!" The beaches round here have very little sand, mainly rocks and lots of seaweed. And we are finding our standards are being raised with every place we stop. And this makes it harder to settle for less! So this day we drove...and drove...saw some beautiful coastlines but no good camping spots. At 8.30 at night we settled at Browns Beach in the Innes National Park right at the "toe section" of the leg of the Yorke Peninsula, basically because we had no choice, the kids were hungry and it was getting dark!
So...onto the drama bit. The next morning we had just finished breakfast when this young guy runs up to our camper and says in a frantic voice, "hey can you help me my friends real sick" so off Mark ran. It is awful to think badly of anyone but my first thought was that this guy is a bit suspicious and I better go and check Mark is ok. (As if I could of protected him !!!) Like they were going to ambush him or something... so off I ran to where they were and what I see is this guy, about 19 years old, lying on the ground, frothing at the mouth and his body having big jerking movements. We had no idea what was going on, we didn't know if he was having a really bad reaction to something, like an anaphylaxis or what was going on! So we put him in the recovery position and made sure he was breathing and had a pulse (I got Mark to do this cos I was shaking too much!!! Great nurse I am!!!) After a few more seconds I realised he was having a seizure of some description ( the guys knew of no history of epilepsy) and we got the guys to ring 000 and call for an ambulance (the first time I've ever had to do that!!) We got a small pillow to put under his head (cos this guy was banging his head on the ground) and made sure he was safe from any self harm. His fit went on what felt like about 5 minutes or so. He was non responsive and it was really scary knowing the ambulance was a good 30+ minutes away because we were in the furtherest part of the National Park. It was obvious after awhile it was an epileptic seizure, he eventually became responsive after about 10 minutes and just kept falling back to sleep and was obviously exhausted. On top of this these guys car battery was flat as a tack, so Mark had to get the Prado and give them a jump start. (These guys had come from the Adelaide area for a fish (the salmon were on the catch in this area), had left at 11pm the previous night and didnt get to camp till 4am!) I stayed by the guys side, and Mark went out to the road to guide the ambulance when it arrived. Some 40 minutes later it arrived and by then this guy was fully responsive, very embarrassed, trying to maintain the "tough guy image" and absolutely worn out. One of his friends rang his family and this guy did have a history of epilepsy but hadnt told any of his friends. These guys were so scared out of their minds over the whole thing. They told us they thought he was going to die! The ambos had a tough time in the end getting him to go to hospital, but he did finally did go. One of the guys came up to us as they were leaving so grateful for our assistance and said "its great to know there are still good people in the world". Awwww.... The worst bit for them was they'd driven 4 hours for a weekend fish, and ended up not even putting a rod in!!!
So by the time we had been Doctor Mark and Nurse Sharyn it was 12pm, and we set off to find a spot for the night. Typical fussy us it took us forever to find a spot but we found a great one at Port Victoria right on the ocean. Nice...Great sunset...felt real good! And a can of the local WEST END Draught went down real well...
Find it at www.seek.com.au Your Future Starts Here. Dream it? Then be it!
