This last week a school was due into camp, they book out the whole camp for a week and usually set up on Sunday. So we made sure that campers who were in over the weekend were aware that they would have to vacate their sites on time rather than having the relaxed checkout times we allow at this time of the year.
We waited for the school to arrive, we waited and waited. I checked with Ranger Bruce and no, he hadn’t heard anything to the contrary and we were still expecting them. We didn’t mind, the peace and quiet was also most deafening
At 5pm Bruce turned up to tell us that he had just run into a colleague and whilst chatting Bruce mentioned the schools lack of arrival. Oh, did nobody tell you? they cancelled three weeks ago! Well, we are in for a very quiet week then as according to the online booking site, the camp is still booked out for the week. This anomaly was rectified late Monday morning so that others could now book in for the week. And Monday afternoon we did have one solitary camper book in, a man in his early 60’s. We passed pleasantries with him early in the evening and left him to do his own thing.
The evening passed quietly, we are enjoying this new found solitude and quietness, it feel a little bit like the first lockdown back in 2020 when we were on our own. But later that night things were to change.
At around 11pm we hear a knock at the door, Roy answered the door to find our solitary camper standing there. Can we have a look at the back of his head please, he thinks he’s cut himself. What happened? we asked. It transpired he had gone fishing off the rocks, stepped back and slipped hitting the back of his head on the rocks knocking himself out as well, he said he woke up and he was in the water! We got him inside and as I tended to his profusely bleeding head and seeing the large open gash atop an egg sized lump we decided to ring one of the Rangers. We first rang Bruce, but his phone went straight to messages, then Roy used my phone (his phone was flat, as was the phone issued to us for park use), so he called Emma, the duty ranger, except in his hurriedness, he called the first Emma on the phone list which just so happened to be a niece Emma in Dunedin!! That also went straight to messages. We would normally also use the Park issue phone to call the pager for a Ranger to call us but that phone was completely flat and not charging up quickly enough for us to use, and of course I don’t have the pager number saved to my phone (it is now) so we decided as he probably had concussion we would call 111, the emergency number.
Meanwhile I was trying to clean him up and stem the flow of bleeding so Roy dealt with the 111 call. After discussing it with the call taker they said they would get a nurse to call us back, and promptly hung up. By this time I had padded and bandaged the head wound as best I could and we waited. After an hour, the patient said he was feeling fine and he would return to his van for the night, and we would wait for the return phone call….which never came.
Next minute I hear a helicopter swooping around above us, circling around and disappearing for a few minutes before returning, surely it can’t be for us? we said. As we were debating wether we should call 111 again to make sure it wasn’t meant for us, we saw a stream of headlights coming into camp. One police car, followed by an ambulance followed by two more police cars and another ambulance!! Eeek, what on earth is going on?
Roy went to talk to them and to lead them to the patient, it transpired that the 111 call taker had neglected to take Roys phone number so they couldn’t contact us. Now, I was always under the impression that they would have had a call log or display to show the call number, but it seems in this case something had gone awry. So after another hour of the camp being lit up by spotlights, flashing lights and headlights, the patient was sorted and we were back to relative peace and quiet.
The next morning Bruce came to see us to see what had happened, it transpired that Emma did get a page from the police , Emma returned the the Police and they said no it wasn’t showing on their logs so she then rang the Council Park call centre to see who had initiated the page, but they couldn’t tell her (it transpired it was a newly employed call taker who forgot to alert supervisors of what had gone on). Of course the Police were looking for someone to give them the codes to get into the park through the locked gates, hence the number of police cars as they do have codes and keys to get in (they are held locally at the police station for emergency use). It was a case of left hand/right hand.
The excitement for the night was over and we got a couple of hours sleep. Thefisherman is fine after being attended to and fixed up, by ambulance staff but he will be a lot more cautious as well as being better prepared in case anything happens again. I did suggest that he wear a water activated inflatable life jacket when he goes fishing off the rocks, especially at night and when he is on his own, wether he heeds that advice is another matter.
The Vanninis' Manoeuvres 