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NewsMeet the oldest Air Ambulance Nurse in Australia
Meet the oldest Air Ambulance Nurse in Australia

Meet the oldest Air Ambulance Nurse in Australia

Maureen Roberts has many career highlights to share from her 32 years as Australia’s longest serving air ambulance nurse.

In a recent interview on Macquarie Media, Maureen told the story of the pilot of her aircraft passing out at the controls and how she calmly popped his oxygen mask on and brought him around enough to land the plane. And you thought your job had challenges!

Maureen began her career in the Riverina and became interested in the Air Ambulance are speaking to a fellow nurse from the service. She started her career in Albury but is now based at Mascot, near Sydney.

Another memorable moment of her career involved a premature baby in the skies over the Hunter Valley in NSW. The Air Ambulance needed to land but a FA18 Hornet on “critical fuel” took precedence. Maureen remembers saying to the Air Ambulance pilot “the fighter pilot can eject if he needs to but we can’t, we need to land”!

One of the wonderful things about her job, Maureen told us, is that every day is a different experience depending on the patients you're transporting.

“Sometimes you're taking people home to die and they know they're going to die and they have the most amazing conversations with you."

Hear the full interview with Maureen Roberts here

Originally posted on .

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Terry
Terry from QLD commented:

unfortunately we live in a world, where if you have it, then they( ? )want it, or at least a good portion of it, its not just governments, today we need very big pockets so every large corporate can fit there hands in there, STARTING WITH; Banks taking a good slice of your wages to cover your mortgage and bank fees, taxes to many to write down, council rates, water rates( which are as dear as the property rates, do you remember when this fees was introduced because we had a drought!!, well all our dames are full but the fees are still here), electricity( big profit, check out their share market returns, oil companies ( they have so fine tuned their petrol prices to coincide with wages and not world petrol prices),it has become very expensive to just live, the only thing we have not been charged for is the air we breath,(even though the labour did try to introduce carbon Tax). Then we have the incompetence of government, one spends like there is no tomorrow, raking up billions, knowing (wanting) to leave the next government a mind field of headaches, and a huge clean-up bill, which the Tax payers pay,( again big pockets). Sometimes I feel, the major parties forget the taxpayers and have their own agendas, like in a school yard, it them against us and likes mark it hard all the way. 

Anne
Anne from QLD commented:

Reading comments on train. left hime 5.45am n wl be back at 5.00pm. I too would like stay home and not go to work but I have bills to pay and house to pay off so govt can deem it an asset when I retire. Cant understand the Australian way. 

Andrew
Andrew from NSW commented:

If the goverment wants us all to be responsible for our own retirement funds than maybe they should be on the same superannuation deal as everyone else and get 9% from employer and whatever they are allowed to salary sacrafice. Their current deal is probably the best in the world, and we're paying for it. 

Pauline
Pauline from ACT commented:

After having worked for 45 years (and I'm still working) I believe we are entitled to expect something back from the government! There are a lot of people who could be working that aren't and never have been. I know this for a fact as I used to try to help long term unemployed people find work and not all of them wanted to work and they would deliberately destroy their chances at interview. As far as the family home is concerned the government should just be grateful that some of us have worked hard and bought a house so they don't have to provide accommodation or rental assistance to us at any stage of our lives. 

Gillian
Gillian from NSW commented:

Yes, we could have our homes included in the pension test, if that happened what would be our options then. We could apply for government housing, but there is a waiting list of approx. 50.000 people in NSW alone and these people aren't all old either, so the chances of getting that kind of housing are not very high, did you work very hard to buy a house to end up spending your latter years in government housing, you could sell your home and pay rent in the private sector, this I would imagine would be very expensive, because people don't rent out houses unless they are going to get a good return on their investment, you could buy a house in a retirement village which would shrink the amount of money you had left to live on by quite a lot, you would also have to pay a yearly fee for the upkeep of the grounds, you could live in an aged care home, that would also cost you more than you may think, how about a reverse mortgage, ever looked into that, well I did, just isn't worth it, you could end up losing your home completely, you can only get a certain amount of money, considering your home would be fully paid for it isn't very much, you would have to pay more than the current interest rate is, imagine what could happen if interest rates started to go up, if you ever had enough money and wanted to get out of the contract before it reached it's conclusion, you would have to pay an exit fee, which is very high and the company who lent you the money are allowed to double it if they want to, you could try to get a job but you are old now, who knows what age related health problem you may have and anyway who would want to employ an old person in the first place, lots of young perfectly able bodied people can't get jobs, not everybody on the new start allowance are just bone idle, a lot have been laid off through no fault of their own.So if you really give it some thought where do you all believe it would leave us in the end, after the system has sucked everybody dry. 

Beverley
Beverley from NSW replied to Gillian:

Well written Gillian! Simple logical and factual - and I totally agree with your perspectives. 

Beverley
Beverley from NSW replied to Gillian:

Well written Gillian! Simple logical and factual - and I totally agree with your perspectives. 

janet
janet from QLD commented:

why should the overseas owners of companies in Australia expect the taxpayer to prop up their business here ,they are and have been getting all the profits ,and the government needs to stop the unions with all these high wages and handouts especially to x politicians ,they were sacked for a job not done 

Barry
Barry from QLD commented:

Where the hell did we ever get the notion that the Government has ANY money to give ANYONE? Any money the government has, is OUR money which we entrust to them to use responsibly. The Government owns NOTHING! They are custodians of what we entrust to them! The idea that we should be "entitled" to some of that money is a nonsense, since it it ours anyway. We are asking the wrong question here; the question SHOULD be "Should be politicians be entitled to do what they want with our money, or should THEY be personally responsible for the way they administer what we entrust to them" FiftyUps, it's time WE told the government what they will do, instead of them telling us what we can't do! 

Beverley
Beverley from NSW replied to Barry:

Here Here Barry - but dont they take an oath to do what is right and responsible - then do as they please? How exactly do we/would we get them to comply??? Current Fed Govt is going to look like the bad guys because of the mess left for them to clean up, and precious little (if anything) to do anything with in the future. Idealistic and realistic come to mind - and quite obviously idealistic doesnt work. We have the evidence. 

Lesley
Lesley from NSW commented:

Too many benefits have very high incomes to qualify eg Family Tax Benefit, Back to School bonus. This needs to be cut drastically. Politicians should at least wait until the same retirement age as the rest of us before drawing their overly generous pension and benefits (travel, staff etc) 

janet
janet from QLD replied to Lesley:

why should they get staff , cars offices when they retire ,and when the lose a seat theyhave been sacked so no benefits 

janet
janet from QLD replied to janet:

was agreeing with lesley 

narelle
narelle from QLD commented:

how much more does the government expect people in the retirement stage of their life who have made sacrifies in their life to pay taxes and dues, only to be expected to pay for every whimsical hand out that could be invented for funding. stop the crap, of over over taxing hard working people. 

Bernard
Bernard from QLD commented:

Cheers Barbara. Now all we have to do is convince others that the LNP and the ALP are in fact bed-mates taking turns to line their own pockets and rape the country. No more. Time for new parties and new policies. 

Beverley
Beverley from NSW replied to Bernard:

New parties . . . new policies? Nice idea but how do we really KNOW what is behind the facades? Wolves in sheep's clothing, sweet words and ideas - but usually no practicalities because THAT is how the new-age politicians have been educated since birth - or should I say brainwashed - to believe is the way it CAN be not the way it is! 

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