Grumpy old buggers thread

[JDNSW]

Location was not an issue. My landline has a precise location in the database that the ambulance service uses, and the actual address, that is locality, street name and number, takes you to the house. Put that into Google and it takes you to the house.

The problem was basically that the paramedics had no maps, and with no mobile phone coverage, apparently did not think to use their phones as stand alone GPS (can you do this with all phones? Works with mine.), add to that incomplete and misleading signage on the roads (thanks NPWS!). Giving them a precise location was not the issue. The problem was finding a way there. Despite my giving simple, clear directions how to get here, these directions apparently got mangled between the dispatcher and the driver, and not having phone coverage, I was unable to talk directly to them.

When they were here I did not discuss their getting lost with them, both of us were more interested in my foot. Which is well enough this morning to get the boot on.

[cuppabillytea]

I would have thought that regional ambulances would be fitted with GPS as a standard practice. Glad your foot is mending John.

[Saitch]

I use W3W app as well. Its easy giving a position report to VKS 737 when travelling remotely. I am surprised more people dont use it.
Keith

Yes, it's quite accurate. I've used it to locate old Trig Stations. (Albeit with a bit of 'Scale Factor' thrown in!)

[NavyDiver]

This morning I was sufficiently clumsy to drop a log on my foot at the woodheap. Fortunately only a few inches, onto my steel capped boot - but it missed the steel cap and got me just in front of the ankle.

I can't recall how I got my foot from under it, but I lay down on the spot, and my grand daughter removed the boot and then helped me into the house, where I lay down and got her to take a picture of it for me. It does not look as bad as it feels, but after making sure my health insurance would cover it, I called an ambulance. I gave them explicit instructions how to get here.

This is something I have wondered how it would go if needed ever since moving here thirty years ago. The road is now good, although the gate is 17km from the bitumen, and I did not expect any issues.

After about two hours I got a phone call from a dispatcher. They had got lost. Obviously my directions had got garbled. I gave more directions from where they were, and listened to the dispatcher mangling them as she repeated them over the radio for the next ten minutes or so.

The situation was compounded by the lack of mobile phone coverage over most of the road, and the misleading and incomplete signposting (which is required for the road to be a major firefighting access, which it is, or should be).

The paramedics determined nothing is broken, and circulation is working, and no signs of nerve damage. Which is what I needed to find out.

While your recovering a old movie. "The road to Dimboola" may make you laugh if you can find it. 1980s? An Ambulance and dispatcher chat about the old road to or the new road to was a hoot I recall .

[3toes]

You do not have to be remote. A friend died in residential house in Caboolture when the ambulance could not find the address. Lived on his own. Managed to make a phone call but ….. event was survivable if they had been able to find the house

[JDNSW]

I am not remote. I am less than 60km from one of the largest inland towns in Australia, and less than 20km from the bitumen!

Remote might (in NSW), for example, be somewhere in the roughly one third of the state where most of the roads are closed whenever it rains, simply because they are formed of blacksoil. And that is without looking at the states with large remote areas such as WA, Qld, SA, NT!

[NavyDiver]

I know Road rules do not really apply when walking. I tend to keep left. Just walked into a shopping center and had a pram, shopping trolly, several kids an one gent spread across a walkway walking towards me spread out from left to right with a majority being on my right or their left.

The one gent walked straight at me. I stopped rather than step out into the crowd move past me. The Gent said 'Excuse me' I said sure. I'll happily wait here.

The bucket full of bile was heard for a fair while from the gent as he finally took a step to the left away from the wall I was up against

[V8Ian]

It never ceases to amaze me, how rude and arrogant some people are.

[Saitch]

It never ceases to amaze me, how rude and arrogant some people are.

Going by other posts, I'm sure that if you met ND in person, you may reconsider.

[V8Ian]

Going by other posts, I'm sure that if you met ND in person, you may reconsider.

I have met and dined with ND, there was nothing pretentious or arrogant about him. The world could do with more like him.