Dr Richard Harris recalls most remarkable moment from Thai cave rescue ahead of Lieutenant Governor appointment
Despite a new role proving a surprise, Thai cave rescue hero Dr Richard ‘Harry’ Harris is looking at dialling back a little – but has a doco to prep first.
SA News
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The state’s newest Lieutenant-Governor say he was taken by surprise when the Premier offered him the role – and knew immediately it meant a change to his increasingly busy schedule.
Dr Harris, who retired from medicine in 2022 to focus on writing, filmmaking and speaking, said the call was “genuinely out of the blue”.
“I said to the Premier, this is a massive honour – I need to talk to my wife Fiona and think about it, it’s not something I take lightly,” Dr Harris, better known as Harry, said.
Dr Harris was instrumental in the extraordinary global effort to rescue 12 children trapped in a flooded Thailand cave system in 2018.
Using his 30 years as an anaesthetist and “hobby” of cave diving, he trained other divers to sedate children and then help bring them out, one by one, through the pitch-black, narrow and flooded tunnels.
Keeping the children asleep during the rescue was considered vital to avoid them panicking and killing both themselves and the diver.
He and his WA diving partner Craig Challen were named joint Australians of the Year six months after the rescue.
Dr Harris said he took two weeks to consider the Lieutenant-Governor role – a deputy position to SA Governor Frances Adamson.
“I wanted to make sure I had the time to do whatever would be necessary – and research to see what the job involved,” he said.
“But in the end, we decided, why wouldn’t I take up an opportunity like this to give something back to the state?
“But I am trying to quarantine a bit of time this year from some of my projects.”
Those projects involve speaking engagements, writing and filmmaking, with editing continuing on the Screen Australia-funded feature-length doco Deeper.
Using archival and new footage, it’s the story of his and Dr Challen’s record-breaking 245m dive into one of the world’s deepest freshwater caves, Pearse Resurgence in New Zealand, and their use of hydrogen to breathe.
It was the first time hydrogen had been used as a breathing gas in a non-commercial dive.
“It has a lower density – it’s easier to breath in deep water,” Dr Harris said. “But it has some hazards, it’s very explosive if you get the mixtures wrong. It was a nerve-racking experiment.”
The Lieutenant-Governor role is potentially quite small, he said – a good thing for a guy who is already very busy.
“The Governor is an amazing and energetic woman – last year she had 1200 engagements.
“It’s a backstop position in case she’s had an accident, or has ill health, or had to leave the state, I’m the first in the queue to take over the administrative roles in her absence.”
He said since being named Australian of the Year, he’d discovered the joy of meeting people face-to-face and hearing their stories.
The recognition initially came with a sense of “embarrassment”, because he believed more worthy people were those such as 2024 Australians of the Year melanoma researchers Professor Georgina Long and Professor Richard Scolyer or SA Australian of the Year, environmental scientist Tim Jarvis.
“To me that’s what it’s all about, he’s trying to save the planet … then you get a couple of blokes who have an interesting hobby and get involved in one incident.
“But it was an amazing story and demonstrated how the global community can co-operate.
“It didn’t quite feel like we were the right recipients at the time.
“I remember a kid at a high school said, ‘do you really think you deserve it?
“It struck a chord, but it came to me at that moment, it’s about how I can conduct myself over the next few months. There’s no point feeling sheepish.”
Dr Harris said one of the enduring memories of the rescue – which he believed would not save one child, and incredibly saved all – was the moment he emerged from the cave system to learn the last child had been safely rescued.
“We walked out and two lines of people were making a corridor to applaud everyone walking out of the cave – and as we walked down this corridor of people, it seemed to go forever.”
Dr Harris said he expected every child to die during the rescue attempt.
“I gave it zero per cent chance of succeeding. It was inconceivable to me that you could anesthetise someone and put them under water for three hours, particularly in that kind of environment – with no monitoring or vision of them. No one was more surprised than I was (when they all survived).”
The rescue was turned into multiple films, TV shows and docos, most of which Dr Harris has watched, as his own filmmaking progresses.
“I’m interested in how they portrayed it – but anything overdramatised or not accurate, that grates a bit,” he said.
Dr Harris will be sworn in by Ms Adamson at a ceremony on February 9 at Government House.
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