Luke Giudicatti: Ingham QFD firefighter wins national Bravery Medal
A North Queensland firefighter has received one of Australia’s highest bravery gongs for risking his life to save another during a weekend away with his wife.
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A North Queensland firefighter has been awarded one of Australia’s highest bravery honours for risking his life to save a woman during a weekend getaway at an up-market hotel.
Luke Giudicatti, station officer at Ingham Fire and Rescue Station, is just one of five Australians to receive the Bravery Medal, the nation’s third highest civilian award for heroism, in 2025.
“I’m not a hero,” he said on Monday, playing down his role in a dramatic, off-duty rescue.
“It was just the right place at the right time and that was about it.”
Mr Giudicatti, a father of four girls aged 10 to 15, said he was enjoying a quick trip away with wife Rikki-Lee at Pacific Hotel Cairns on a Saturday evening in November, 2019.
He said the couple were staying on the 6th floor and preparing to head out for dinner when they were alerted to a blood-curdling situation.
“I looked down at the pool and these girls were yelling up at something and I looked across to the 7th floor, so the one above me, and there’s a woman hanging off the side … threatening to hurt herself,” he said.
“Then she’s flipped or fallen from the railing on the seventh floor down and bounced on the railing on the 6th floor and landed on the balcony.”
Mr Giudicatti, who had already called 000, said it was a miracle the woman had fallen the way she did.
“That’s when I thought I better do something … I think I jumped over something like three balconies that were about this far apart,” he said, spreading his arms more than a metre wide.
“But by the time I got there, she had climbed over the balcony again, she was fair dinkum (about jumping).”
The full-time firefighter since 2007 said he had to “wrestle” the woman from danger.
“There was actually another fella, he climbed up from a balcony below, from the 5th (floor) to 6th and he helped me get her legs over.”
Mr Giudicatti’s view of the initial fall was obscured but according to a statement from the Governor-General’s Office, the woman had initially dropped from the grasps of a man and a police officer attempting to stop her falling.
Mr Giudicatti said that would explain the nature of her fall onto the 6th floor.
“She’s dropped straight down, or slightly in, I do remember her back hitting the railing and she could have gone either way but luckily she bounced in.”
He said his training had helped him process and deal with life-and-death situations but Rikki-Lee was left shaken.
“After that had happened we carried on, went out for the night and we were lying in bed about 11pm, I was half-asleep, and she’s suddenly gone ‘I can’t believe what just happened, that girl, she could have died’,” he said.
“It was playing on her mind more than mine considering, and I guess that’s a firey thing; you forget quickly otherwise if you held on to every job you’d be up all night.”
Mr Giudicatti said he had never been in contact with the distressed woman.
“I’ve thought about her often in the following years and I hope she’s doing well and got the help that she needs or whatever, that’s she’s in a good space.”
The popular Ingham firefighter was one of five recipients of the Bravery Medal, including late NSW Senior Constable Kelly Ann Foster who received her award posthumously following an attempted rescue during a canyoning accident in early 2021.
In total, three of the five recipients of the medal, awarded for “bravery in hazardous circumstances”, were from Queensland.
They were Stephen Edwards who rescued a woman from railway tracks in Kingston in August 2000 and on-duty nurse Gabrielle Kelly who helped a police guard overcome a violent attack in Ipswich in November 2018.
Gold Coast surfer Jason Gibbs who attempted to save the life of a shark-attack victim at Greenmount Beach in September 2020 was one of seven to receive the Commendation for Brave Conduct.
A fourth Queenslander, Mitchell Bennetts of Mermaid Waters, was one of five individuals honoured with a Group Bravery Citation for their respective roles in subduing a man who had stabbed to death one person and seriously injured a second during a rampage in Sydney’s CBD in August 2019.
Governor-General Sam Mostyn said each recipient acted on impulse to render help in “extraordinary circumstances that most of us are never forced to confront”.
“In that moment you were brave and because of your selfless actions you deserve the recognition of your fellow Australians,” she said.
“Recipients are united by their selfless, compassionate courage and care and that impulse to help someone else, in spite of all danger to themselves.”
Originally published as Luke Giudicatti: Ingham QFD firefighter wins national Bravery Medal
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