Pride of Australia: Paramedic Pete Hogan nominated after 40 years of service with NSW ambulance service

PARAMEDIC Pete Hogan has been held hostage at gunpoint, undertaken epic overnight treks to rescue injured bushwalkers and attended more horror road accidents than he would care to remember.

PARAMEDIC Pete Hogan has been held hostage at gunpoint, undertaken epic overnight treks to rescue injured bushwalkers and attended more horror road accidents than he would care to remember.

But it is often the little jobs that stay with him the most: chatting to an injured war veteran, bringing someone back to life with resuscitation or bringing new life into the world with a roadside delivery.

With 40 years in the NSW Ambulance Service, the 60-year-old is one of the longest-serving paramedics in the state.

Paramedics Andrew Edwards, pictured left, and Pete Hogan, right, at Penrith ambulance station. Picture: Justin Lloyd

For almost his entire career, Mr Hogan has worked in the Blue Mountains.

Perhaps most dramatic among the thousands of jobs he has attended was a day in 1986 when Mr Hogan and a colleague, on a routine run transporting two nursing home patients to hospital, got a call to a woman collapsed on the street nearby.

“We got there and found she was deceased — she had been shot,” he said.

The paramedics unwittingly found themselves in the middle of a murderous domestic dispute.

“We heard a fellow yelling out in a European tongue and he was in the front yard of a house and had also been shot a couple of times,” Mr Hogan said.

“We got him out of there, but then the gunman came out of the house with a child in his arms and held us hostage.”

Hogan has served with the NSW Ambulance Service for 40 years this year. He has rescued people from the bush, been held hostage by a gunman and attended countless road crashes and domestic accidents. He’s been nominated for a Pride of Australia award Picture: Justin Lloyd

With a gun trained on them and overhead helicopters making the killer ever more agitated, Mr Hogan and his partner dared not move.

“We kept telling him we had two patients in the ambulance we needed to take to hospital, but he just kept refusing, telling us to stay where we were,” he said.

“We were there for an hour or so but then for some reason he told us to F-off, which we promptly did.”

Another incident in the 1970s — before helicopters could be called on to rescue people from remote locations — required an overnight trek deep into the bush near Mt Solitary to a boy who had broken his ankle.

The hike in took hours, then came the hard part of carrying the injured child back out of the wilderness.

“There’s a huge diversity of work up there, but there has always been a lot of motor vehicle accidents, especially in the old days when the highway wasn’t that good,” Mr Hogan said.

Hogan is planning to retired at the end of the year to spend more time with family after an eventful 40 years on the job. Picture: Justin Lloyd

Add to that the fact the closest hospital to the Springwood ambulance station where he works is 25km away, and working life is frequently challenging.

“It’s good in a way, because a lot of the time you get to see your treatment work by the time you get them to hospital, but then of course in major trauma or cardiac arrest it’s a lot harder because you’re working on the patient a lot longer,” he said.

“People say to me: ‘You must see a lot of terrible things’, but you see a lot of great things too.”

“You meet some lovely people through the years — World War II veterans especially.”

“I still enjoy the job of helping people out. I like to treat everyone the same — you treat them the way you would want someone else to treat your family.”

Mr Hogan is finally planning to hang up the first aid kit and stretcher later this year to spend more time with his family.