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The ICU, or Intensive Care Unit, is a part of all hospitals that thankfully few of us will see. Most of us have heard news reports of people who have been in tragic stories who have been “rushed to Intensive Care”. But what is this place? How does it work? Does it look like it does in House or Grey’s Anatomy?

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I was fortunate enough to be invited into the real world of the ICU to document the incredible work done there by the dedicated ICU staff nurses and doctors. The Intensive Care Foundation has an annual appeal from 10-23 April, to raise money and community awareness about what the ICU achieves, and the foundation asked me to come along to photograph a documentary piece so that seldom seen media images could be viewed by the widest possible audience. The foundation, and my contact within it, Monique Pockett, had arranged for me to visit 4 separate ICU’s over Sydney over a week.

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First stop was the Royal North Shore hospital (RNS). Within the RNS ICU I first met patient Gemma McHardy, a teenager who has been in the ICU for 3 months. Around her bed the walls and windows were covered with photos of her and her friends in happier times, get well messages, magazine clippings with photos of her idols. Directly above her bed pasted on the ceiling were photos of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Leonardo DiCaprio, and a handwritten poster saying “Every day in every way I’m getting better and better and better”. Gemma was due to go home “soon”, and it was clearly this fact that kept her bouyant as her mother Anne talked to her about school and fed her home made pumpkin soup.

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Throughout my visits to the RNS, Westmead and The Prince of Wales ICU’s, similar heroic stories emerged from patients and staff alike. Each ICU was very different physically, with the Westmead offering each patient a separate room, where their status was monitored from outside by dedicated nurses perched before monitors showing their vital signs, reams of paperwork on medication, history etc and the best diagnosis tool of all, a large window to observe through. ICU director at the Westmead Dr Yugan Mudaliar is the most ebullient man I have ever met, and I got the feeling that showing me through his ICU was a source of considerable and justifiable pride.

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At the Prince Of Wales, patient Joel Cabides had a disco mirror-ball hanging from the ceiling and a large whiteboard behind his bed on which was written “1 Blink = Yes; 2 Blinks = No”. Enough said. Even through all of this trauma, Joel smiled broadly at the arrival of a press photographer, an interesting diversion maybe, and his father Joel Sr. joked with him as he massaged his son’s hands as I took photos.

Nothing was going to prepare me for the scenes inside the Westmead Children’s ICU though. As the father of a seven month-old boy, I felt as though this one would be tough, but it was much harder than that. Three month-old baby girl Eva Cole, her bed space festooned with monitors, equipment, wires, slept peacefully as her mum Sophie kept vigil, stroking her face and feet as the ICU staff bustled by, checking on her and her mum as they went. In the next bed, four year-old Byron Campbell was quietly sitting up, blowing soap bubbles from a wand held by a physiotherapist. It turned out this was no mere boredom-relief activity but a wonderfully engaging part of his recovery process, helping his lungs recover as well as his mind as the bubbles floated across the ward. Ashley Walton, 14, was wheeled off to get a scan by porter Joe Borgia, who was wise-cracking all of the way, keeping patient, mother, and staff smiling all the way. Seeing these kids, watching them dealing with their situation, and their stoic parents masking their concern, my mind is constantly on my own family, and I understand what these parents must be thinking - that they would do anything to swap places with their child in pain.

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With my week inside the ICU over, I relive the moments I encountered with the incredible patients and staff as I edit the pictures. As I edit them, I am amazed at some of the facts that the ICU foundation can boast. Out of the 148,000 patients admitted to ICU’s across Australia and New Zealand each year, 86% of adults and a staggering 97% of children survive, pure testament to the care they receive and their will to live.

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And no, they don’t look like they do in House or Greys…they look real.

Ash on the car in the morning, the smell of burning Eucalypt, it must be bushfire season again. Just when I thought a lazy Sunday afternoon by the beach might be on the cards, the call came in: “Bush fires are threatening homes north of Sydney”. I had, earlier in the day, suspected a bushfire emergency might emerge, as the outside conditions were very hot, very dry, and very windy, kind of like standing inside a hair dryer.

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Step one was to pack the car with water, lots of it, and my regulation bush fire fighting protective clothing consitsing of fire resistant jacket, trousers, gloves, helmet, goggles and boots. Basically the same as the Rural Fire Service uses, but with a luminescent “MEDIA” patch emblazoned on the back.

Next was to pinpoint the fire front on a map, and try to get to it. Australian bushfires, whilst burning vast areas of land, are extremely tricky to get to, usually because they are burning in pretty inaccessable terrain. I had heard on the radio that families had been evacuated from the popular picnic area of Bobbin Head, so that’s where I was headed. Police had set up roadblocks around the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park to prevent rubberneckers, tourists, and media from entering. Only residents who wanted to get home to defend their properties were allowed into the restricted area. My way forward barred, I drove in a loop around the national park, to find another roadblock but this one was attended by the Rural Fire Service (RFS) instead of the police. The RFS media officer Rebel Talbert gathered together some of the assembled media for a quick briefing, and then herded us into her 4×4 for a trip to see what was happening on the fire ground.

We found several crews from many districts of Sydney with their fire tenders, conducting a back-burning excercise in the national park. Stepping through the brittle undergrowth, it’s little wonder how this material provides fire with potentially explosive raw fuel. The leaf litter on the ground is ankle deep and bone dry. The back burning operation seems to me like a tightrope walking exercise. the RFS are deliberately lighting fires in these conditions, and trying to keep them controlled, so that when the firefront eventually reaches the area, the backburning has depleted much of the fuel and the fire is easier to control.

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With alarming speed huge flames rear up from a tree that has caught fire in the canopy nearby, and the firefighters rush to hose it down before it can leap over the road and escape into the bush beyond. They succeed, with glowing embers and ash raining down from the force of the high-pressure hose on the burining tree trunk. Eyes are peeled for evidence of an ember attack over the road, where a fire can suddendly burst back into life. A water-bombing aircraft is audible overhead, huge sky cranes that can carry a payload of 9,000 litres of water to dump directly on the firefront. Smoke renders everything beyond a few metres invisible though, and the chopper comes and goes. Time for a drink of water, and the backburning continues down into the valley.

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On a different edge of the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park a couple of hours later, I arrive to see streets crowded with people who have come out of their homes to watch a spectacle that is awesome. The ridge of the national park beyond this small enclave of homes is ablaze, and the entire sky is orange in the dusk. “I’m going to go and get the hose again” says a resident as the sight fills her with worry for her home, and hurries away to hose down her house roof and guttering.

In all, the RFS save all the homes that were threatened, and controlled the fire within a couple of days, with the help of some friendlier weather. Disaster averted, this time.