The River, Part 1
Monday 30 June, 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview
When a Lithuanian rafter became trapped in rapids on Tasmania’s Franklin River late last year, it made headlines around the world. Now, Australian Story can reveal dramatic details of the 24-hour rescue attempt, drawing on never-before-seen footage taken by rescuers and the fellow rafters.
When emergency services were first alerted that a man had slipped and was trapped up to his chest in fast-running water, they thought it would be a relatively easy job to remove him. But it turned into one of the most complex rescue missions in Tasmania’s history.
“How does someone’s leg go into a crack and not come out; like surely there’s a way, there’s always a way,” paramedic Rohan tells Australian Story. “And there wasn’t.”
Over two episodes, Australian Story provides a heart-stopping account of the rescue mission, as rescuers and doctors raced against the clock to free the rafter’s leg.
As the hours passed and the trapped rafter became dangerously hypothermic, rescuers had to consider the possibility of amputation. “I felt so conflicted,” Rohan says. “I’d never, ever had to hurt someone to save their life. If this goes ahead, you might kill him. But even if even if it all goes perfectly, he’ll never be the same guy again.”
With all rescue attempts failing, the decision was made to amputate. And that’s when there was what rescuers call “an incident within an incident”. The doctor who was preparing to perform the difficult operation slipped on the wet rock and broke his wrist.
With the trapped rafter’s condition rapidly worsening and a replacement doctor hours away, hopes began to fade.
Australian Story interviewed rescuers, medical personnel and the rafters, in Tasmania and Lithuania, to provide a nail-biting anatomy of an astonishing mission.
Producer: Robyn Powell.
The River, Part 2
Monday 7 July, 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview
The dramatic conclusion to Australian Story’s two-part account of the extraordinary 24-hour rescue effort to save Lithuanian rafter Valdas Bieliauskas from rapids on Tasmania’s Franklin River.
When emergency services were first alerted that a man had slipped and was trapped up to his chest in fast-running water, they thought it would be a relatively easy job to remove him. But it turned into one of the most complex rescue missions in Tasmania’s history.
Australian Story provides a heart-stopping account of the rescue mission, drawing on never-before-seen footage taken by rescuers and Valdas’s fellow rafters.
“The only feasible way to get Valdas out was going to require an amputation and this was probably going to have to happen in a rapid, under water,” retrieval specialist Dr Jorian Kippax tells Australian Story.
“There was a moment before I started of, I really, really don’t want to do this. Not so much that it doesn’t need to be done. It’s more that it felt wrong.”
As if the amputation wasn’t difficult enough given the location, the saw Dr Kippax was using to perform the operation snapped midway through. “It was just such a heart-sink moment,” he tells Australian Story.
The doctor struggled on and Valdas was freed but moments later the rafter went into cardiac arrest. Rescuers and Valdas’s friends held little hope that he would survive the chopper ride to hospital in Hobart. Miraculously, however, he did survive and after many weeks in hospital he was able to return home to Lithuania.
“The main thing is being alive, and life is a beautiful thing,” says Valdas Bieliauskas.
“Australian people helped me survive and it brings tears to my eyes when I remember their care. If it had happened in a place other than Australia, heaven knows what would have happened to me.”
Australian Story interviewed rescuers, medical personnel, Valdas and his fellow rafters – in Tasmania and Lithuania – to provide a nail-biting anatomy of an astonishing mission.
Producer: Robyn Powell.
Common Ground – Liz Heggaton and Tim Baker
Monday 14 July, 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview
Liz Heggaton and Tim Baker should never have met. She’s a recently widowed sheep farmer from Western Australia; he’s a surf writer from northern NSW. But a shared traumatic experience has brought them together to highlight the potentially deadly side effects of a widely used treatment for prostate cancer.
Tim Baker was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer at 50 and put on androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), a hormone treatment that works by blocking the testosterone that feeds the cancer. While the treatment was effective, it had side effects that he likens to “chemical castration”.
“It absolutely feels like your masculinity is being taken from you,” he tells Australian Story. “I consider myself entirely asexual. It causes breast swelling, genital shrinkage, loss of muscle mass. I think emotionally, it just leaves you feeling really, really vulnerable.”
There were times he felt suicidal and as a form of therapy he started writing and speaking publicly about his experience.
When Liz Heggaton heard Tim on a podcast, she had the terrible realisation that her husband’s suicide months earlier could have been a result of him being on ADT.
Liz’s husband Craig was diagnosed with prostate cancer at 56 and had his prostate removed. But four years later the cancer returned and he was put on ADT, despite having a history of depression. He took his own life not long after.
“If only we’d been forewarned that this could be a side effect to this drug,” Liz says. “What was going down for Tim could well have been what was going down for Craig.”
Liz and Tim recognise that ADT is a lifesaving treatment and men should not stop taking it. But they insist much more needs to be done to prepare patients for the potential psychological impacts of the treatment.
“I think every man and their partner, if they’re going on ADT, need to be counselled to ensure that they’re fully warned how their body’s going to feel when they commence it,” Liz tells Australian Story.
“I know Liz isn’t going to cop this lying down,” Tim says, “and she wants there to be a legacy for her husband and for him not to have died in vain.”
Producer: Ben Cheshire
Tim Baker’s podcast interview with ABC Conversations is available here.
Gut Instinct - Jane Dudley
Monday 28 July, 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview
“I think we have a lot of hang ups about poo. But I think my story proves that you shouldn’t poo-poo poo. In a very real way, the number twos cured my blues!” - Jane Dudley.
Jane Dudley was a happy child but after she was sexually abused by a relative in her teens she became depressed and eventually developed bipolar one disorder. She lost 18 years of her life to the condition, suffering crippling depression and manic periods that saw her hospitalised.
One day while gardening she found a frog, which led her to ecologist Alex Dudley. “A woman with a frog will always get my attention,” he jokes. The pair developed an instant bond, but Alex was deeply concerned about Jane’s mental health and desperately wanted to help.
After researching how the gut microbiome influences the brain, he came up with a radical suggestion: a faecal transplant – transferring his poo to Jane’s gut via enemas.
“I was like, you want to do what? That is gross. No thank you,” Jane tells Australian Story. “But then I had a few months of thinking about it and realising that I had to try something.”
Faecal transplants have not been approved for use in mental illness but within three months, Jane’s life was transformed, and she has now been free of depressive and manic symptoms for eight years.
Since Jane started telling her story, there has been enormous interest from medical and mental health experts.
“This is such a paradigm change in terms of how to manage bipolar disorder,” renowned psychiatrist Professor Gordon Parker tells Australian Story. “It gives us the opportunity for a completely new approach focusing on the gut microbiome. This is a story that needs to be told. A condition that has been positioned as incurable may potentially be curable.”
There are now calls for large-scale clinical trials to prove that it is an effective treatment for depression. But there is one message everyone involved wants to stress: this is not a procedure anyone should do at home without medical supervision as faecal transplants can lead to the transmission of serious illnesses and disorders.
“The ethical dilemma I have about continuing to share my story is that I run the risk of promoting a therapy that is potentially extremely dangerous if the donors are not properly screened,” Jane says.
Producer: Vanessa Gorman.
Momentum: Mohammed “Dr Mo” Mustafa
Monday 4 August, 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview
“The whole world is watching in horror of what’s going on, and people want to feel like they’re doing something.” - Dr Mo
The situation in Gaza has caused outrage and a sense of helplessness but Perth-based doctor Mohammed “Dr Mo” Mustafa is determined to focus the world’s attention on solutions. After gaining prominence for his harrowing social media posts from the warzone, where he twice volunteered as an emergency doctor, he wants to harness that profile to get a children’s hospital built there.
Now an Australian citizen, Dr Mo was raised in England, the son of Palestinian refugees. Starting high school a few days after 9/11, he was bullied relentlessly but always stood up for himself and fought back. At 6’3" and 120kg, he excelled at sport, winning world titles in jujitsu and competing in MMA. He was dubbed “Beast from the Middle East” when he played professional rugby as a medical student – which is how he’s known to followers around the world on Instagram.
Dr Mo understands that what’s happening in Gaza seems complicated to many people, but he’s urging us to put politics aside and focus on what matters – saving the lives of children.
“There’s a lot of pain that I’ve got,” he tells Australian Story. “But if I can put aside the pain and I can focus on something positive, then maybe people from the other side can also put aside their pain as well and focus on the positive.”
Over the past few months Australian Story has followed Dr Mo’s journey from an outback hospital in the Kimberley to the halls of power in Canberra and beyond as he processes the trauma of what he’s seen and sells his dream of a children’s hospital personally to political leaders around the world.
“I just wanted to make sure that my voice was heard so often and so many times on so many different platforms that we would become undeniable,” he tells Australian Story. “I’m not a hero. I’m just a guy that just refuses to give up.”
Producer: Amos Roberts.
To Bilo and Back - The Nadesalingam Family
Monday 11 August, 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview
They were once the most famous refugee family in Australia. But where are they now?
When the Nadesalingams were removed at dawn from their home in Biloela in 2018 and put in immigration detention, a group of locals launched a campaign to bring them back. For the next four years, the Tamil family captured the nation’s attention as they were moved from one detention centre to another, fought countless legal battles and staved off multiple deportations attempts.
A novice band of campaigners from the small central Queensland town was up against a federal government determined to take a hard line on immigration.
“It looked like an unwinnable campaign for, for such a long time’, says Simone Cameron, one of the #HometoBilo campaigners. “I thought, ‘Oh, we are no match for this government.’”
“It was an unforgettable and long campaign’”, says Priya. “When I think now how hard they worked for our family, I get very emotional.”
We first told their story in 2021, when the family was in community detention in Perth.
Since then, the campaign achieved its goal and Priya, Nades and their two daughters Kopika and Tharnicaa were allowed to return to Biloela. It was an unforgettable moment.
“I felt like crying”, Nades tells Australian Story . “I felt like I was reborn and had come to Biloela in my next life.”
We revisit the family to hear how they survived the uncertainty and scrutiny of those four years, how life is now and their hopes for their children’s future.
The mayor of Biloela, Nev Ferrier, is sure that despite the heartache, the campaign has put his town on the map. “People know where Biloela is now”, he says. “It’s changed the town. It’s put us out there. It makes us feel proud.”
Producer: Lisa McGregor.
