Emergency Medical Response

Event First Aid, Fire and Stand-by Emergency Response Services

About EMR

Emergency Medical Response is a Privately Held FREE Volunteer pre-ambulance service that provides FREE Medical Care to calls for help from community members in areas surrounding Bealiba, Dunolly, Moliagul, Tarnagulla, Emu, Archdale, Natte Yallock and Colac/Elliminyt in Victoria.

In a life threatening or time critical Medical Emergency please call: 000 or 112 from your mobile for an Ambulance. Then call: 0438 580 426 as soon as possible for FREE Pre-ambulance Emergency Care from Emergency Medical Response (if available) while waiting for your Ambulance to arrive.

Emergency Medical Response is ready to respond to any type of local incident and provide the Emergency Medical Care needed until our handover to Rural Ambulance Victoria for transport to Hospital.

Ambulance Victoria provides pre-hospital care for patients experiencing medical emergencies and is also the only organisation in Victoria permitted to provide Emergency Medical Transport to Hospital by road and air.

As a local rural organisation ourselves, we know how hard it is for rural event organisers to find all the money needed to run events and we are more than happy to provide First Aid Coverage and Stand-by Emergency Medical Response Services coverage at Market Days or Street Festivals from as little as $242.00 inc. GST / day (subject to availability). We are also available ON-CALL for any Emergencies within the Shire.

We carry $2 million Professional Indemnity / Medical Malpractice and $10 million Public and Products Liability insurance coverage. Our crew of volunteer responders work under the direction and guidance of our in-house PAEIMA accredited Extreme Sports Medic & EMT. All volunteers are covered by our own Voluntary Workers Personal Accident Cover. A volunteer reimbursement policy is also in place to ensure that our Volunteers do not incur "out of pocket" expenses in their volunteering role.

While we operate as a privately held business in order to maintain our vehicles and medical supplies, we still need help from the community to keep our Community Response vehicles stocked and on the road.

Why EMR?

It simply comes down to the location of Dunolly, Dunluce, Mount Hooghly, Archdale Junction, Archdale, Dalyenong, Bealiba, Emu, Cochranes Creek, Goldsborough, Inkerman, Painswick, Moliagul, Murphys Creek, Tarnagulla and Waanyarra and surrounding areas have in relation to the current Ambulance Stations. These areas are all located in a dead zone between all the current major Ambulance Stations.

Data recently released by the Heart Foundation shows the CENTRAL Goldfields Shire had the highest rate of heart attack in the state from 2007-08 to 2011-12, with an average of 17 heart attacks per 10,000 persons.

In a life threatening or time critical Medical Emergency please call: 000 or 112 from your mobile for an Ambulance. Then call: 0438 580 426 as soon as possible for FREE Pre-ambulance Emergency Care from Emergency Medical Response (if available) while waiting for your Ambulance to arrive.

It is simply impossible due to the distance for a Priority 0 Ambulance to get to Bealiba within 20 minutes from any of the current Ambulance Stations in Maryborough, Avoca, St Arnaud, Inglewood, Castlemaine or Bendigo. A call to ESTA on 000 normally takes about 4 minutes to complete and a page to be sent out to the responding unit. EMRs response time within Bealiba is as low as 4 minutes.

In February 2013, it took nearly 40 minutes for three AV Ambulances and the HEMS3 (Helicopter Emergency Medical Service) to arrive after EMR at a car versus a tree single @+70km/hour vehicle car accident in Bealiba with three occupants with one having serious difficulty in breathing in the back seat due to fractures of their right seventh and eighth ribs, a partially deflated lung and a Lacerated Liver (with internal bleeding).


Tom Aczel - EMT Paramedic / GoodSAM Responder / First Aid Trainer

My family and I have lived in Bealiba for over five years now since moving from Melbourne. One of the things we used to take for granted was Emergency Medical Treatment. While in Melbourne we could call 000 for an Ambulance and have it arrive in as little as 10 minutes, this sadly wasn’t the case for us in Dunolly on the 16th of December, 2010 where I had to perform CPR for 35 minutes while waiting for an Ambulance to arrive from nearby Maryborough at the scene of a Bendigo woman that was struck by an oncoming car in front of us. Unfortunately, when the Rural Ambulance Victoria Paramedic crew arrived there was nothing that we could do to save the woman and she was pronounced at the scene.

I don’t want to imagine what the possible outcomes would be for this sort of delay for Bealiba residents requiring emergency medical help in the event of an MVA, Amputation, Smoke Inhalation, Heart Attack, Stroke or Sudden Cardiac Arrest.

In other Victorian Rural locations there are 28 local CERT (Community Emergency Response Teams) that are dispatched along with an Ambulance Victoria RAV Paramedic crew to remote emergencies.

I’ve approached Ambulance Victoria back in 2010 in an attempt to setup a CERT system in the Bealiba and Dunolly Area and I’ve been advised that there’s no funding to do so. With ongoing community backing, support and education, we can implement our own local system where residents in Bealiba, Dunolly, Moliagul, Tarnagulla, Emu, Archdale and Natte Yallock and surrounding areas can first call 000, or 112 from a mobile, for an Ambulance and then call EMR on 0438 580 426 for Emergency Medical Care (if available) while waiting for Rural Ambulance Victoria to arrive.


I hold a Certificate II in Emergency Medical Service First Response, Certificate IV in Emergency Medical Technician, Certificate IV in Emergency Medical Response and a Certificate IV in Health Care (Ambulance).