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Thursday, 9 January, 2014 Page 3
2013 – The year that was…
Hilary sends our hearts hopping HILARY the Kangaroo entered the hearts and minds of animal lovers throughout the state after she was shot with arrows in Endeavour Hills in July. After successful surgery Wildlife Victoria planned to release Hilary before her condition took a turn for the worse and she died on Saturday 10 August. A 21-year-old Dandenong man was interviewed and released pending further inquiries in relation to the attack on Hilary, who was rushed to an emergency wildlife vet after being shot with two arrows in her back and side. Fears for the kangaroo’s wellbeing and potential spinal damage were rife after one arrow was lodged 14-centimetres deep into its back. Wildlife Victoria’s Amy Amato said fines weren’t a harsh enough punishment for animal cruelty. “We don’t believe justice will be served as with many other incidents like this in the past, the penalties for such crimes are just not significant enough,” she said. This attack followed the death of a male kangaroo shot in the neck by an arrow in Narre Warren in November 2012.
Vanessa, centre, with her mum Virginia and kids Ella and Max is thankful to be home after surviving a cardiac arrest and being clinically dead for over 40 minutes. Picture: MEAGAN ROGERS
Dead reckoning
Wildlife Victoria’s Sue Anderson nursing Hilary the kangaroo in her final moments after she was unable to fully recover from arrow wounds to her back and side. Picture: WILDLIFE VICTORIA
Bus smash hero hailed DAWN Fredericks was hailed for her heroic efforts in saving a group of Dandenong North students from a head-on bus crash in March. This selflessness saw the Ventura Bus Lines employee, who chaperones a group of Emerson Middle School students on their daily commute to and from school, honoured with an Ambulance Victoria Community Hero award, as well as a commendation. On 21 March, Ms Fredericks and 31
students from the specialist school were on board when the bus and a car collided on Nettle Drive, Hallam, wedging the vehicle underneath. In the pandemonium after the crash, Ms Fredericks cracked open the rear window of the bus and helped the students escape. Two students were rushed to hospital but sustained only minor injuries. “The first thing that came to my head
was to check that everyone was OK, I had to move really quickly,” Ms Fredericks said. “There were a couple of obvious injuries, scratches and nosebleeds and I went to the front and talked to them and told them it was going to be OK, we’re all right, you’re all safe.” The day after the incident, Ms Fredericks made sure she was back on the bus to care for the students.
VANESSA Tanasio made international headlines in August when she came back to life after being clinically dead for 42 minutes. The Narre Warren South mother of two was rushed to Monash Medical Centre after suffering a severe heart attack at home, and then at the hospital had a cardiac arrest which technically killed her. Doctors at Monash used a new CPR machine called a LUCAS 2 External Compression device to keep blood flowing to Ms Tanasio’s brain after the cardiac arrest, allowing them to perform emergency stent surgery on her blocked artery. Ms Tanasio said without the LUCAS 2 machine, one of only
two in Australia, she wouldn’t be alive today. “I wouldn’t be here without it. It was keeping oxygen in my brain,” she said. “The surgeons were stoked. They were making calls to other doctors in the hospital to let them know what had happened.” Ms Tanasio, en ex-smoker with a family history of heart problems, started having chest pains on the morning of Monday 12 August which prompted her mother, Virginia, to call the ambulance. When Virginia was finally allowed to see her daughter in the hospital room, Vanessa passed her a handwritten note which said “kids”.
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CALL NOW ON Dawn Fredericks hugs Tyler, one of the Emerson Middle School students she chaperones every day and who was on the bus when a car crashed into it in March. Picture: STEWART CHAMBERS
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