For six years now a quiet group of former Australian servicemen have been working tirelessly in the background to assist the community with search and rescue (SAR) in the southeast Queensland area.
The Queensland Remote Area Tracking (QRAT) team is comprised of military veterans who have re-purposed their decades of military service towards helping authorities locate missing persons who become lost in wilderness or rural areas.
Hinterland local, Rich Hungerford, created the southeast Queensland QRAT team after realising current search and tracking knowledge was open to improvement and ex-military veterans needed a new focus.
The team operates beyond the scope of other search and rescue resources and is employed by Police accordingly.
Either assisting directly with the search for and rescue of missing individuals or indirectly with the provision of closure to grieving families and loved ones.
To date this year, the team has been activated to assist with 10 searches across southeast Queensland, many of them within the Sunshine Coast region.
From rescuing tired and scared hikers, to desperately sad recovery missions, the QRAT volunteers go over and above in helping worried and grieving families.
Rich said he was particularly proud of all missions, but one that stood out was the rescue of four lost hikers in Diablo National Park.
“Police were aware of the hiker’s location but weren’t able reach them, so we walked down a number of dark valleys to reach the hikers, and safely walked them out the next day,” Rich said.
“It was a good win.”
Other missions are weighted down by the knowledge that someone has already passed away.
One family, aware of the devastating outcome of an accident were still desperate to have their loved one’s body back safely.
Rich said they did everything they could to comply to bring the body back to the family before nightfall.
Other times, QRAT may be asked to track cold cases, in the hope of providing the family with closure.
The team draws extensively on the hard learned experience of recent military involvement in various conflicts, as well as the rich depth of experience held inherently within the veteran community.
Ex-soldiers themselves benefit significantly from the camaraderie and support from other veterans and of actively working to assist others in times of need within the wider community.
This volunteer work provides veterans with a sense of purpose and of service; a loss of which many veterans suffer from after transitioning out of the military. The QRAT Trackers, using their training and experience in patrolling, navigating, and tracking people in remote wilderness areas, now fulfil a niche in the Australian search and rescue space.
The southeast Queensland team consists of 38 ex-military men who service areas in southeast Queensland reaching from the NSW border to Hervey Bay.
All QRAT members are volunteers who remain on call 24/7; willingly answering the call to assist, like so many other members of our community who give up their time, energy and finances to help others in need.
Some of the terrain the team has been called to search has been true dinosaur country; remote, steep, dense rainforests, swamps, through to dry bushland.
Places people get lost in. Yet, the team never fails to put their hands up to help.
With increasing levels of social despondency now affecting our community, the QRAT Trackers provide a specialist SAR capability that exists nowhere else in the country. If you’d like to know more about QRAT please visit www.qrat.org.au for information. QRAT is a fully registered charity and gratefully accepts donations from local businesses and individuals to assist with ongoing equipment and training costs.
Main image: Southeast Queensland QRAT team at work