Anyone wandering the tracks of Glenrock State Conservation Area on Thursday afternoon might have been fooled into thinking there was a high-stakes rescue operation taking place, with paramedics abseiling down a steep cliff face.
But the NSW Ambulance rescue crews from Rutherford and Singleton were training with new state-of-the-art gear designed to help them retrieve people in hard-to-reach places.
Rescue paramedics - part of the NSW Ambulance Special Operations Team - are called to an average of 370 jobs a month across the six regional crews statewide.
The specialists attended 2096 jobs across NSW in the first half of 2020.
The Glenrock reserve is a common scene for rescues, an easy place for bushwalkers to lose their footing and become trapped - sometimes injured in a fall.
Most recently, a 17-year-old boy needed to be winched to safety after suffering serious injuries when he fell from a cliff at the popular nature spot.
The new gear being used on Thursday, known as the Etch Machine, can be employed in a range of rescue situations including on cliff faces, in industrial settings, confined spaces and on rooftops.
Paramedics told the Newcastle Herald the compact and lightweight equipment would also make it easier to get to - and set up for - rescues.
"[Cliff rescues] are a big part of the work we do up here," said Inspector Dane Goodwin, the state's NSW Ambulance rescue coordinator.
"We would use this where helicopters aren't able to get in and winch a patient out due to weather or bad circumstances."
