The Bathurst-based paramedic established the NSW Ambulance Paramedic Bomb Response Unit and played key management roles in the Sydney 2000 Olympics and visits by international heads of state, together with operational responses to emergencies including the 1997 Thredbo disaster, 2004 Banda Aceh tsunami and 2009 swine flu pandemic.

Supt Webster retired on Friday, August 11, taking a wealth of memories and experience with her.

Supt Webster, 61, worked as a nurse and midwife for 11 years before joining NSW Ambulance in 1986, inspired by the desire to do more for her patients. “By becoming a paramedic, I felt I could do everything I possibly could to make that person’s life easier; to give them the care I felt was needed,” she said.

Supt Webster started at Rockdale, then worked at Caringbah before transferring to Young. In 1988, she returned to the city to become a training officer while studying to become an intensive care paramedic.

Further roles followed including station officer at Sydney’s Quay St headquarters where she also served as operational support manager. It was in this role that she began identifying areas where NSW Ambulance could strengthen its expertise. One such area was bomb response.

“In the mid to late 90s we had a lot of bombing incidents in Sydney when the police rescue and bomb unit asked for our assistance. We needed to have a specialist group that looked after the technicians; who knew how to remove the bomb tech from the scene, remove his suit and initiate treatment.”

In 1997, Supt Webster led the Special Casualty Access Team response to the Thredbo disaster, tasking 84 personnel to the scene and ensuring their well-being.

The year 2000 was also pivotal, not just for the nation in celebrating the Sydney Olympics and Paralympics, but for Supt Webster, who led the NSW Ambulance planning and logistics component of both events.

“It was a year before the World Trade Centre attacks but the threat was still real. Having come from the Bomb Response Unit, you knew the potential of what could happen. But the ambulance component was very successful thanks to the paramedics involved. There was a lot of teamwork.”

Following this event, Supt Webster transferred to Bathurst to take up the role of duty inspector and has remained in the region ever since. “The first job I did in Bathurst was an unexploded device which had been left at the top of Mount Panorama. It was a case of, ‘I know how to do this’,” she said.

In April 2012, Supt Webster accepted a role that became close to her heart, establishing state-wide co-ordination of the organisation’s Volunteer and Community First Responders, and has since watched the army of clinically trained volunteers grow to almost 440 in number.

“They’re people who will drop everything at home and race out to help someone else,” she said.

Supt Webster attributed her go-getting nature to the support of her husband Graham, a former senior paramedic of 40 years, and her late mother Sheila.

Recognition has included receiving the country’s highest ambulance honour, the Ambulance Service Medal, this year and two Commissioner’s Meritorious Medals.

Supt Webster believed the most significant change to paramedicine was the improvement in skills and equipment. “The skills paramedics are taught and the equipment available has come ahead in incredible leaps,” she said.

As for the future, Supt Webster, whose legacy includes training and mentoring countless paramedics, made a hopeful prediction for further extension of out-of-hospital care.