LOVE AND COURAGE

Dr Alison Thompson QAM, an Aussie surfer girl’ and first responder, has spent her year bringing hope and medi€al aid to disaster zones from Puerto Kico to Ukraine.

- HUGH BOHANE

The day that changed Dr Alison Thompson’s life as it did so many was September 11, 2001. A blonde-haired, blue-eyed surfer girl, maths teacher and nurse from the Sutherland Shire in Sydney, she was living in New York City when the World Trade Centre buildings were attacked. As dust and smoke billowed through Manhattan streets, Alison rollerbladed into ground zero with a backpack full of medical supplies and began pulling survivors from the rubble.

There was a moment that day when she realised this was her true calling that she would spend the rest of her life offering what help she could in disaster zones around the world.

“At that moment I realised that everybody is needed,” she tells The Weekly, and I understood the importance of being in the wrong place at the right time.”

Since then, Alison has helped construct the first Community Tsunami Early Warning Centre in Sri Lanka, volunteered after the 2010 Haiti earthquake and assisted in a long list of other natural and human-made disasters. She was on the frontline during the war in Syria and administered aid to refugees who crossed the Mediterranean to Greece.

Most recently, Alison has been dividing her time between responding to the deadly hurricanes in the US, and delivering aid and training citizens on the frontlines of the war in Ukraine. I’ve been helping to rescue orphans, delivering food and medicine to the elderly, and training civilians in combat medicine in recaptured Ukrainian frontline cities,” she explains.

“Winter is coming, which is going to be harsh, so I will help to get the soldiers winter clothing. When I bring things to them, they often burst into tears and touching moments like that fill my heart up.”