At 4am, Karen Gilbert lay in Dubbo Hospital having blood tests and antivenom administered, after being flown in by the Royal Flying Doctor Service following a snake bite on a remote outback campsite.
Just days earlier, on the same road trip, she'd donated $1000 to the very organisation that would come to her aid.
“As the saying goes, ‘You just never know what’s around the corner.’ That was certainly the case for us on this trip,” Karen said.
Now retired, Karen and her husband Grant are caravanning across the outback, following The Darling River Run with friends.
The trip had been planned two years earlier but was postponed after the sudden death of Karen's father.
"I think he was watching over us as we travelled this time," she said.
The couple's luck turned early. Stopping in Louth, they visited the local pub, Shindy's Inn, where Karen was drawn to pull a card in the pub's Joker draw – worth $8000.
She pulled the Joker.
“I’ve never won anything like that in my life!” Karen said.
True to the spirit of the trip, Karen shared her winnings with her travelling companions and shouted a bar tab for the Louth locals.
Then she donated $1000 to the Royal Flying Doctor Service. A longtime viewer of the television series, Karen had always had a soft spot for the organisation.
But driving the long dirt roads on this trip made its work feel more real to her – in towns like Louth, the RFDS-run primary health clinic is often the only medical care nearby.
The group pushed on through Broken Hill and towards Cobar, with a stop at the RFDS Outback Heritage Visitor Experience along the way.
Parked overnight at Emmdale Roadhouse, Karen stepped out of the caravan in thongs onto the hard red dirt and felt a sharp pain in her foot.
"The pain was absolutely excruciating," she recalled.
She'd been bitten by a snake. With no other symptoms beyond the pain and gradual swelling, she tried to sleep it off – but by the early hours, it couldn't be ignored. Grant and Karen set off for Cobar Hospital, 150km away, meeting an ambulance partway.
From Cobar, RFDS pilot Conrado Ciarliero and flight nurse Lydia Newton flew Karen to Dubbo, where she arrived at 4am for treatment.
"I had a great experience with all the medical staff. They looked after me and did whatever they could, despite it being the worst 12 hours of my life," she said.
As usual, it was a busy night for the RFDS – two planes landed at Cobar, and Karen's flight carried five people, including another patient and carer. Grant, meanwhile, drove back to collect the caravan before making the 500km trip to Dubbo to be reunited with Karen.
A couple of months on, Karen is in good spirits with just a small mark left where she was bitten. Doctors classified it as a dry bite, with little to no venom injected.
At the time, Karen mistakenly put her foot in a bucket of ice. Karen now knows the correct approach: immobilise the leg, bandage it as far up as possible, and stay still, using a splint if available.
She'd had a snake bite bandage in the caravan the entire time.
