Discover Our Bases at Westpac Life Saver Rescue Helicopters: Learn about the strategic locations of our bases, enabling rapid response to emergencies.
The Sydney Westpac Life Saver Rescue Helicopter Base is situated at Cape Banks in the Botany Bay National Park at La Perouse on the northern headland of Botany Bay.
This state-of-the-art, purpose-built facility opened in 2006 and is less than 200 metres from the coast. This quick access to the coastal waters and cliffs provides the most responsive helicopter rescue service to the community of greater Sydney.
Cape Banks is central to the service’s primary mission requests, with many requests within a 10-15 minute flight of the base. The service often responds to rock fishing incidents along the NSW coastline and around thirty percent of these missions occur within a 20km radius of the base.
The service is available 7 days a week and can reach the Royal National Park or Sydney Harbour within 6 minutes. The operational area stretches from the Central Coast to the Illawarra. Whilst we specialise in the coastal and marine environments, on occasion we are, called to provide rescue services in the Blue Mountains.
An operations room where the duty crew are based while on shift. This room includes a large communications hub to monitor radio communications from NSW Police, surf lifesaving services, council lifeguards, Marine Radio, the Government Radio Network and the Ambulance Service of NSW.
A ‘ready room’ where the various rescue and emergency care equipment is stored in readiness for the next rescue.
A Briefing Room that allows operations crews to prepare and plan for missions or training flights.
Living and accommodation facilities including kitchen, a lounge and ten bedrooms.
Maintenance and engineering facilities where we carry out maintenance and engineering services on our aircraft onsite.
Hangar space for at least two large rescue helicopters.
Office facilities, training room, board room and a large open area for group presentations.
Outside the building is a large landing apron and to the south is an expansive grassed area for taxiing helicopters.
With the support of our major sponsor, the Westpac Banking Corporation, we commenced a second helicopter rescue service on the NSW South Coast in 2010. Initially, it was a daylight service over the summer months but with State Government support, it has become a daily operation, year-round.
Service area boundaries are Shoalhaven Heads (in the Shoalhaven Council LGA) to the north, and the Victorian border to the south (in the Bega Valley Shire LGA). Whilst core operations are focused on marine and coastal environment, the aircraft, equipment, and crew can operate at inland locations too.
