Bryce England remembers his first visit to the Snowy Hydro Southcare Rescue Helicopter open day - he had his photo taken with the helicopter and thought it would be a cool job to have one day.
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Ten years later he was back there as a pilot talking to people about his experiences flying the rescue helicopter.
About 6000 people visited the open day, where the rescue helicopter proved the biggest attraction with longer queues than the baby animal petting zoo.
While flying helicopters sounds like a cool profession to kids of all ages, the realities of the job can be horrific at times.
''One of the other guys when I first came here said it's about 5 per cent carnage and 95 per cent countryside that you get to see. Some of the stuff we see is not very pretty,'' England said.
''When I first came here I went to a lot of really nasty crashes … and because we were there, the doctors and paramedics saved their lives. That's the best part of this job.''
The service performed 500 rescue missions last year, a 20 per cent increase in demand from the previous year.
''In June last year, we did up to five missions in one day,'' media and communications manager Kate Van Haalen said.
''It's not unusual for us, especially on a long weekend … to be doing back-to-back jobs, so there's a crew here 24 hours a day, seven days a week, ready to go.''
The service enlisted a replacement helicopter while the official helicopter was on display at the open day, and to prove the demand for the service, it was called out to a motor vehicle accident near Tumut where a campervan had collided with a car.
While some rescues have unhappy endings, thousands have been saved by the service, with a number of rescued people coming to the every open day every year to say thanks to those who saved their life.
Brad Nagy has experienced both sides of the coin. He has been working as an air crewman on the service for 14 months, but five years ago it was his brother who was rescued. ''[He] had a pretty horrific motorcycle accident, by all accounts he shouldn't be alive,'' Nagy said.
