This is a white lie. Blewitt has been a paramedic with ACT Ambulance since the mid-1990s and has been a core member of the SouthCare Helicopter rescue service since its inception in 1998.

Her efforts paved the way for the growing number of women who are now making a vital contribution to a local service that has traditionally been dominated by men.

SouthCare engaged its first female doctor in 2010 and an increasing number of female interns and registrars from The Canberra Hospital are signing up to train for the skilled rescue and recovery roles.

"I don't tend to tell people what I do," the highly trained intensive care flight paramedic said. "And I have been known to introduce myself as a school teacher."

This reluctance to share is not because she is ashamed of her work; quite the reverse. "The average person thinks we are dynamic hero types [because of what we do] and you don't want to spend half an hour talking about your job every time you meet someone new."

Some of the questions, such as "what is the worst accident you've ever seen?", just aren't the type of things you want to discuss over cocktails and canapes. Then there is the issue of patient confidentiality.

"People have a lot of respect for the work but they also want to ask a lot of questions," Blewitt said. "Canberra is a small place. You can't tell war stories without running the risk of identifying individuals."

The SouthCare community is close-knit. Members are generally most comfortable opening up to each other. As a result a lot of what happens on the helicopter stays on the helicopter, so to speak.

"You can't talk to members of the public the way we can talk to each other," she said.

Jane VanDiemen, one of the female doctors now working with SouthCare, agrees. "We take our jobs very seriously but we don't take ourselves seriously," she said. "[When we are on a mission] we try to keep it light; this is partly for the benefit of the patients. But you have to be ready to go serious in an instant."

There is a lot of non-verbal communication; team members know each other well and can communicate a lot about a situation just by sharing a look. This is partly because of the working environment.

"The helicopter is very noisy, it does vibrate," Dr VanDiemen said. "We do have an intercom but we share that with the flight crew. You have to make sure you don't talk at the wrong time."

Responses to a particular emergency are usually nutted out in the air while on route. Once on the ground at the primary retrieval scene it is very much "head down, bum up and on with the job. We all know what we have to do. You don't need to say 'the patient is critically ill'. You can tell that with a look."

There is no such thing as a normal day's work. Crews can end up anywhere and everywhere across a territory that covers all of the ACT and much of southern NSW.

While there are no issues within the service about the growing numbers of female paramedics and doctors, some members of the public have yet to read the "girls can do anything" memo.

Intensive care flight paramedic Karen Yanik, who also works road shifts with ACT Ambulance, recalls arriving at the scene of a crash where a truck driver had lost control of his vehicle and rolled it. "When I got into the driver's seat of the ambulance his response was, 'she's not driving!' " Ms Yanik thought this was ironic, given the circumstances.

Then there was the time the helicopter was sent to the scene of a motorbike accident to the south of the ACT. Ms Yanik winched down near a group of other motorcyclists and, on reaching the ground, took off her helmet off to expose a mass of blonde tresses. "They were quite surprised," she said. "One of them said, 'Oh, it's a chick!' A short time later a road ambulance arrived and another young female paramedic climbed out. 'It's another chick,' the same guy said."

Jennifer Myers, one of the newer members of the SouthCare team, still pinches herself from time to time when she deploys on a mission. A senior registrar at The Canberra Hospital, she is only months away from completing her training as an anaesthetist.

"I decided I wanted to do medicine when I was 16," she said. "I didn't have a clear vision of what was involved and didn't realise what I'd got myself into until I was an intern."

Dr Myers started with SouthCare in January. "It is something I have wanted to do ever since I realised critical care is what I liked most [about medicine]."

The experience has, if anything, exceeded her expectations. "I had thought it was going to be pretty cool," she said. "The first time I went up in the helicopter my response was, 'OMG! This is awesome.' "

That sense of exhilaration and excitement never fades and all four women say they still love what they do. Their reasons

include the sheer variety, the opportunity to see the region from a unique perspective and the chance to make a real difference in life and death situations.

Michelle Blewitt was literally thrown into the deep end in December 1998 when tragedy struck the Sydney to Hobart yacht race.

"I had done my helicopter training a bit ahead of the October 1 service start date," she said. "We did our water winch training in Lake Burley Griffin on what had turned out to be a fine, calm day."

Blewitt suddenly found herself putting that training into practice 160 kilometres off the NSW south coast in heavy seas and windy conditions. "The training was up to the task," she said. "It just kicked in. As is the case with a lot of the jobs we do, the reality of the experience didn't really hit home until afterwards when we were back at base."

MISSIONS OF MERCY