The chance to represent the region in an international competition is something a group of firefighters consider to be a great honour.
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The team from the Ulladulla based Fire and Rescue Station 477 will be taking part in the Australasian Road Rescue Organisation's (ARRO) Australasian Road Crash Rescue competition in Dubbo from Wednesday.
Captain Paul Collins said the team had been training hard for the event and testing their skills.
"This is a competition against other teams from around the world," he said.
Teams from New Zealand and Hong Kong will be taking part in the event, along with representatives from all Australian states.
They are the only team from the Shoalhaven taking part.
The team is Paul Collins, Tony Bewley, Aaron Owers, Joe Reid, Nathan Garrett and Shane Woodhouse. High ranking Fire and Rescue NSW Rob McNeil selected and invited the Ulladulla team for the event.
Team member Nathan Garrett said they were already looking to make their mark in next year's championship.
"We have this year and another next year and so we will be looking to get experience at Dubbo. It's something good for our station to take part in," he said.
Captain Collins also sees the Dubbo event as a learning experience.
"My goal, not being at this type of competition before, is to gain the experience so we can have a really good shot at winning next year," he said.
"We have been doing a lot of training."
The group has to learn the various techniques and ways of doing things on the competition side of things.
"We got plenty of experience doing road crash rescue but to do in way to get maximum points to win is what need to learn," Captain Collins said.
"We have to go in and pretty much stablise a vehicle, organise how we are going to cut it apart to get the person out it and we have medics who go in to stablise the patients.
- Paul Collins
"It's a big competition and its exciting to be in."
Captain Collins hopes the team will finish in the top three next year. The team will take part in five or six events and will take part in mock but realistic rescue situations.
"They use live patients who will be told certain things by doctors - things like what to do and what to say and they use mannequins as well," the captain said.
"We have to go in and pretty much stablise a vehicle, organise how we are going to cut it apart to get the person out it and we have medics who go in to stablise the patients.
"We work as a team and we have to get those people out of cars within half-an-hour."
The teams are literally kept in the dark before hand.
"We don't get to see the car. We get put in a dark room for 30 minutes while they set the scene up and they let us out and go 'alright do the rescue'," captain Collins said.
"We don't know what we are facing - all we know is that we have people in cars and we have to make spur of the moment decisions to look after the patients and get them out."
Captain Collins said the team was looking forward to complete and feel lucky to have been chosen to take part.
"We just want to do really well at it," he said.
