Australian Story: The River Part 2

The dramatic conclusion to Australian Story's two-part account of the extraordinary 24-hour rescue effort to save Lithuanian rafter Valdas Bieliauskas from rapids on Tasmania's Franklin River.

When emergency services were first alerted that a man had slipped and was trapped up to his chest in fast-running water, they thought it would be a relatively easy job to remove him. But it turned into one of the most complex rescue missions in Tasmania's history.

Australian Story provides a heart-stopping account of the rescue mission, drawing on never-before-seen footage taken by rescuers and Valdas's fellow rafters.

"The only feasible way to get Valdas out was going to require an amputation and this was probably going to have to happen in a rapid, under water," retrieval specialist Dr Jorian Kippax tells Australian Story.

"There was a moment before I started of, I really, really don't want to do this. Not so much that it doesn't need to be done. It's more that it felt wrong."

As if the amputation wasn't difficult enough given the location, the saw Dr Kippax was using to perform the operation snapped midway through. "It was just such a heart-sink moment," he tells Australian Story.

The doctor struggled on and Valdas was freed but moments later the rafter went into cardiac arrest. Rescuers and Valdas's friends held little hope that he would survive the chopper ride to hospital in Hobart. Miraculously, however, he did survive and after many weeks in hospital he was able to return home to Lithuania.

"The main thing is being alive, and life is a beautiful thing," says Valdas Bieliauskas.

"Australian people helped me survive and it brings tears to my eyes when I remember their care. If it had happened in a place other than Australia, heaven knows what would have happened to me."

Australian Story interviewed rescuers, medical personnel, Valdas and his fellow rafters – in Tasmania and Lithuania – to provide a nail-biting anatomy of an astonishing mission.

Monday 7 July, 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview