Two boys, aged 16 and 17, got into trouble in the surf off the coast of Lennox Head, near Byron Bay in northern NSW. At the same time, lifeguards were having a training session to familiarise themselves with the drones.

At around 11.30am a member of the public noticed the pair were in trouble in the three metre swell and called lifeguards.

Lifeguard supervisor, Jai Sheridan, who was also the 2017 NSW Lifeguard of the Year, decided to make the training session very real by piloting the drone towards the swimmers.

“The lifeguard in this scenario got the Little Ripper drone up in the air and guided it down the beach,” Minister for Primary Industries Niall Blair said on Thursday.

“Using the drone, the lifeguard was able to spot the swimmers, and then drop the Rescue Pod into the water.

“Vision captured by the drone shows the Pod expanding, allowing both swimmers to reach it and grab hold of the device to help them stay afloat,” he said.

Both swimmers were able to use the pod to make their way to shore, where they were met by lifeguards from Lennox Head who had raced to the scene.

Despite showing signs of fatigue, the two boys escaped injury.

In December 2017, the NSW Government announced it would invest $430,000 in drone technology as part of a trial on the north coast of NSW.

“This is a world first rescue,” Deputy Premier John Barilaro said.

“Never before has a drone, fitted with a flotation device been used to rescue swimmers like this.

“It’s quite incredible to see that the NSW Government’s investment in this technology has already resulted in two people having their lives saved,” he said.

It took little more than a minute for “Little Ripper” to travel the one kilometre from where the lifeguards were situated to the swimmers. A similar task, performed by a lifeguard, could have taken up to six times linger.

“This was an extraordinary rescue with the very best possible outcome,” Mr Blair said.

A video shared by Liz Williams of an eastern brown snake and tiger snake caught in a brutal battle outside her Nanneella home in Victoria is the stuff of nightmares.

The footage shows the two snakes rolling around on the ground together, with the brown coiled tightly around his opponent.

And as if witnessing two deadly reptiles fight in your backyard wasn’t enough, once the tiger snake was dead the brown snake proceeded to eat it.

“It was amazing, I didn’t even know they would fight like that, let alone eat one another,” Ms Williams told The Riverine Herald.

“My niece posted some video of the event and I learnt there was a real contrast in people’s reactions — from fascination to fear.

“Half the people who saw our post said they would not be visiting us again.”

Snake catcher, Craig Bergman, who came to retrieve the brown snake and what was left of its meal, said that it later regurgitated its opponent after deciding it had bitten off more than it could chew — literally.

The eastern brown was reportedly 125cm long and the tiger was around 100cm.

Ms Williams said she has assumed the tiger snake would win in a fight but Mr Bergman informed her that a brown snake would always come out on top.

Get to a first aid course in case you run into one of these guys.

When Samuel Lethbridge, 17, didn’t arrive at a friend’s home on Sunday — and when he failed to reply to messages — his family immediately feared the worst.

As his sister Megan posted frantic messages on social media asking for sightings, their father Tony Lethbridge followed his gut instinct. And that ultimately saved his son’s life.

The teenager was reported missing to police but by yesterday morning Mr Lethbridge decided to hire a chopper to find his son. And he knew exactly where to direct them to search.

“An accident happened there about five years ago … It stuck in my mind … I thought, ‘I can’t leave him out there without looking.’”

The car was eventually found 20m down a bank off the Pacific Highway at Crangan Bay, south of Newcastle. By the time emergency services were able to reach him he had been trapped with broken bones for about 30 hours.

The first on the scene initially feared what they would find inside, but were amazed when they saw his head move.

Mr Lethbridge was taken to John Hunter Hospital where he underwent surgery for multiple fractures, including a broken arm, leg and spinal injuries, as well as dehydration He remains in a serious condition.

“He’d been there all night. No one could see him from the road, no one at all,” NSW Ambulance superintendent Jeff Atkins said.

When rescuers found him they had to peel the roof back and cut the seats out to free him. The car was so seriously damaged after plunging through bushes as it rolled that Mr Lethbridge couldn’t move inside because he was pinned under the dash.

“He was trapped extensively in the car from the waist down and was fully conscious through the whole ordeal,” Mr Atkins said.

Once freed, he was carried up the bank on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance.

“It was a very extensive rescue, very difficult access, difficult extrication of the patient, [we’re] very lucky the young patient is still alive.”

Sister Megan Lethbridge took to Facebook last night to say how lucky she felt.

“Counting my lucky stars tonight [Sam] is doing well so far,’ she wrote.

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The opposition has sought to highlight the losers from the changes starting in July, using a new breakdown of which electorates contain the 279,000 families that will be worse off.

Early childhood spokeswoman Amanda Rishworth says data the opposition obtained under freedom of information show Labor-held electorates of Lalor, Rankin and Blaxland are the top three where families will lose out.

“The government for months has been trying to convince Australians that families will only be better off under their childcare changes,” she told reporters on Sunday.

“What the figures reveal is that families right across Australia will be affected and indeed the majority of families who will be affected are in the two lowest income brackets.”

However, the figures show that while the electorates Ms Rishworth highlighted are the biggest losers in terms of the number of families, it is Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s own seat of Wentworth where the highest proportion of subsidies will be lost.

Nearly half the families who now get childcare subsidies in the wealthy Sydney suburbs he represents will lose out from July.

More than two in five families in other blue-ribbon Liberal seats of Goldstein, Curtin, Warringah, North Sydney and Higgins will lose payments.

Education Minister Simon Birmingham says overall more than a million families will get higher subsidies for their children’s care under the new system.

“This is about helping those families who are working the longest hours and earning the least amount of money,” he told reporters.

Under the changes, which passed parliament last March, existing childcare subsidies will be rolled into a single payment.

Both parents must be working, looking for work, studying or volunteering for at least eight hours a fortnight to be eligible and families with a combined income of more than $350,000 won’t get any subsidy.

“Is the Labor Party really saying they want more taxpayer dollars to support child care for people who are sitting at home?” the minister said.

“Because, frankly, that would be a waste of taxpayer dollars.”

Parents can use an estimator on the federal education department’s website to calculate how much subsidy they will be eligible for under the new system.

Check out our upcoming first aid course for childcare staff at www.canberrafirstaid.com

Riley Schmidt, from NSW’s Southern Highlands, was trying on a Harry Potter costume last Sunday when he was bitten on the finger by a creature hiding in the outfit.

“It hurt and it felt very sharp,” he said, according to Fairfax Media.

When he showed his mother and father Kayla and Stephen he didn’t seem too upset, but they wrapped his finger in a compression bandage and called an ambulance to their home, north of Mittagong.

Kayla, who held Riley’s bandage on while Stephen caught the spider, had done first-aid training on snake and spider bites — not thinking she would need it.

When the boy arrived at Bowral and District Hospital, doctors administered anti-venom before transferring him to Randwick Children’s Hospital.

Riley’s hand had started swelling, but medics praised his parents for taking rapid and effective action, which prevented the situation from getting worse.

“It started with his fingers and then the rest of his hand started to swell,” said Kayla. “The anti-venom worked really quickly and we started to see him improve 10 or so minutes after he had it.”

There is a shortage of anti-venom this summer, so Stephen took the spider to Taronga Zoo after he caught it.

“Part of the reason we brought the spider in was because we had heard there was a shortage of anti-venom,” he said. “It was jumping around in the container and you could hear its fangs hitting the plastic.”

Funnel-web spiders are milked for venom, which is taken to labs to be made into anti-venom. They are more likely to attack in summer, as they like hot, moist weather.

This is why we love giving first aid training in Canberra. When you hear the great work by someone saving a life it makes all of the hard work worth while. 

The capture of one of the tiny killers off the west coast of Fraser Island last weekend has sparked renewed fears the creature is moving south as sea temperatures rise.

Surf Life Saving Queensland (SLSQ) found the highly venomous jellyfish in a stinger drag and jellyfish toxicologist Professor Jamie Seymour confirmed it was an Irukandji.

The catch came after three women and a 12-year-old girl were hospitalised after being stung in the Fraser Island waters by Irukandji jellyfish.

When it reached those waters, he predicted it would force beach closures and cause a “collapse” in tourism, Nine News reported.

Professor Seymour, who has himself been stung more than 10 times by Irukandji, described the pain as a “10 out of 10” which lasts for between six and 12 hours.

“There’s usually severe vomiting, nausea, stomach cramps and about 10-15 per cent of patients end up with cardiac problems,” he said.

“Linked with that is this feeling of impending doom where everything is going to go wrong and there’s nothing you can do to fix it.”

Several victims have died from Irukandji stings which caused heart failure.

SLSQ has warned swimmers to “stay out of the water entirely” on the western side of Fraser Island.

A spate of Irukandji stings in the 2016 to early 2017 Christmas break caused alarm.

SLSQ advised that if a person was stung, triple-0 should be called immediately and the sting area should be doused with vinegar as soon as possible.

Visitors to Fraser Island should take a bottle of vinegar with them.

Book a first aid course at www.canberrafirstaid.com

As Mr Ogier continued driving, the red-bellied black snake started tapping on his window.

“It’d come out from under the engine bay under the bonnet. It was probably a bit warm there,” Mr Ogier told ABC News.

“It was sort of tapping on the window a couple of times, because it obviously wanted to get in.”

Mr Ogier put in a quick call to his co-worker Kai Pearse who put his amateur snake wrangling skills, and the broom in his car, to good use.

“I just had a broom in the back of the ute and … basically just got him off the car nice and safely, and just ushered him into the bushland off on the side of the road,” Mr Pearse told the publication.

It isn’t uncommon for snakes to curl up in car engines, especially to keep themselves warm overnight, which the pair speculate their red-bellied black snake was doing.

“Last night it got a bit cold down here on the South Coast, so I think he’s got up into the engine bay of the vehicle, and he sat up on the engine to keep himself warm,” Mr Pearse said.

But, when the engine starts running, things get a little too hot — and the snake starts looking for somewhere else.

Despite the pair estimating the snake was at least 2.5m long, Mr Ogier said he’d take his slippery hitchhiker over a spider any day.

“Not as frightening as getting a spider on the inside — spiders are one thing I don’t like, but I don’t like snakes either,” he said.

The post has since gone viral on Facebook with plenty of commenters saying their reaction would’ve been a little less relaxed.

“Burn the car, it’s not worth it,” one wrote.

Another person said seeing something like that is “when you’re glad you have the windows up!”

“Holy hell red-belly, I would just run off the road or try to speed off in hope it falls off and doesn’t go up under the car — my heart would stop!” another commenter wrote.

Mr Ogier’s hitchhiking snake comes two weeks after another red-bellied black snake decided he’d make his temporary home in a car engine.

Sydney man Michael Garbutt was out for an afternoon walk just after Christmas when he noticed someone had left a note on his windscreen.

“This afternoon a red belly slithered up into your front left tyre. Please be careful,” a good Samaritan had written to him.

Carefully lifting the bonnet, Mr Garbutt spotted, as the note had warned, a red-bellied black snake curled in the engine.

The high school teacher carefully closed the bonnet, with his little friend still inside, and called Andrew Melrose from Shire Snake Catchers.

Mr Melrose rushed to the scene but realised the rescue wasn’t going to be an easy one.

“It took about an hour for the snake catcher to coax it out. The snake was trying to bite the snake hook. The guy ended up catching it with his hand and just chucked it in a bag,” Mr Garbutt told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham said dodgy operators now had nowhere to hide.

“This register should serve as a warning to providers that if you’re non-compliant and do the wrong thing you will be hung out to dry,” Senator Birmingham said.

In 2016-17, the Education Department issued 141 sanctions and immediate cancellations of taxpayer subsidies.

Almost 40 others were caught out for wrongdoing in the first quarter of the 2017-18 financial year. The majority of cases involved family day care services, with fraud being the most common breach.

“We don’t want dodgy individuals looking after Australian children,” he said.

The government carried out 3800 compliance checks in 2016-17.

Parents can view the Child Care Enforcement Action Register at www.education.gov.au/child-care-enforcement-action-register.

Labor has welcomed the register but said it did nothing to help the 279,000 Australian families who will be worse off under the Liberals’ new childcare changes.

The Turnbull Government’s new child care package is due to kick off on 2 July and will also provide additional compliance powers to crack down on rorters.

The new package will allow a family earning less than $65,000 a year to have 85 per cent of their child care bills paid for by taxpayers.

But it has been criticised for hitting lower income families as parents will have to work, study or volunteer for at least eight hours a fortnight to get the maximum benefit.

It’s been estimated that those earning less than $65,710 a year will get reduced subsidies.

RELATED: What the new child care changes mean for you

The government has defended the package and Mr Birmingham said it would provide an extra $2.5 billion investment and nearly one million families were set to benefit.

“A working family on $50,000 a year with two children in care three days a week at $100 a day will be around $3380 better off each year,” Mr Birmingham said.

“That same family earning $150,000 a year would be around $1040 better off a year, and if they were earning $94,000 with the children in care two days a week, they’d be around $1560 better off a year.

“We know that affordable childcare is essential for some families to work the hours they want and the days that suit them, which is why we’re targeting support to low and middle income, hardworking families.”

Between the March 2016 and 2017 quarters, Mr Birmingham said there had been a 3.1 per cent increase in the numbers of children attending approved early education and care services.

He said the Turnbull Government’s actions to date had helped slow fee growth to 3.9 per cent, including 4 per cent for long day care, the second-lowest increases in the last decade.

“After a decade of annual average fee increases of 6.7 per cent and 14.6 per cent spikes under Labor, we know how tough some families are finding the cost of early education and care,” he said.

“I encourage families to visit our savings estimator at www.education.gov.au/childcare so they can see exactly what our changes mean for them and their budgets.”

First Aid Course Training for all staff should also be something that you look for when choosing a centre for your child.