{"id":82239,"date":"2026-08-28T09:02:33","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T09:02:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/82239\/"},"modified":"2026-08-28T09:02:33","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T09:02:33","slug":"dog-missing-for-a-week-rescued-from-cliff-face-around-blue-lake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/82239\/","title":{"rendered":"Dog missing for a week rescued from cliff face around Blue Lake"},"content":{"rendered":"

A dog has been reunited with his owners after emergency services worked for hours to rescue him from the cliffs around a volcanic crater lake.<\/p>\n

Tyson had been missing for a week in the SA city of Mount Gambier before SA Water crews boating on iconic Blue Lake spotted him recently.<\/p>\n

The Camilleri family had been missing two dogs, with the other, Odo, located earlier that same week.<\/p>\n

Metropolitan Fire Service (MFS) station officer Jarrod Petschel said Tyson had managed to get himself about 100 metres over the edge of the walkway around the lake.<\/p>\n

“If anyone’s been to Blue Lake, it’s beautiful, but it’s really steep, and quite treacherous terrain,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"emergency<\/p>\n

Rescue crews managed to reunite Tyson with his owners. (Supplied: Metropolitan Fire Service)<\/p>\n

“So he’d managed to get himself onto a tiny little ledge \u2026 and he couldn’t go anywhere.<\/p>\n

“There were reports from about Tuesday that people could hear a dog barking, but no one could locate it.”<\/p>\n

Tyson’s owner Will Camilleri had moved away from the family home to Melbourne, but was in town the weekend the dogs escaped.<\/p>\n

He said he was on the phone with his mother Sabrina during the rescue effort.<\/p>\n

“To know there’s a chance he might be OK was very relieving,” he said.<\/p>\n

“There were so many things that could’ve gone wrong. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”<\/p>\n

Multi-service rescue effort<\/p>\n

After one MFS crew attended the scene, the service called for State Emergency Service (SES) support, including a drone.<\/p>\n

“We had to set up a lowering system and a hauling system,” Mr Petschel said.<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

Tyson had been missing for a week. (Supplied: Metropolitan Fire Service)<\/p>\n

“There’s lots of communication because the guy on the end of the rope’s basically having to communicate via radio how fast or how slow he wants to go.<\/p>\n

“There were some parts of it around 30 degrees [incline], and there was [also] 20 to 30 metre drops of vertical rocky cliff face.”<\/p>\n

Mr Petschel said once they reached Tyson, the rescuer had to earn his trust.<\/p>\n

“[Firefighter, Joel Van Eeten,] had to make friends with Tyson, and he was a really big dog so that took about five minutes,” Mr Petschel said.<\/p>\n

“Once Tyson had confidence in Joel he was like, ‘Get me out of here.’<\/p>\n

“Joel put him in what we call a nappy \u2014 it’s meant for people, but he managed to get it \u2014 and then got the lead on him.<\/p>\n

“Just hauling back up took about 30 minutes.”<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Emergency services used a drone to rescue Tyson. (Supplied: Metropolitan Fire Service)<\/p>\n

A heartfelt reunion<\/p>\n

Mr Petschel said he “swelled with pride” at how successful the rescue was, and the heartwarming reunion between Tyson and the Camilleri family.<\/p>\n

“I’m a dog person, and just to watch Tyson coming up that cliff, he was almost pulling Joel up,” he said.<\/p>\n

“The owners were there, and it was like a big family reunion because I think they’d started giving up hope.<\/p>\n

“He just laid there, and everyone rubbed him on the belly.”<\/p>\n

Mr Camilleri said Tyson was in relatively good condition but had lost weight.<\/p>\n

“Obviously he’d lost weight because of the lack of food and water over the past six days,” he said.<\/p>\n

“He was completely unscathed, no scratches, no blood, nothing at all.<\/p>\n

“We were really blessed.”<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

Blue Lake sits in the volcanic crater of Mount Gambier. (Supplied: Metropolitan Fire Service)<\/p>\n

Normally working in Adelaide, Mr Petschel said he had rescued macaws, cats, possums, bats and lots of koalas, but Tyson’s rescue was unique.<\/p>\n

“Being an old country town boy myself, I just love working in communities where you see all the volunteers and the full-time [workers] and everyone just kicking in to do something that’s really worthwhile,” he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Camilleri thanked all agencies involved in the rescue.<\/p>\n

“Words can’t say enough,” he said.<\/p>\n

“To go from thinking ‘the walk I took him on the night before [he went missing] is probably the last time I’m going to see him’, to thinking he might be okay has made my world.<\/p>\n

“None of it would have happened if not for everyone involved.”<\/p>\n

More news from regional SA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A dog has been reunited with his owners after emergency services worked for hours to rescue him from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22,21,130997,3283,130998,21251,3271,5305,5663,56029],"class_list":["post-82239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-blue-lake","tag-dog","tag-dog-rescued","tag-mfs","tag-mount-gambier","tag-rescue","tag-ses","tag-tyson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}