The Whitianga Road Crash Rescue team is in Australia this week ready to compete in the Australasian Rescue Challenge.

The Australian Road Rescue Organisation is hosting 20 teams from four different countries in Australasia at Lardner Park.

Whitianga firefighters are taking part in a three day road rescue challenge in Australia.

ARRO president Steve Rothwell says this year the event is being held in Victoria and sees teams coming as far afield as Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand and of the course the Northern Territory.

The three day challenge will see teams compete in in each of the three extrication classes, twice in the trauma challenge, and also once in the workshop pit, where they will have a chance to learn from senior and experience ARRO trainers.

Steve says the challenge starts today with a full day of learning symposium/workshop followed by the three ‘challenge' days where teams will compete in three realistic, complex and time framed events.

'Teams will be assessed on their command, technical and medical response to the incident at hand and will also have the opportunity of applying their trade on new Holden's kindly donated to ARRO by GMH.

'Running in parallel with the three road rescue incidents will be a trauma challenge that will assess two team members across a number of scenarios in their application of first aid.”