On Monday April 29 park officers Clayton Burey and a second field officer were ending their shift for the day when they decided to check a closed bush trail.

By chance they were first on scene of a crisis with the potential to become a fatal tragedy.

"We were driving past and I said you never know, people can still walk in here. We'll just check it out," said Clayton.

"We got to the gate and this bloke's walking back into the park and I said - that's not right, something's wrong."

His partner, a 45-year-old woman, was seriously injured after falling forty metres off a cliff onto rocks in the remote Washpool National park.

In the thick bush land the women was over an hour down a track inaccessible to cars and out of phone reception, and she was unable to walk.

"She was not good, unconscious when we first got there; in and out and blood gushing out the back of her head, trapped under a log," said Clayton.

The woman had gone 24 hours without water and was later assessed as being in a medically serious condition.

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It was Clayton Burey's first month on the job. Neither had any training for the situation, aside from work at the Glen Innes Volunteer Rescue Association.

After making contact with emergency services they set about tracking her down and providing first aid. Then they cleared 12 kilometres of scrub track.

The biggest challenge was communications.

"The National Parks radio was the only one that would work, so we had to relay messages back to them in the town here, back to the ambulance," he said.

They set the radio up where it would work on a nearby hill. One of them stayed with it, while the other stayed with the stricken women.

"We never had a hand held (radio) that day either, that's why we had to keep running back and forth; we were fit by the end of that night!"

The Westpac helicopter arrived that evening but was unable to break through thick fog.

Police, ambulance and the Parks duo were forced to carry her 12 kilometres on a stokes rescue litter. It was pitch dark, the track was steep, winding in and out of a dry creek - but hours later she was safe

The woman was treated for possible serious head and spinal injuries and flown to the Princess Alexandria Hospital in Brisbane.

The National Parks Field Officer said the rescue was "just part of your job".

"I'd do it again for sure," he said.

"I don't think you'd be able to live with yourself if you knew someone was going to die because you weren't going to help them."

As the citation on Clayton Burey's ambulance Commissioner's Commendation for Courage says, without their "courageous efforts and support, the patient's outcome would have been vastly effected."