Morrinsville's Honore Bond and Bella Strange have three real life heroes – and one of them is a German shepherd dog called Gemma.

Nine-year-old Honore and her three-year-old sister Bella will never forget how Gemma helped rescue them when they and their parents Matt Strange and Sarah Anderson became lost at night in the bush near Te Aroha in July this year.

Reunited Bella Strange and her sister Honore Bond were delighted to meet rescue dog Gemma again, along with LandSAR volunteers Gavin Hancox (left) and Graeme Hill – watched here by the girl's parents Sarah Anderson and Matt Strange.

'They haven't stopped talking about Gemma, Graeme and Gavin ever since. Those three mean so much to Honore and Bella and all of us,” says Sarah.

When the family and their rescuers met to re-tell their story to Coast & Country it was a special time.

'It's not often you get to meet people again after a rescue,” says Graeme Hill, Gemma's owner and handler.

'This search had such a good outcome. It's very satisfying to see a happy ending,” says Gavin Hancox, who was Graeme and Gemma's partner in the rescue.

Gemma is a qualified Land Search and Rescue (LandSAR) Search Dog and Graeme and Gavin are both volunteer members of the Hamilton Branch of New Zealand LandSAR organisation, which was called in to help find the missing family on Saturday July 14.

They had driven to the Waiorongomai Valley south of Te Aroha at about 3.15pm for a bush walk, followed by a swim at the local hot pools.

'We followed the track and went up the Queen's Incline, which was steeper than we'd expected. When we go to the top and went on a bit further, the track markers ran out,” says Sarah.

By this stage three-year-old Bella was tired and the descent down the incline was too hard for her, so the family tried to find another way down. By the time they had reached a stream, light was failing and they still hadn't found a clear track. Matt says he was shocked at how quickly things could go wrong and how quickly the light went.

'If I'd been on my own I would have been OK and I did think about walking out to get help but I didn't want to leave Sarah and the girls.”

Sarah says she was scared. 'I started to panic and had trouble getting cellphone coverage but moved around until I got one bar on the phone and called 111.”

Unsure by then just where they were, and because they didn't have a torch, the family stayed put on a rock in the middle of the stream where they were to remain stranded in the dark for five hours.

'Bella went to sleep but either Matt or I had to hold her in case she slipped into the stream. Honore just talked and talked.”

Graeme and Gavin got the call to help at 6.30pm and at 7.30pm arrived at the car park where the family car was left.

'No-one else had been on that track so I knew Gemma would have a good chance of picking up the most recent human sent, which she did,” says Graeme.

With Gemma on a tracking line and Graeme following behind, the search began. Gavin followed, keeping a track of where they were on GPS and communicating with search headquarters.

'It's ideal to have Gavin with me on a search because then I can concentrate on Gemma and pick up from her body language what she is telling me. Gavin can concentrate of looking for visual signs and taking care of comms.”

Being a local, Gavin knows the walking tracks in the area well but says without Gemma, finding the family would have taken even longer.

'I wouldn't have expected them to go up the incline but Gemma told us they had.”

Gemma faithfully followed the family's progress through the bush but even at her fast pace it took until nearly 10pm to find them. Graeme says the family did exactly the right thing by staying in one place. If they had kept moving, finding them would have taken even longer and in the steep terrain at night, the risk of falling was very real.

The family was stuck in the bottom of a very steep gully, and noise from the stream masked their calls.

'We were tracking them on the path they had taken and as it turned out they could see our lights momentarily as they looked up the steep bank of the gully, but we couldn't hear them. The scent from them would have been flowing downstream with the light breeze so no way Gemma could have picked it up as we tracked them around the top of the track.”

However, as Graeme and Gavin got closer they heard Sarah and Matt shout 'Help”.

'We thought from the noise they were around the other side of the steep gully, and because Gemma was tracking well we kept going thinking we would locate them on the track very soon. We tried to shout to them again but couldn't hear them because of the stream's noise.

'So we decided to head back a short distance to try and make voice contact again, despite Gemma wanting to track on along their path. If we had continued to track, we would have followed their exact path but it would have taken longer and we wanted to re-establish voice contact, to reassure them we knew they were there and also just in case they had separated and someone was coming up the bank. By going back and getting voice contact and then descending straight down the bank we basically took a short cut off the path the family took.
'When we got within 25 metres of the family having descended into the gully, we were stuck in the thick bush above the stream for what must have seemed like an eternity to the family because it was so thick. It was probably only a few minutes before we made it to them,” says Graeme.

'I have never been so pleased to see anyone in my life as when Gavin, Graeme and Gemma came bursting through the bush,” says Sarah. Their rescuers supplied the four weary, cold members of the family with headlamps and emergency blankets and moved them to a more comfortable location on the side of the stream. Honore and Bella were relieved and excited to see their rescuers, Gemma in particular, and as they settled down, wrapped in blankets to await further help, Gemma curled up with the girls and went to sleep.

Finally, with the help of other Hamilton based search and rescue volunteers, the family was guided out of the bush, (Bella being carried most of the way) making it to safety at around 2.30am.

Sarah says she, Matt and the girls will always be grateful to Graeme, Gavin and Gemma for rescuing them from a very cold and scary situation.

'These three mean so much to the girls and I am so impressed that people like Gavin and Graeme give up their time to go out in any conditions to search for people.”

She's grateful too for Gemma's incredible sense of smell which guided Graeme and Gavin to them.