On the Saturday afternoon of my younger daughter’s ninth birthday a drama unfolded making me miss the party.

It was about two in the afternoon on a still sunny winter day in mid July. Our teenage son had gone fishing with a mate. All the preparations for the party were on cue. The calf was slain. The cake was in the oven. The grandparents were on the way.

We had an hour to kill. So Helen and I went for a walk from our church rectory, no more than 300 metres from the Kiama Blowhole, to see if Steve had mastered the sea and add surf to the turf for the gourmet barbeque birthday dinner.

Steve’s favourite fishing spot was a rock platform just beyond the harbour. The serenity of the scenery normally resembled a shot from the BBC soapie, Doc. Martin (although this all took place years before the Doc. character had been created).

Suddenly, the tranquillity took a traumatic turn.

Ambulances and fire engines roared past us with lights blazing and sirens blaring. Emergency and media helicopters hovered overhead and then landed on whatever flat ground they could find on the headland. SES trucks, police cars and paramedics whizzed all around us. Kiama’s Blowhole point was transformed into a war zone.

I enquired and, to my horror, was told that several people had been washed from the rocks and drowned.

On instinct, Helen and I split up, desperate to find our son and his friend, and find them alive. But a paramedic, who attended our church, intercepted me and asked if I would jump into the back of his ambulance and comfort a man who had just witnessed the drowning of seven members of his family?

For the next three hours I sat with this soaking wet, traumatised and frightened man. I held him, kept dry blankets covering his shoulders and reassured him, as best and as I truthfully could, that people were doing everything they could for his family.

He, a daughter and a niece had been pulled from the wintery waters, where seven of his family had perished. They had come from a landlocked middle-eastern country with little water literacy. They saw the ocean sparkling in the afternoon sunshine. Little did they know that the same water could so easily kill.

I never got more than this man’s name. He knew little English. I knew no Arabic. How could I learn his story?

But I rubbed his back. I stroked his hair. I offered my shoulder. What I couldn’t say in words I would try to say with touch.

I held him as he held and caressed the lifeless limbs of seven of his nearest and dearest. They had been carefully laid in a regimental row on the cold concrete floor of the harbour’s fish co-op.

I accompanied him as the ambulance sped to the regional hospital where his only living daughter and niece were anxiously awaiting news on the welfare of their family.

We raced into casualty. As we met the social worker just outside the ward she abruptly said to me, “You tell them.” With that she pulled back the curtain to reveal two frightened teenagers. I did it as best I could. The wailing could be heard for miles.

An hour later, as another ambulance came to take these three utterly bereft people back to their home in Sydney, I bade farewell to this sorrowful stranger that I would never see again. In broken English, he asked me to pray. In simple English I asked Jesus to comfort him.

When I returned home, the party was all but over.

Days later, a member of my congregation, the matron of a local hospital, asked who had debriefed me after the ordeal. “Nobody.” I said, giving my shoulders a sharp little shrug. Her disbelief was distressing.

This happened twenty years ago. The memories remain vivid and, at times, overpowering.

Should I have been professionally debriefed? Should I have done more than unload the story on a couple of mates? My matron friend thought so.

But how would I have known? I had been walking with people in trauma and grief for decades. Wasn’t it just the parcelled up package of the professional pastoral role?

The first funeral I ever conducted was a cot death. At the time I had two toddlers of my own. I was asked to accompany the parents to a private viewing of the open casket before the service. All I can remember was the perfectly featured face, china white in colour, bordered by white lace in a miniature white coffin. I tried not to imagine what autopsy work lay beneath the tiny satin skullcap. I had nightmares for weeks. More than thirty years later I can still remember almost every detail.

Did I, or any one else, think I should have been debriefed at the time? It never crossed anyone’s mind.

Who will care for the carer? Who will pastor the pastor? Do people in the people helping professions ever need help?

Is there an accumulative burden that can reach overload when people are exposed to trauma, grief and conflict as a regular part of their professional lives, year after year?

When budgets are bleeding, time is tight and people problems are piling on the pressures, is this ministry the first casualty? It may be a question, not of can we afford to care for the carer, but can we afford not to care?

If we have mates to unload on, we are very blessed. If we have a spouse we can spill our guts to - a double blessing. Not all of us do. Not all of us trust. Not always is our trust reciprocated and honoured.

Too often, too many of us sally forth to save the world without thought to our own salvation, and come unstuck.

Some years ago, a denominational leader from another country was voicing his criticisms to me about the isolation (often self-inflicted) of those who feel the weight and personal cost of the care of others.

“Cowboys don’t cry,” he rued with a wry grin.

We both knew it wasn’t true.