They’ve never tackled anything medical on The Great Australian Trade-Off. Suppose that makes sense, because there were SO many medical professionals all around the place this week, even though their products weren’t actually being used on anyone for real. Well, mostly. They usually try to keep the professionals off the camera, but this week they had a few cutaways. Like, to hyperbaric medicine specialists here in Melbourne, giving lectures to the camera about how hyperbaric medicine is super complex, an ever-evolving field, and how no one should attempt to create anything of their own at home (unlike most episodes of this show, when the opposite applies).
The teams had to research hyperbaric medicine, and then try to create hyperbaric oxygen chambers based on a design brief. That was almost the easy part after they got to the technical challenge, where they were presented with a fully-disassembled oxygen chamber and they had to use their acquired expertise to put it back together. Lyle’s team tanked hard on that one, mainly because they all passed the buck on the design process and none of them really committed it to memory. They ended up with this weird-looking thing that wouldn’t pass a single medical test. All the doctors rejected it and it was super awkward.
At least this serves to show that there are pretty strict regulations for this sort of thing. I mean, if I was looking around buy a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, Melbourne medical professionals can be assured that I’d want to know (a) that it actually works and (b) that it’s not about to start leaking toxic gas all over my house.
Honestly, this was probably the most dramatic episode of GATO ever, with Lyle almost yelling at Shiro for not doing the research, Shiro blaming Dana for not memorising the designs… I didn’t like it. I tune in for DIY, not drama.
-Lois