NSW Australian of the Year 2026 Alison Thompson recognised for humanitarian work
Alison Thompson, 37, was armed with a camera and a first-aid kit as she rollerbladed toward the chaos she heard was caused by an airplane in Lower Manhattan, New York, on September 11, 2001.
After walking past piles of what he thought were “zombies,” covered in soot, shocked civilians fleeing destruction, Thompson came across an arm stretching from a pile of gravel, an engagement ring on its finger. He pulled her away, trying to help the partially buried woman. There was no body tied up.
Dr Alison Thompson rinsing a firefighter’s eye with saline after 9/11.
Terrified and nearly knocked over by a collapsing tower, Thompson sped away on his skates and arrived at a base across from the World Trade Center, where he began washing firefighters’ eyes with salt water.
The former Cronulla High School maths teacher turned New York investment banker and filmmaker spent nine months at Ground Zero before dedicating his life to humanitarian work. But he could never shake the smell: the smell of burning flesh, plastic and oil.
“We started washing the firefighters’ eyes and I found someone’s head outside the front door,” he said. “There were just body parts everywhere and there were disasters, usually we were collecting full bodies, but it was just fingers and arms. One day I found someone’s heart just lying on the street.”
Thompson, now 61, has been named NSW’s 2026 Australian of the Year for the work of his organisation, Third Wave Volunteers, which provides global humanitarian aid to crisis areas.
Dr Alison Thompson OAM is a candidate for NSW Australian of the Year for 2026. He is a global humanitarian focusing on crisis areas. Credit: Steven Siewert
Before volunteering, Thompson worked in a nursing home in Sydney and then taught mathematics for eight years. After a near-fatal bus accident confined him to a wheelchair for a time, Thompson moved to New York and set his sights on Wall Street.
The morning light illuminates her face as she sits in a friend’s apartment in Potts Point this week. In Jamaica last week, he was jumping out of helicopters with assistance after a Category 5 hurricane hit much of the island.
