Richard Harris

Education and medical career

After completing school at St Peter's College in Adelaide, South Australia, Harris completed a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery at Flinders University in 1988. He subsequently completed anaesthetics training in the United Kingdom and New Zealand as well as aeromedical retrieval certification at James Cook University.

Harris has worked on medical assistance teams in natural disasters in the Pacific region and taken part in Australian Aid missions to Vanuatu. He worked as an aeromedical consultant and anaesthetist for the South Australian Ambulance Service's medical retrieval service beginning in 2012. He worked as the head of retrieval coordination for MedSTAR beginning in 2016.

Harris retired as an anaesthetist in 2022.

Cave diving

Harris began scuba diving in 1979 when he was 15 years old and began cave diving around 1985. His cave diving experiences include leading the Wetmules team to record depths of 192, 221 and 245 m (630, 725 and 804 ft) in 2011, 2012, and 2020 respectively whilst searching for the source of New Zealand's Pearse River: this mission was filmed for National Geographic. In 2023, Harris conducted a dive to 230 m (750 ft) while using hydrogen as a diluent breathing gas on a rebreather. While hydrogen had previously been tested as a breathing gas, this was the first known case of it being used on a rebreather. In 2024, Harris dived to 283.9 meters (931 ft) at Boesmansgat, South Africa while again utilizing hydrogen. Harris suffered decompression sickness on a subsequent dive to 272 metres (892 ft).

Harris serves as the search-and-rescue officer for the Cave Divers Association of Australia (CDAA) and the Australian coordinator for International Underwater Cave Rescue and Recovery (IUCRR). He developed and taught sump rescue courses. In 2011, he recovered the body of his friend Agnes Milowka who had died whilst exploring Tank Cave near Tantanoola, South Australia. In 2025, he led the recovery of a 65-year-old man at the same cave.

Tham Luang cave rescue

In June 2018 Harris was about to depart on a cave diving holiday to the Nullarbor Plain when he and dive partner Craig Challen were requested by the Thai government, on the advice of British cave diver Rick Stanton who was part of a team working to rescue twelve Thai children and their soccer coach who were trapped in the Tham Luang Nang Non cave system, to provide assistance with the rescue efforts.

Harris's efforts throughout the rescue have been described as essential. He conducted a medical assessment of all of the trapped boys and developed and executed a plan to keep the boys anaesthetised with ketamine while spontaneously breathing through full face masks. This was to ensure they did not panic during the long extrication through underwater caves, which would have endangered both the rescue scuba divers and the boys. While one source states that Harris was the last rescuer to leave the cave, this is not correct according to Harris's own detailed account of the rescue.

On 5 November 2019 Harris and Challen released the book Against All Odds chronicling their participation in the rescue of the boys from the Tham Luang Cave. In the book they corrected some of the inaccuracies in the media regarding the rescue. Harris stated that he did not pick the order that the boys would leave the cave, and that the boys decided that amongst themselves based on the distance each boy lived from the cave, as they thought they had to cycle back home. He also said the boys were fully unconscious as they were carried through the flooded cave, as he had given each boy two intramuscular injections in the thigh: ketamine to sedate them, and atropine to suppress saliva production to stop choking.

Lieutenant governor of South Australia

On 25 January 2024, Harris was appointed as the lieutenant governor of South Australia. He was sworn in on 9 February 2024 by Governor Frances Adamson. Harris engages in public speaking and film making since his retirement from medicine.

Awards

In 2009 Harris was awarded the "Outstanding Achievement" award at the Australian technical diving conference Oztek, to mark his exceptional contributions to cave diving exploration, in 2017 he was awarded the "Australasian Technical Diver of the Year" at Oztek.

On 24 July 2018 Harris, along with Challen, was awarded the Star of Courage (SC) and Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) by the Governor-General of Australia. On 7 September 2018 the King of Thailand appointed Harris as a Knight Grand Cross (First Class) of the Most Admirable Order of the Direkgunabhorn.

On Australia Day 2019, Harris was announced as the joint 2019 Australian of the Year with Challen.

In 2022, the Explorers Club presented Harris with the Presidential Award.

In film

An Australian doctor is played by Ross W. Clarkson in the 2019 film The Cave.

Harris is portrayed by Joel Edgerton in Thirteen Lives, a 2022 film about the Thai cave rescue.

Harris stars in Jennifer Peedom's documentary Deeper which was released in October 2025.

Publications

Richard Harris; Craig Challen (2019). Against All Odds. Penguin. ISBN 9781760899455.

Harris has published two children's picture books, based on his family's pet dog:

Richard Harris; Simon Howe (ill.) (2022). Alfie the Brave. Puffin. ISBN 9781761041358.

Richard Harris; Simon Howe (ill.) (2024). Alfie the Kind. Puffin. ISBN 9781761341328.

Harris published a book on risk taking based on his podcast Real Risk:

Richard Harris (2023). The Art of Risk. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-76110-677-4.

Harris, Challen, and Simon Mitchell of the Wetmules dive team published an article regarding Harris's deep dive using hydrogen:

Harris, Richard; Challen, Craig; Mitchell, Simon (31 March 2024). "The first deep rebreather dive using hydrogen: case report". Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine. 54 (1): 69–72. doi:10.28920/dhm54.1.65-68. PMID 38507913.