Street Kid

Australian boy, Julian Moreland, aged 12 3/4, lives in Darwin with his widowed father, Craig, a colonel and helicopter flying instructor in the army. They have a close relationship, sharing a love of fishing and flying in helicopters. But Craig, who is in his late forties, has been in the military for thirty years. At Christmas, he retires from the army, and moves to Melbourne for civilian work in mid-January. Tragedy follows, Craig is killed in an accident and Julian finds himself as a homeless street kid.
For the next two months he lives rough, avoiding the derelicts, the gangs, and the drug addicts, until being badly injured saving a baby, and is flown by helicopter to hospital. Whilst recovering, he has his thirteenth birthday, and makes friends with the first three men to help him at the scene, a photographer with the international paparazzi (the baby's cousin), a policeman, and the doctor now treating him. (These three men are the main teen characters in this series' prequel, Dangerous Days). When told that Julian's an orphan, the wealthy grandparents of the baby take him in when is fit enough to leave hospital, and set him on the path to realising his dream of flight.