The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories (15 page)

It was a hot, still Sunday in Nappa Merrie when Squeaky the stockman and his mates began maintenance work on an old Southern Cross windmill.

As usual, Squeaky somehow managed to draw the short straw and was given the job of climbing to the top of the windmill to oil the blades, grease the bearings, and so forth. There he was, working away, when a gust of wind came out of nowhere. The blades of the windmill suddenly spun into motion and Squeaky was knocked clean off the top platform. Down he fell in a flail of arms and legs.

For those who don’t know, it’s a good distance from the top of a windmill down to ground level. In this case, the only thing in the way was a water delivery pipe, about a yard or so off the ground.

The rest is history.

Some say that the pipe saved the wily stockman’s life. But at what pains? I ask. Because a split second before impact Squeaky inexplicably parted his legs. Crunch! There he sat, motionless, astride that pipe, a loose leg dangling either side, his mouth rendered ajar, his eyes almost popped out of their sockets.

His workmates rushed to his side. ‘How are yer, Squeaky?’ they asked. ‘Are yer all right, mate?’

But Squeaky didn’t say a word. He tried to, mind you, but it was like there was an obstruction in his throat, somewhere just below his Adam’s apple, stuck in his oesophagus.

‘Ouch,’ said his mates as they gently extricated him off the water delivery pipe. After they placed him on the ground, carefully, they called the Flying Doctor.

‘Ouch.’

I don’t know if you know or not, but Nappa Merrie’s over in south-west Queensland so it took a while to fly out there. Then just as they’d settled Squeaky into the Nomad aircraft, another call came across the radio. This time a bloke down at Moomba had put a chunk of wood through his leg while chopping a log for the barbecue.

This left the doctor in an awkward situation. On one hand there was the bloke at Moomba who was in desperate need of help. On the other, there was Squeaky. Now Squeaky was a single bloke, a bit on the shy side with women like, but still and all there was the chance that he might want to settle down and raise a family some day. If so, an emergency operation might have to be carried out. Time was of the utmost importance and Moomba’s in the north-east of South Australia, well out of the way.

‘Well, Squeaky,’ the doctor said, ‘it’s up to you, mate. Are you well enough to make the trip to Moomba before we head back to Broken Hill?’

At that point the wily stockman gave a sort of half-throatal gurgle which the doctor took to mean that he was okay to do the trip to Moomba.

‘Brave decision,’ the doctor said, before loading Squeaky up with pethidine, just in case the pain caught up with him somewhere along the way.

So they arrived in Moomba and picked up the bloke with the chunk of wood through his leg. The doctor gave the Moomba chap a shot of pethidine, plus an
extra shot to Squeaky, just in case. As they were about to take off, lo and behold, another call came through. This one was from my wife who’d contacted them to say that I’d scalded my arm and was in need of emergency treatment.

Now the bloke with the lump of wood through his leg was no real problem. He could wait. But Squeaky… Squeaky was a different matter.

‘Well, Squeaky,’ the doctor said, ‘it’s up to you, mate. Do you reckon you’re well enough for another diversion before we head off back to Broken Hill?’

Squeaky gave another half-throatal gurgle, which the doctor took as an assurance that he was okay to do the trip from Moomba over to our property, just south of Broken Hill, before heading to the hospital.

‘Brave decision,’ the doctor said, then loaded Squeaky up with another dose of pethidine, just in case.

The doctor radioed ahead explaining the situation and asked if I could be ready to board the aeroplane as soon as it landed. So my wife drove me to the airstrip and the moment the plane cut its engines I jumped aboard. But when the pilot attempted to boot the engine of the Nomad, it was as dead as a doornail. He tried again. Same result. Dead silence. All we could hear was Squeaky letting go with one of his gurgles.

‘We’ll have to call out another plane,’ said the pilot. ‘The Nomad’s buggered.’

So my wife drove us back to the homestead to escape the heat until the reserve plane arrived. There the doctor pumped some more pethidine into us all, just to tide us over.

Now perhaps it was because of the pethidine, I don’t know, but soon after, Squeaky began to lighten up. Not
that he could talk, mind you, but his throatal gurgles began to rise in pitch. So much so that by the time the reserve plane landed, Squeaky was sounding like he’d had a triple overdose of helium.

‘Squeaky, yer getting squeakier and squeakier,’ the pilot remarked.

Now I know it wasn’t much of a joke. I guess you had to be there at the time, but it was enough to get Squeaky, me and the bloke with the lump of wood through his leg giggling like little kids, which was something we continued to do right up to the time we arrived at Broken Hill Hospital.

I don’t know what happened to Squeaky the stockman after that. We sort of lost contact. He went one way and I went the other. So whether or not his family jewels needed rectifying, I don’t know. But that was a fair while ago now and he still comes to mind occasionally — oddly enough, when I think about him I can’t help but wince a little.

There was an accident in the middle of the night. A car had turned over with two people in it, a husband and wife. The husband was dead. The wife, who was the passenger in the vehicle, was still alive but in an extremely critical condition.

It was touch and go.

We flew to the nearest town immediately. As I said, it was in the middle of the night so they had to line the runway with flares. It was a bit hairy there for a while but we landed and the ambulance drove out to meet us. We loaded the woman into the plane. Then the problem arose as to what we’d do with the husband’s body.

We looked blankly at each other for a while until the ambulance feller asked if we’d be able to take it back in the plane with us. Of course we could see the logic of the request. Taking the body back home with us was the most practical and economically feasible thing to do. The funeral was to be held there so it’d save another trip out. But, naturally enough, our doctor wasn’t keen on having the body in the aeroplane in full view of the wife.

‘She’s critically ill and extremely distressed,’ he reasoned. ‘If she saw her dead husband it could be a turning point and she could give up hope and go the same way.’

The only thing that we could come up with, to get around the problem, was to stow the body in the rear luggage locker of the Nomad aircraft. The problem
was, the luggage locker wasn’t large enough to take the body lying down. So we got the ambulance feller to give us a hand to get the husband’s body into such a position that it’d fit inside the locker. In this case, we were forced to squash him up into a crouched kneeling position. After we got the husband safely stowed away in the luggage locker, we then took off to the nearest city where the wife could receive emergency treatment.

I’d say it took us about an hour and a half to get to the city. Turbulence was minimal, which was lucky. It’s distressing enough to go through a rough patch inside the plane itself where the air pressure is equalised and you’ve got safety belts on to minimise the bumpy ride. But there’s no such luxury in the luggage locker, and the last thing we wanted was to have the body thumping around in the back.

Things went quite smoothly. When we’d landed, the ambulance was waiting and the woman was rushed to hospital where she eventually went on to make a full recovery. But we were left with a problem out at the airport. With the wife now not in the plane, it would have been far better to have had the husband’s body in with us for the return trip. We all agreed on that. But it was a busy airport and, if anyone saw us dragging a body out of the rear luggage locker of a Nomad aircraft, a few questions might be asked, questions that we weren’t too keen on answering, considering the delicate situation.

Eventually, we decided to leave the body where it was, just in case. So we departed the airport to fly back to our base. That trip took us about another hour and twenty minutes, and once again we were relieved by the lack of turbulence.

Anyway, we arrived back home quite exhausted from all our travels, only to be confronted by the undertaker. Now the undertaker was a very pedantic man, as most undertakers seem to be. Everything had to be just right. There he was, the coffin at the ready, all organised for the body to be placed in, nice and snug and neat. Apparently, he’d been waiting for a fair while so he wasn’t in the best of moods to start with but worse was to follow. See, the rear luggage locker of the Nomad isn’t heated so the temperature during the flight got down below minus 2°. Not only that but a few hours had gone by since the chap had died.

‘Show me to the body,’ the undertaker said in his dry, formal manner.

So we did. We flung open the rear luggage locker and there was the body in its crouched position, frozen stiff and locked solid with rigor mortis.

Alf Traeger’s known as many things — ‘the Pedal Radio Man’ just for starters. He’s also been described as the person who gave a voice to the bush and in doing so connected the more remote areas to the Royal Flying Doctor Service. There’s no doubting that Alf was a bloody magnificent technician, I’ll vouch for that. The only trouble was that he was the type of chap who wouldn’t let anything be. He was always fiddling with the radios, trying to improve them, and that’s what drove us up the wall.

After the 5 watt pedal radio was established in the bush, Alf started working on a couple of modifications. The thing with all those radios — and there were a couple of hundred or so in the network back in 1950 to ’51 — was that someone had to service them, right. Frank Basden, the radio operator at the Broken Hill base, did some, as did Alf himself, which caused us all the headaches.

But those chaps like Alf and Frank weren’t travelling around anywhere near as much as we were. So each time Vic Cover, the RFDS pilot, and I used to do the rounds of the stations we also did a bit of servicing on these radios, when the need arose. Vic knew a lot more about them than I did. But the thing that we came up against very smartly was that if Alf had had his hands on them after they’d been installed, the circuit diagram on the inside of the sets never matched the wiring because he’d gone and changed things about.

Anyway, the ones that we couldn’t fix on the spot we used to cart back to Frank Basden who, as I said, was the radio operator at the Broken Hill base, and Frank would have a go at fixing them. By this stage Frank had been with the Flying Doctor Service for about twenty-five or thirty years and he knew Alf Traeger very well. Frank was an interesting feller too. He’s dead now, unfortunately. A very knowledgeable chap, he was. He had to have been to be able to follow Alf’s so-called ‘modifications’. Anyway, apart from fixing these radios on the base, Frank also gave advice over the air if someone out on a station was having problems.

When Vic and I told Frank about the fun and games that we were having with the radios Alf Traeger had fiddled around with, he just laughed.

‘You reckon that Alf drives you blokes bloody balmy,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you a little story. Do you know the bloke who was at Pincally Station, the one with the droll sort of voice?’

‘Yes,’ Vic and I said.

‘Well, he got on the radio about the same sort of problem that you’re having with the circuit diagram. “Ah,” he said, in that voice of his, “are you that bloody Frank Basden bloke?”’

“‘Yes, I’m Frank Basden,”’ I said.

“‘Well, Frank,”’ he said, “I’ve got a bit o’ bloody trouble here with the 44-metre frequency, ’n’ the 78’s not all that bloody good neither.”’

At that time there were three available frequencies, the 44, the 78 and the 148. The 148 didn’t carry very well with those little radio sets and we had to rely upon people relaying the messages which, of course, they did, and everybody within range used to tune in and
listen in to the message. That’s why the 148 was ideal for the ‘Galah Sessions’ where all the ladies used to get on and talk to each other. Worked perfectly for that. What’s more, the whole network used to come alive as soon as the doctor got on the air.

‘Then the chap from Pincally says, “Frank, I had a go with the bloody screwdriver last night and I think me radio’s buggered.”

“‘What did you do?” I asked.

“‘Well, I took the bloody guts outa the middle’a the thing to see if there were anything wrong and everything looked like it were hooked up proper.”

“‘What do you mean, Pincally,” I said, “by saying that you took the guts out of the radio?”

“‘Well, I undid that big round piece, you know, the bloody one that’s got all them little contacts on the outsides because it wasn’t turnin’ around, ’n’ I thought that it might’a been the trouble but it wasn’t ’n’ now the whole thing’s in bloody pieces ’n’ I don’t know what to bloody do.”

“‘Oh, God,” I said. “You shouldn’t have done that, Pincally, definitely not without the proper authority and advice.”

“‘Well, I got that, okay,” said the chap. “I rang up that Alf Traeger bloke the other day and he said, ‘Well, have a go at fixing it yerself, ’n’ if you can’t you’d better get in touch with that bloody Frank Basden bloke. He’ll know what to do.”’

After I left school back in 1950 I spent a hell of a lot of time in the pastoral area out in the west of New South Wales. And around that time the Royal Flying Doctor Service incorporated an on-line radio service through its base in Broken Hill.

This particular service was greatly appreciated by the station people because they didn’t get into town much and it gave them the chance to place orders for food or machinery parts or whatever. In actual fact, I reckon that about 90 per cent of station business was carried out that way, back in those days.

Now, aligned to this on-line radio service, the Flying Doctor base also ran what us station hands called ‘Galah Sessions’. And these Galah Sessions were in part set up so that, after the business was concluded, the station women could have a good chat to each other and catch up on all the gossip and stuff. But also, there was some time set aside for urgent telegrams to be read over the air.

Anyway, most of us out on these stations used to listen in on the Galah Sessions whenever we could and then to the telegrams as they came through. Everyone used to do it. It was a bit of a lark. What’s more, it sort of brightened up our day, hearing the gossip from different parts — who’d had a baby, who was crook, who’d died, who was getting married, and so forth. And also, you never knew when an urgent message might come through for yourself from family or whoever.

Anyway, at this particular time I was working out on the White Cliffs road at Koonawarra Station, just doing ordinary stock work and the like. And we were sitting around one morning listening to these telegrams being read out when we heard what I reckoned to be the daddy of the lot.

Apparently things weren’t going too well for one particular family down in Tasmania and there was this telegram which was read over the air to a station hand out at Naryilco Station, in south-west Queensland. I forget the poor chap’s name but, anyway, the message said it all and, what’s more, with the minimum of words.

It read: DEAR (whatever his name was)

FATHER DEAD — TOM IN JAIL —

SEND TEN QUID.

LOVE

MOTHER