The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories (51 page)

I can honestly say that the three years I spent in Alice Springs, while I was flying for the Flying Doctor Service, was the most enjoyable and rewarding experience in my life. I had an absolute ball. Though, in saying that, of course everything didn’t always go as well as I would have wanted it to go. And unfortunately this was the one particular case that still gets to me because, you know, if only the weather conditions had been different, this patient is one that we could’ve very possibly saved.

Anyhow, it was three o’clock in the afternoon when I got the call to fly out to Tennant Creek and pick up this little kid. She was a young eleven-year-old girl. The only trouble was that there were storms about everywhere. And, mind you, in Alice Springs you do get some very big storms, especially when it’s the wet season up north. Anyway, these storms were a bit too big for my liking. Still and all, the situation sounded very serious so I told them that I’d have another think about it before I made a final call. As you may well know, anything to do with the flying part of the RFDS is up to the pilot, and the pilot not only has to think of the safety aspects of every trip he makes, he’s also got to keep in mind that he’s responsible for a couple of million dollars worth of aeroplane plus the lives of the doctor and nurse who may be accompanying him on such a trip.

So I did have a good think about it, balancing the safety aspects of such a flight against the desperate
need of the child and, based on the fact that it would be in the dead of night when we returned and we had no weather radar, I made my final decision. So I got back in touch with Tennant Creek and said, ‘No, I won’t go. It’s too risky. But I’ll definitely be in the air as soon as the storms dissipate.’

Then, the first chance we got, we went. I think we left about one o’clock in the morning — this is up in Tennant Creek — to pick up this young girl.

When we got to Tennant Creek the doctor took one look at the poor little kid and he pulled me aside and said, ‘Gee, she’s as good as gone. What’s more, we can’t do anything more for her in Alice Springs than what I can do for her here, in Tennant Creek.’ He said, ‘There’s only two options: one is to take her straight down to Adelaide and the other is to get her to Darwin as soon as humanly possible.’

Darwin was closest, of course, but, as I said, it was the wet season, which was why the storms were so bad in Alice Springs. Anyhow, just in case, I rang up and got the weather report for Darwin and they told me that it was okay for the present.

‘Righto,’ I said to the doctor. ‘Darwin it is.’

So we went helter-skelter to Darwin and because of the restrictive weather conditions and the emergency of the case, I was the only light aircraft to be given permission to land in Darwin that day. Anyway, you wouldn’t believe it but the poor little child died just when we got there. We were still on the tarmac. A girl it was — a dear little eleven-year-old girl, just a kid.

And that case still gets to me because if only I’d been able to fly up to Tennant Creek the night before, who knows what might’ve happened. But the weather
was against us. Everything was against us. And the thing is, as I said, as a pilot you’re not only responsible for yourself and the aeroplane but there’s also the nurses and the doctors that you’ve got to think about. And each and every one of us has to ensure that we’re there to fight another day.

But in the three years I was in Alice Springs that was the only one, you know, that I had any doubt on. Yes, of course, others have died, which was unfortunate, though there was more than a good chance that they would’ve died anyway. But that little girl was the only one I have any doubt about. And it still gets to me, even to this day.

I’ve got a story here that has quite an amusing aspect to it. See, from time to time, the Flying Doctor Service used to get the occasional complaint about how long it took us to get out to some of these remote places to pick people up. You know, along the lines of, ‘Gees, youse took yer bloody time’, sort of thing.

But of course we couldn’t be everywhere at the same time and, mind you, we did have vast distances to cover. And then of course we’re all human beings so, naturally, when someone’s seriously ill or injured or something, well, we all get a bit upset and stressed when help doesn’t arrive immediately.

Anyway, this is when I was flying the King Air aeroplanes, so it’d be back in the early 1990s, and on this particular occasion we’d been up to one of the Aboriginal communities — it was either Kowanyama or Pormpuraaw — to pick up someone. So we were on the way back home with this patient. At that stage of the game our base in at Cairns received an emergency call from a certain property — Bolwarra — to say that they had a stockman who’d fallen off his horse and he had a very badly broken ankle. The people from the property had spoken to the doctor in at our Cairns base and the doctor had said, ‘Well, we’d better do an “evac” and get the feller out of there as quick as possible.’

Now, unbeknown to the people on the property of Bolwarra, we turned out to be flying virtually right over the top of them when we got the message. So
within fifteen minutes of their call I had the King Air landing at their airstrip. And they were amazed. ‘For heaven’s sake,’ they said, ‘you wouldn’t get a faster service from the road ambulance in the city.’

So we reckoned we’d made up for any perceived ‘tardiness’ we might’ve had in the past, just on that one ‘evac’. You know, to be able to produce the aeroplane, in front of an anxiously waiting group of people and a seriously injured stockman, within ten or fifteen minutes of them calling Cairns was just about unheard of. It was just pure luck, of course. As I said, we just happened to be returning from picking up another patient and were basically right over the top of the place.

But the poor bloke — the stockman — he was really in a bad way. He had an extremely bad compound fracture, where the bone was actually protruding through the skin of his ankle. It was a shocker. Very distressing, really. But it was just typical of these outback people. I tell you, they’re as tough as nails and with an amazing sort of resilience, because when the stockman was asked, ‘Is it hurting?’ he gave a wince and replied, ‘Oh, it itches a bit.’

Anyhow, we got him back to Cairns in pretty quick time and he didn’t lose his ankle or his foot. Mind you, I’m not sure he was able to run as fast as he had in the past but they were able to fix his foot up. So he could walk and that was great.

When I first went up to Cape York to work with the Australian Inland Mission, there was a story going around that went something like this. Now, you know how cooks have the reputation of being temperamental people. Well, one of the station properties had this rather large cook who, when he got into a ‘paddy’ about anything, would grab a book and go out and plonk himself down in the outhouse toilet and, depending on the gravity of the paddy he was in, maybe not come out for anything up to a couple of hours.

Of course, back then there weren’t any septic systems in those remote areas so the type of toilets they used were the ‘long-drop’ type. For those of you that may not know, the long-drop toilet is basically, you know, a wooden box type of thing with a hole in the top where the seat goes, and that’s all placed over a very deep hole, which is where all the ‘waste’ goes. For privacy, it’s surrounded by a few sheets of corrugated iron, a roof and a wooden door. That particular style of toilet was well suited to Cape York because, being an old mining area, the actual toilet itself was simply plonked down over an old mine shaft, which saved a lot of digging.

Anyway, early one morning this cranky cook got his knickers in a knot about something or other, so he grabbed a book and went out and plonked himself down on the toilet. Unfortunately, the white ants must’ve been very busy of late because when he sat down the toilet crumbled from under him and he, in
turn, disappeared down this old mine shaft. Actually, you could liken it to what happened to Alice in the book
Alice in Wonderland
, except that this cook really landed in the…well, you can imagine what he landed in, can’t you?

Now, seeing that all the ringers and stockmen and that who worked on this station property were well aware of the cook’s temperamental nature, when he hadn’t come out of the toilet by breakfast time they didn’t worry too much, and they just went ahead and helped themselves. Even by morning tea there was still only some semi-mild concern. But by lunchtime, some hours later, these stockmen were starting to get pretty hungry and even though the cook wasn’t what you’d call ‘a gourmet specialist’, at least he dished up a pretty hearty meal.

Anyway, one of the younger ringers drew the short straw and he got landed with the job of going over to the outhouse to check on the situation. So he wandered over to the long-drop, knocked on the wooden door and said, ‘Cookie, are yer okay?’

There was no answer so the ringer knocked a little louder, ‘Hey, Cookie, we’re getting hungry.’

Still no answer. Then, just as the ringer was about to walk away, he thought he heard a very faint voice. ‘This’s a bit odd,’ thought the ringer and he called out for his mates to come over and offer a second opinion. They all gathered around the outhouse. ‘Hey, Cookie!’ they shouted.

‘Help,’ came the distant reply.

So they broke down the toilet door and that’s when they discovered that the cook had disappeared down the old mine shaft.

‘Hey, Cookie, are yer down there?’

‘Yes,’ came the echo.

Anyway, while someone went over to the homestead to get on the radio and call the Flying Doctor, the stockmen knocked down the outer, corrugated iron, toilet structure and then they got the ropes and all the rest of it and they hooked up a ‘windlass’ — a winch lift — to haul the cook out.

Even though the cook had been extricated from his predicament by the time the Flying Doctor arrived, the poor chap was still in rather a smelly state. But the doctor, being the professional that he was, checked the cook out to make sure that he was okay and luckily, apart from a very bruised ego, the cook had survived the experience without too many injuries at all. But just to be on the safe side, the doctor decided to give him a course of antibiotics, because of the, you know, the particular situation he’d been in. And as the story went, the cook lost a little of his temperamental sharpness after that event and even when he did throw a paddy, just before he’d storm out of the kitchen he’d announce to all and sundry, ‘Won’t be long, fellers.’

I got into flying in quite an odd sort of way, really. Back during World War II, my older brother, Bill, had been a flying officer in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), Number Thirteen Squadron, up in Darwin. He was flying Hudsons. Then on 19 February 1942 he got shot down over the Timor Sea and was listed as missing. And that event changed the course of my life really, because at that stage I’d put my age up and had already enlisted in the Army. But then, after Bill went missing, I resolved to get into the Air Force when I’d reached their required age of eighteen.

Finally, after being accepted into the RAAF, my initial training was held at Victor Harbor, which is south of Adelaide, in South Australia. After that I was posted to Narrandera, in south-western New South Wales, where I was instructed in elementary flying in the Tiger Moths. After eight months there, I returned to South Australia, this time to Mallala, where I built up one hundred and forty flying hours. I was then deemed ready for service with the RAAF.

After the war had ended, I went back on the land and although I maintained my private licence through the Aero Club of South Australia, my flying career basically went on hold. But even then I still continued to explore any possible opportunities towards a flying career. To that end, in 1959 I purchased my own Cessna and started up as a charter pilot, based in the far west of New South Wales, at a place called
Wilcannia. My main work out there came through stock firms like Elders, Goldsbrough Mort and Dalgety’s. But then the drought of 1963 put paid to all that and so I adapted my aircraft and began selling pest control products throughout South Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory. As it turned out, there was an untapped market in those outback areas and flying the Cessna was a great way to reach them, because in those days you could land just about anywhere. So even though I wasn’t a salesperson by nature, because of the accessibility I had, I still had great success.

Then in 1965 I sold my aircraft to Ross Aviation and joined their firm in Adelaide. Ross Aviation was a sales and charter company so I had a combination of work, with demonstrating and selling aircraft plus flying charter. That job took me all over Australia, and from Adelaide I was offered a job in Perth, doing charter flying in King Air aeroplanes. By charter work I mean, someone might come along with a group of, say, half a dozen people and they’d want to go to some place that would take them ages to reach by road, like from Perth to Darwin or Perth to Sydney. So they’d charter an aircraft. It was like a taxi service, really. That’s all it was, like an air taxi. Prices varied, of course, and the clients were a mix of tourists and business people, and so pretty soon, I’d done 7500 hours, which included a lot of bush flying.

Then one day in 1968 while I was in Perth I was talking to one of the blokes about flying and he mentioned that the Queensland Section of the Royal Flying Doctor Service was advertising for four pilots to replace their previously seconded TAA (Trans-Australia
Airlines) pilots. There must’ve been some sort of change within the organisation there somewhere, and now the RFDS wanted to employ their own pilots.

But I think that my interview for the job deserves some sort of mention. Now, because the senior pilot of TAA was on a trip to Perth, I had a preliminary interview with him to see if I was a suitable applicant for the job with the Flying Doctor Service. That recommendation was positive and it was relayed back to the RFDS Head Office in Brisbane. Then they, the Flying Doctor Service, got in touch and informed me that my final interview was set for ten o’clock, on such-and-such a date, at their Head Office in Queen Street, Brisbane.

Well, that was good news, and so I just assumed that the interview was to be held at ten o’clock in the morning, as you would. But the thing was, I didn’t want my employers in Perth to find out that I was going for another job. That just wasn’t done in those days, and also my feeling was that there’d be a lot of excellent applicants going for the four RFDS flying jobs. So even though I’d got over the first hurdle and had been recommended, I wasn’t all that confident. Anyway, I made up an excuse as to why I couldn’t fly for the Perth company on that particular day — the day of my interview in Brisbane — and a friend of mine, who was also a pilot with the same company, he said he’d sub for me, for just that one day.

So, with everything all organised on the Perth workfront, unbeknown to my current employers I flew off to Brisbane for this interview. It didn’t cost me anything. The RFDS saw to all that. Accommodation and flights there and back were all paid for.

When I got to Brisbane, I rang the RFDS Head Office to let them know that I’d arrived. ‘I’m here,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.’

‘Well, no,’ they informed me, ‘we have interviews already organised throughout tomorrow, sir, and yours isn’t set down until ten o’clock tomorrow night.’

Well, that certainly set the cat among the pigeons because I’d only sorted out things back in Perth for that one day. Anyhow, I stayed for my 10 pm interview and caught a flight back to Perth the following day — a day later than expected. So, in saying that it didn’t actually cost me anything, well, in a funny sort of way it did, because by the time I returned to Perth the company I was working for had found out that I’d been to an interview for another job. So it was a case of being welcomed back and being told, ‘Well, you’re finished with us now.’

So, having realised I’d done my last flight with that mob, there followed an extremely nervous wait to see if I’d got the job with the Queensland RFDS. And even though I had all the requirements, including an endorsement on the Queen Air aeroplane, which I’d been flying in Western Australia, as I said, I still wasn’t all that confident of getting one of the pilots’ positions because I knew there were a lot of very strong applications.

Anyhow, thankfully they gave me the job. That was in May 1968, and my first appointment was out at Charleville, in south-western Queensland. And during the following six or so years I worked at Charleville, I was on call seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, except for annual holidays. Back then, I’d say that Charleville was the busiest of the RFDS bases. We
ran clinics up to four days a week, with overnights at many a remote station property and also at towns like Jundah, Birdsville, Windorah, Thylungra, Bedourie and Thargomindah. On top of all that we then averaged one evacuation per month, to Brisbane.

Then in 1974 I was appointed to the Cairns base, where I worked until my retirement in 1988. So my flying career for the Royal Flying Doctor Service spanned twenty years and, over that time, I clocked up over 20 000 flying hours. But really, because it was my first appointment, the township of Charleville is, and always will remain, very dear to me.