The Flying Kangaroo

by Jim Eames

  Flight engineer Frank Amy, who did several trips to Vietnam, says not only was it a volunteer assignment but in the early days of the charters they were not even permitted to tell their family where they were going. ‘Actually it wasn’t the type of trip you went out of your way for. I’d much rather have been sitting on the beach during a Waikiki stopover.’

  According to Amy, not all the diggers were looking forward to it either. ‘One bloke locked himself in the toilet and wouldn’t come out. At one stage the sergeant in charge was going to use an axe to break the toilet door down but we used some piano wire to trip the lock.’

  Flight steward Alan Kitchen, who in later years would be instrumental in establishing Skippy Squadron in recognition of the work of the troop charters, volunteered six times between 1965 and 1972. Kitchen, like others involved, remembered the sharp contrast in the mood of the troops when the two-way charters began to operate. ‘Leaving Australia the mood was often subdued, particularly on the Singapore to Saigon leg, but coming back they were much more animated.’

  Les Hayward agrees and says Qantas made sure there was plenty of beer on board on the way home. ‘Sometimes we’d fill the toilets with extra beer and the cabin crew made sure by the time we got to Sydney they’d drank us dry,’ says Hayward proudly.

  Often too Qantas crews were mindful of the desire of their passengers to return home as soon as possible from the war zone, a situation which could often encourage aircraft captains to improvise when necessary. Another highly respected captain, Norm Field, had a well-honed ability to improvise when it became necessary. It was December 1970 and Field was ready to depart with a full load of diggers who would be home for Christmas, when the air traffic controller changed his runway take-off direction because a fire fight had broken out at that end of the airport.

  Field now found himself faced with the age-old airman’s problem of having to take off downwind, a less-than-ideal situation in a fully loaded 707, particularly as the controller was telling him the tailwind was up to 15 knots (28 kilometres per hour) and the absolute maximum downwind component allowed for a 707 was 10 knots (18 kilometres per hour).

  ‘Looks like you’ll have to stay the night,’ was the controller’s helpful suggestion over the radio.

  Field didn’t need much imagination to know what the reaction would be when he made that announcement to the troops down the back, so he headed off to the control tower. ‘I vividly remember that control tower. It was well ventilated with shrapnel and bullet holes which doubtless helped the air conditioning,’ says Field.

  Using a mixture of guile and pleading, Field managed to persuade the traffic controller into ‘re-assessing’ the wind factor at ‘ten knots—gusting to twelve’ which now put Field within the 707’s ‘legitimate’ take-off limits.

  ‘We got off the ground okay but when we reached around 300 feet we got the real tailwind and were stuck there for miles and at one stage were actually flying under the helicopters which were heading for the fire fight.

  ‘Helicopters are not a nice sight when you’re underneath them in a Boeing,’ was Field’s wry comment 45 years later.

  For the troops themselves it was an exercise in contrasts. Michael Jeffery, who, in a distinguished military career would win the Military Cross in Vietnam, later serve as commander of an Australian Special Air Service Regiment and eventually be appointed Australia’s governor-general, still remembers the Saigon ‘weather report’ over the airline’s public address system as they approached Tan Son Nhut. ‘Well folks, we’ve begun our approach to Tan Son Nhut where the weather is quite hot, around one hundred degrees [38 °C] and the enemy fire is light and variable.’

  Bill Gray, who served with the SAS in Vietnam, has a similar memory of that weather report before arrival: ‘What struck me first was the porthole view of an air base in full war mode, with F-4s cradled in revetments, other war planes of all shapes and sizes and armed troops everywhere. Then when the doors opened came the overpowering humidity and smell of the local fish sauce, nuoc cham, as it wafted into the cabin.

  ‘The Qantas cabin crew on the Freedom Bird coming home were typically irreverent and friendly and after weeks of anticipation it was all light-headed plotting about what we would be doing on our first night back on Australian soil and the excitement of seeing family and mates again.’

  Russ Properjohn, who did a twelve-month tour with the RAAF in Vietnam, experienced a contrast of another type.

  Within an hour or so of arriving on Qantas into Singapore in December 1966 Properjohn had changed into civilian clothes and was sitting in a hotel beer garden sipping cold Tiger beer and listening to a Chinese girl singing.

  Next day he boarded a Pan American 707 for Saigon where he watched the hostesses sitting at the front of the cabin chatting and painting their fingernails, rarely venturing into the cabin. As they disembarked at Saigon, Properjohn couldn’t resist commenting: ‘A cup of coffee would have been nice.’

  ‘You got here didn’t you, Mac?’ was the reply.

  A year later he was hardly in his seat on a Qantas 707 when there was a fresh, cold beer in his hand and loud cheering as they were airborne and Vietnam faded into the distance. ‘In those days we had a very proprietary view of Qantas. It was our national airline,’ he says.

  One of the flights too would be something of a family affair, with Captain Stu Archbold flying the 707 that took his son Jim to war as a digger. On several occasions during his twelve-month tour in Vietnam, Jim managed to make it to Tan Son Nhut to greet his father as his 707 arrived with a planeload of fresh troops. Jim also believes his father, himself a decorated World War II fighter pilot, was the only captain to be photographed posing in front of his 707 proudly holding a combat rifle (borrowed from Jim).

  Crews operating the charters weren’t the only ones to get a close-up view of the Vietnam War. What is not often acknowledged is the fact that the normal international air corridor between Hong Kong and Europe took the regular scheduled Qantas 707s over Vietnam. Approaching Da Nang after take-off from Hong Kong they would descend to around 26,000 feet as they crossed Vietnam towards a checkpoint near Bangkok.

  During the crossing they would often catch sight of the giant US air force B-52 bombers coming in above them to bomb Vietnam from around 30,000 feet.

  ‘There would be big gaggles of them above you as they flew on to where their navigation co-ordinates told them to let their bombs go,’ says Peter Raven.

  Since the flights out of Hong Kong were at night, crews would occasionally see patches of flickering light on the ground below as the Special Forces fired constant flares to protect their camps from attack. ‘Somehow it seemed strange to be sitting up there with a cup of tea in hand whilst there was a full scale war taking place just a few thousand feet below,’ Gordon Power reflects.

  ***

  No account of the Qantas involvement in Vietnam should be written without reference to the uplift of war orphans out of Bangkok by a 707 under the command of Captain Alan Bones.

  It was mid-1975, the war had been lost and South Vietnam was in the throes of being overrun by North Vietnam forces. Bones, at the time a relatively junior captain, was told his QF180 from Bangkok to Melbourne was to pick up orphan children being brought in from Saigon aboard an RAAF Hercules.

  When Bones’s chief steward saw RAAF personnel from the Hercules carrying cardboard boxes across the tarmac towards the 707 he immediately assumed it was food, shouting to them that QF180 had already taken on its catering supplies. Then he noticed the first box contained two babies, head to toe. The following boxes also contained very young children and by the time loading was completed Bones had 74 of them on board, plus several Australian military nurses.

  Bones soon learnt that two of the children had already died on the flight from Saigon and many more had been airsick but when he requested a clearance to taxi Thai authorities refused. He would not be allowed to move until the names of all on board were listed on the paperwork. Since no one knew the inf
ants’ names, Bones thought about it for a moment then told the chief steward to start writing.

  QF180 duly left with a complete list of names on its passenger list. They included a Donald Duck, a Mickey Mouse, a Sydney H Bridge and many other imaginative nom de plumes.

  Approaching Australia, Bones was told that both Sydney and Melbourne were closed due to fog but with a welcoming committee of politicians and other VIPs waiting to receive the orphans at Melbourne. Bones requested a special clearance to approach through the overcast conditions.

  He later admitted that it was not until he had reached the absolute lowest height he could legally descend to that he suddenly caught sight of the runway and landed safely.

  All 74 children were admitted to the Fairfield Infectious Diseases hospital, some with serious illnesses. Many years later two young Vietnamese women, now married and living in Australia, came looking for ‘Captain Bone’ to thank him for what he had done.

  By the time the last Qantas 707 rose into the air from Tan Son Nhut in February 1972 the American air traffic controllers had christened them the Red Tail Rats or the White Tail Rats, largely because they struggled to understand what a kangaroo was. By then the airline had flown more than 300 charters and carried around 30,000 troops into and out of the war zone.

  Anxious to ensure that the deeds of the Qantas volunteer aircrew and ground staff would not go unrecorded, Alan Kitchen’s team formed Skippy Squadron in 2000, its members also becoming eligible for the award of the Australian Active Service Medal 1945–75 with Clasp Vietnam and the Vietnam Logistics and Support Medal. They have marched under their ‘Skippy’ banner on every Anzac Day since 2003. ‘It’s our way of recognising an airline which paid a high price in lives during World War II and served this country so well in other wars,’ Kitchen says. We didn’t lose any in Vietnam but lives were lost in World War II.

  6

  CYCLONE TRACY

  The cyclone warnings had begun a few days before Christmas 1974 but, like most of Darwin, the Qantas manager for the Northern Territory, Ian Burns-Woods, took little notice of them. Anyway, he had memorised such tips as opening and closing windows to equalise air pressure, filling the bath with emergency water and retreating to the bathroom for safety. Although there’d been a similar alert several weeks before, nothing had come of it.

  Burns-Woods may have been in Darwin only nine months but his Christmas cheer commitments were heavy as he began his rounds visiting the airline’s numerous travel clients and industry contacts and joining in the festivities. Around midday on Christmas Eve, as Burns-Woods set off to buy his wife Gabrielle a pearl necklace as a Christmas present, a message came through from Qantas head office that all international operations were being diverted away from Darwin due to cyclonic activity within the region. Burns-Woods still wasn’t concerned. It was a normal precaution in the airline business.

  By later in the afternoon, Burns-Woods received word that the airport had been closed to all commercial traffic and that some airline operators like Connellan Airlines were taking the additional precaution of flying their aircraft south to Katherine, just in case. Then word came from Darwin’s weather station that the cyclone had in fact altered course away from Darwin and he feared the monotonous warnings over the radio might turn into another cyclone ‘fizzer.’

  By then Burns-Woods was enjoying a few drinks at the office of Darwin’s largest travel agency, oblivious to the wind build-up and the dark threatening clouds that had developed outside. Then his wife phoned. Gabrielle, two months pregnant, had just received a call from the local naval chief, Eric Johnston, that his own people were telling him the cyclone had changed course again and was now heading directly for Darwin. Burns-Woods decided it was time to head home.

  Once there Burns-Woods called Johnston for any latest news. Johnston reconfirmed his earlier report and suggested they join him at Naval Headquarters, a solid brick building on Darwin’s waterfront. Burns-Woods declined, believing they would be safe where they were. After all their two-storey, architect-designed home was constructed mainly of brick and glass from the ground up, unlike most Darwin residences built as single storey fibro dwellings mounted on brick pillars.

  Burns-Woods spent the following few hours confirming that all passengers had been advised and rebooked on later flights and checking in with his airport manager, Peter Snelling. Snelling had already told Peter Auld, on duty at Darwin airport, to close down and head for home.

  Then the phone went dead and the Burns-Woodses decided to take their two cats and the dog upstairs and to try to get some rest as Christmas Eve now had all the portents of a long night.

  But soon any rest was out of the question. By 11 p.m. the wind was howling, rain was pouring through the rattling louvred windows, the floor was vibrating and the walls were shaking. With Gabrielle carrying one of the cats, two pillows and, fortuitously, a bottle of cognac, and Burns-Wood the dog and a torch, they headed for the bathroom, just as the lights went out. While Gabrielle huddled in the shower recess trying to calm the animals, Burns-Woods went back for the second cat and was in the passageway heading towards the bedroom when there was a violent shudder and a blast of air as the brick wall of the bedroom blew out and the bed and side tables went out with it.

  Back in the bathroom they huddled together, sustained on occasions by the contents of the cognac bottle via a glass Gabrielle had found in the bathroom closet.

  Before long there was a violent wrench and a grinding sound as the roof was torn off and, as the house disintegrated around them, part of the bathroom ceiling crashed into the bath alongside them. Placing the pillows on their heads as protection from falling debris they jammed their feet against the bathroom door as the storm now ripped through what remained of the house. Ears blocked from the wind noise and air pressure, they had to shout to each other to be heard, although words were hardly needed when Burns-Woods realised he still had Gabrielle’s Christmas present in his pocket. She opened the soggy envelope and placed the pearl necklace around her neck as the cyclone raged on.

  Hours went by and then suddenly there was silence, as if the huge wind machine had been turned off. Stepping gingerly through bits of timber and plaster they made their way downstairs to the still-intact laundry and decided to spend the rest of the night there. On their way they could hear the plaintive cries of the missing cat coming from somewhere inside the debris.

  Morning revealed an almost unbelievable sight. Looking out through the opening left by the missing wall, Burns-Woods wondered out loud how anyone could have survived the night’s events. Houses were shattered as far as the eye could see, steel stanchions twisted and bent, roofing iron, fibro and house contents blocking streets.

  A shout from a neighbour told them it was over and the cyclone had moved further inland.

  ‘Who told you that?’ asked Burns-Woods.

  ‘My dad,’ the neighbour replied.

  ‘I believe you,’ said Burns-Woods. ‘Merry Christmas.’

  Peter Snelling and wife Rosalie had also been partly lulled into the belief that Tracy would pass Darwin by. When the wind began to increase, Snelling at least tied the Christmas tree firmly into the corner of their lounge-room wall. The next morning, the tree and the wall had both gone.

  Crouched under the kitchen table, the Snellings sat out the howling winds and shattering glass as their house blew to pieces around them.

  Snelling recalls a smell of alcohol everywhere after the liquor cabinet collapsed and bottles emptied onto the floor. At one stage the children wanted to go to the toilet but Snelling told them: ‘Just go where you are.’

  Quiet came briefly with the cyclone’s ‘eye’, then it was back to howling wind and more flying debris until morning when they saw for the first time the extent of the damage. ‘But we were alive and the first thing we did was check on the neighbours.’

  Snelling had around a dozen bottles of Qantas port as giveaways. ‘Every neighbour got one and I can attest they didn’t touch the sides!’ he remembe
rs.

  The only casualty appeared to be their cat which went missing. But it survived and returned several days later.

  Snelling linked up with Burns-Woods and the pair went off to check on as many of Qantas’s 112 staff as they could locate with the aim of getting together at Darwin’s Travelodge, which had weathered the storm—although with five cars in its swimming pool. But now, along with feelings of great relief, Burns-Woods found himself experiencing pangs of helplessness, inadequacy and even hopelessness. ‘After all, who would expect such violence and intensity from Mother Nature to occur on Christmas Day, the time for peace on earth and goodwill toward men?’

  Meanwhile, unknown to Burns-Woods and Snelling at the time, were a small group of Qantas employees who were not listed on Darwin staff numbers. They were cabin crew transiting the city when Tracy hit. Robert Lindsay and his crew had arrived on 23 December and were scheduled to operate a service to Singapore on Boxing Day. New to the job, it would be Lindsay’s second-only flight as cabin crew, on a schedule known as the ‘milk run’ from Sydney to Darwin via Brisbane, and a two-day stopover to wait for their onward flight to Singapore.

  Booked into rooms on the fourth floor of the Territorial Hotel, Lindsay and his team noted a decline in weather conditions but didn’t think too much of it. Anyway, someone had mentioned there’d been an earlier alert but nothing had happened. As usual, before turning in for the night they called reception to make sure their early morning calls had been logged for the next day.

  ‘The weather then got gradually worse and it became a horrendous night. I don’t think anyone can really describe that noise. Then a window blew out and things were actually sucked out of my room.’ Risking a glance out the window Lindsay saw the roof blow off a bus shelter on the street below and crash into a transformer, sending sparks into the night. He locked himself in the bathroom.

  ‘Finally the hotel people gathered all the crew together and took us down into the basement, steering clear of the lobby as the glass frontage was blown in and the front awning had crashed down.’