The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories

by Bill Marsh

But back to the story: what had happened was an elderly lady was driving along with two young teenagers in a Holden station wagon and they’d left the road, gone into a creek and run smack-bang into a tree. The kids were okay but the woman had suffered head injuries. Apparently, the station wagon wasn’t too badly off but, when the teenagers had attempted to reverse it out of the creek, the vehicle got bogged in the bulldust.

  Now I don’t know if you’ve been bogged in bulldust or not but I can tell you that it’s worse than being bogged in mud. So, there they were, stuck up to the axles. They couldn’t go forward. They couldn’t go backwards. So they called for help.

  On this type of flight we usually carry a Flight Nurse with us but on this occasion, with three people being stuck out there, it was decided that only the doctor and I should go along. So, with me being the pilot, I fired up the Beechcraft Queen Air and we headed out to Prospect Station which was about an hour and a half’s flying time away.

  When we reached our destination, we circled low over the homestead only to find that it’d been abandoned. The upshot of that was if we landed at Prospect there’d be no one to drive us out to the accident scene. And as the doctor stated, ‘There’s no way that I’m going to carry a stretcher for eight kilometres. Not under these conditions. It could well be the end of us.’

  Still, I did a couple of dummy runs over the airstrip just in case. It was littered with ant hills so Prospect Station was out of the question, anyway. Our next best option was Esmeralda Station which was about 30 or 40 kilometres east of Prospect. More to the point, it was further away from the accident scene but, with little choice, we flew on.

  When we arrived at Esmeralda Station there didn’t look like there was much life in the homestead either. Still, the airstrip was in a much better condition so I put the Queen Air down and we waited in the hope that someone would come out and pick us up. Which didn’t happen. So we wandered through the low scrub and sweltering heat, up and over the maze of dirt tracks and hills until we finally came upon the homestead.

  ‘Is anybody there?’ we called.

  Not a sound. Esmeralda homestead had also been deserted.

  So there we were, about 50 kilometres from the accident scene, with no transport. What’s more, because of all the scrub, there was no way we could have flown back and landed any nearer to the bogged vehicle. So we hunted through the homestead and the outbuildings and there we stumbled across an old Toyota LandCruiser.

  Now it was obvious that the vehicle hadn’t been used for some time. For starters, it was about thirty years old. It was covered in a thick coating of dust. It was rusted. The tyres were perished. But, to our surprise, the keys had been left in the ignition. So we gave it a go and after a bit of pushing and shoving and mucking about we managed to get the old Toyota started. The only problem was that we didn’t have a clue how much fuel was in the vehicle because none of the gauges worked.

  With no fuel tanks in sight, that left us with a big worry, a big worry indeed.

  ‘Will we chance it or won’t we?’ was the sixty-four million dollar question.

  ‘Well, we’ve come this far, and it is an emergency,’ echoed the answer.

  So we decided to give it a shot.

  As I said, there was a maze of tracks around the place, all going off in different directions. No signs, of course. What’s more, because of the terrain, hilly and low gidgee scrub, we couldn’t see for any great distance to get a decent bearing. Anyway, we followed something that resembled a once well-used track and somehow we ended up out on the main dirt road. Don’t ask me how. I wouldn’t have a clue. But we did.

  There we were, driving down the road, hoping to hell that the Toyota wouldn’t run out of fuel, when we saw the two young teenagers walking towards us through the shimmering mirage. They’d seen our plane fly over and they’d decided to head in the direction of where they thought it’d landed. By that stage these kids had trekked about 8 kilometres in the searing heat, and they were terribly dehydrated. Terribly dehydrated.

  So we picked them up, got some water into them, then we drove them back to their bogged vehicle. By now, a good hour or so had passed since we’d headed out in the old Toyota. When we got there, the elderly woman wasn’t the best. Being as large as she was didn’t help much either. It certainly hadn’t been her day. Along with the head injuries, she was now suffering from severe dehydration to boot.

  Anyway, the doctor got stuck in and started to sort the woman out. So there I was hanging around with nothing better to do than mull over the accumulation of the day’s disasters. And it got me thinking, which was a big mistake, but that’s what happens when I’ve got nothing better to do. Now, it was obvious that siphoning the petrol out of the Holden station wagon and putting it in the Toyota wouldn’t work because the car ran on petrol and the Toyota ran on diesel. So that was out. But what could I do to save the situation? And the more I racked my brain, the more I started to formulate the idea that, if I dug the car out of the bulldust, all our troubles would be over and we wouldn’t have to worry about running out of fuel in the Toyota.

  So I grabbed a shovel and started to dig the car out. Now that was one of the most stupid things that a bloke could attempt to do, especially in 40° plus heat. As I said, even the dogs back in Mount Isa had crawled under the shade so that the sun wouldn’t fry their brains. There I was, digging the wheels out, when I started to go all woozy.

  ‘Oops,’ I mumbled, and down I went like a sack of potatoes.

  Well, that certainly put the doctor into a spin. He now not only had a dehydrated woman with head injuries plus two dehydrated teenagers on his hands, he also had a pilot who’d collapsed from heatstroke. And, what’s more, without a pilot he knew that he couldn’t go anywhere. He was well and truly stuck. So the doctor then had to turn around and rehydrate me.

  Anyway, to cut a long story short, when I was feeling a little better we bundled everyone into the Toyota, got it going again, then headed back to Esmeralda Station. Now that was no real problem. But finding the airstrip from the homestead proved to be a different matter. Not only did we have the worry of not knowing how much fuel was left in the Toyota, we were all suffering from heatstroke to varying degrees. The old woman, in particular, was feeling it something terrible. What’s more, the thermometer was still rising rapidly and we seemed to have lost our way among the myriad of tracks.

  Then I started thinking again, which, as I said, was the worst thing I could possibly do. But it just seemed that, along every step of the way, things had gone from bad to worse to worser, if there’s such a word. And I must admit, it was at that particular point in time that I started to have very grave doubts about any of us getting out of there alive.

  So there we were, driving aimlessly through the rugged terrain, when the Toyota spluttered over a rise. And there she was, the aeroplane, the Queen Air — my Queen Air — sitting on the airstrip, waiting patiently for us.

  God, she was the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen in my life.

  Great Break, Aye!

  The life of a Flying Doctor is certainly a pretty demanding affair, I can tell you. And if it isn’t these days, it certainly was when my husband, Tony, was working in the far north of Western Australia.

  After we’d been back in Derby for twelve months, I distinctly remember us sitting down and working out that Tony hadn’t had a single day’s break and, mind you, that included the weekends. While we were living there he was responsible for the routine hospital work, the surgery, the clinics, the lot. And, because the dramas had no time schedule, rarely a night went by when he wasn’t called out of bed. What’s more, apart from annual holidays, we could only recall him having three days off in the past three years.

  ‘Enough is enough,’ I said. ‘For one, you need a break. For two, we both need a break to spend some quality time together.’

  So we decided to pack up the three kids and spend a nice, relaxing weekend as far away from it all as possible. To that end, the place we chose was t
he Australian Inland Mission Hospital out at Fitzroy Crossing.

  After Tony had organised things on the work front to cover for his absence, the day finally arrived. Early one Saturday morning we loaded the kids into the car and drove the 300 or so kilometres across to Fitzroy Crossing.

  Finally, we arrived. And what a relief. A whole weekend together lay ahead. What’s more, the girls from the Inland Mission were so excited to see us. They’d even gone to the trouble of planning a big barbecue for the Saturday evening and had invited a few of the station people to come along, especially to meet the doctor and his family.

  Anyway, we were just settling into our accommodation when Halls Creek sent through an emergency radio call to the Derby base, informing them that a seven-year-old kiddie had accidentally shot a six-year-old in the chest. Of course, the Derby Hospital was without its doctor-surgeon, wasn’t it, and not being able to deal with such an extreme case on their own, they got in touch with Tony.

  The next thing I knew, the Queen Air aircraft had been dispatched from Derby and was on its way to pick up Tony at Fitzroy Crossing and take him to Halls Creek — which duly happened. Then at Halls Creek they picked up the gunshot victim and flew the child back to Derby Hospital. Tony remained there in surgery for most of the Saturday afternoon and into the night until he was confident that the child was out of danger and was on the road to recovery.

  ‘Bugger it,’ he said, ‘I’m still going to have this weekend away with the family.’

  So he asked the matron at the Derby Hospital if he could borrow her car for a couple of days. This she agreed to and, at nine o’clock that night, Tony left Derby and drove the 300 or so kilometres back to Fitzroy Crossing to be greeted by a dinner of cold remains from the barbecue that’d been held in his, absent, honour.

  Anyway, we finally wandered off to bed sometime later that night or, more than likely, early the following morning. By that stage, Tony was so exhausted he had trouble getting to sleep. But, not to worry, this was our weekend away from it all and we could take it easy and sleep in.

  At seven o’clock on Sunday morning, Wyndham Hospital contacted Derby Hospital, who in turn rang Tony to inform him there’d been a very bad car accident involving three teenagers. One person had been killed and two were badly injured, one of whom had sustained severe head injuries. Tony was needed to do surgery.

  However, during the three-way phone link-up between Wyndham Hospital, Derby Hospital and Tony at Fitzroy Crossing, an electrical storm hit and contact between the two hospitals was lost. It couldn’t have happened at a worse moment. I mean, there they were, right in the middle of discussing blood groups and trying to organise whatever equipment Tony might need so that the hospital staff could get everything ready for when he arrived in Wyndham.

  Anyway, the plane left the Derby base at nine o’clock that morning and picked Tony up at Fitzroy Crossing, for the second time. I think they had a theatre sister and an anaesthetist on board on that trip as well, but I’m not sure. Off they flew to Wyndham where Tony remained in surgery all that day and well into the evening.

  Tony eventually stabilised one of the lads enough for him to be sent down to Perth for further treatment. But the patient with the severe head injuries was a different matter. There were real problems there and it was deemed too dangerous to evacuate him to Perth along with his mate. So Tony stayed in Wyndham for the next three days monitoring the lad and helping him through that critical post-op period.

  And, all this time, there I was in Fitzroy Crossing with the three kids and two cars, our own and the one that Tony had borrowed from the matron. Now, I don’t know how they got the matron’s car back to Derby. All I can remember is muttering a million times over, ‘Great break, aye!’ as I drove our car back home, across that 300 or so kilometres of damn road.

  Gwen’s Legacy

  My friend Gwen had to go down to Adelaide in the Flying Doctor aeroplane a few years back. And on her way down she saw these little teddy bears in the plane. They were dear things, about 14 or 15 inches tall, all hand-knitted, with embroidered eyes and noses, and all of that.

  ‘Oh,’ she said to the nursing sister, ‘they’re just so cute. What are they for?’

  ‘Well,’ the nurse explained, ‘they’re what we call trauma teddies. If a child gets upset we give them a teddy to keep and explain that the teddy’s got the same injuries that they have.’

  The Nursing Sister also happened to mention that the Royal Flying Doctor Service was in desperate need for people to make the trauma teddies, on a voluntary basis. So Gwen said, ‘Right, you’re on. As soon as I get back home, I’ll go to the Probus Club and the Senior Citizens and the CWA [Country Women’s Association] and I’ll get people knitting.’

  But, as it turned out, when Gwen got down to Adelaide she was diagnosed with terminal cancer so, when she arrived back home, she came to me. ‘Audrey,’ she said, ‘I’ve made this promise to the Flying Doctor Service that I can’t fulfil.’

  Then she asked if I could start the trauma teddies off in the Riverland, which I was pleased to do. I went to the various community groups and explained how Gwen wanted the trauma teddies to continue and I asked if anybody else could pick up the basket because I was too tied up with other things. So a lady from the Lutheran Church took it on. And she’s done a great job because now lots of groups in the Riverland are knitting trauma teddies, getting them ready to go down to be labelled for the Flying Doctor Service and their support services.

  Anyway, I just mentioned that story because, even though Gwen’s been dead for about three years now, her original promise has been more than fulfilled and no doubt those trauma teddies have helped many children and will continue to do so for a long, long time to come.

  Handcuffed

  To my knowledge Dr Clyde Fenton was one of the rare ‘true’ Flying Doctors in as much as he was both an accomplished pilot as well as being a very good, and greatly admired, doctor. And when I say ‘an accomplished pilot’ I say that with a touch of mirth, as my story will reveal, because while Clyde was a bit of a character, a real larrikin so to speak, he was also quite naughty at times, the daredevil type. Still, he did a tremendous amount of good up in the Northern Territory which was probably why he was able to get away with so much.

  When I first ran into Clyde, which was immediately after the war, Darwin was still under military control. And in those days, my late husband, Fred, an ex-RAAF Squadron Leader, had been appointed as the Regional Director of Civil Aviation. This was a posting that made him instrumental in assisting in the re-establishment of overseas air services, both in and out of Australia.

  Anyhow, Clyde and Fred didn’t see eye to eye on many issues. For starters, Clyde didn’t have too much respect for public servants. His favourite description of their livelihood was that of a ‘dog-eat-dog’ existence. So, when the new Department of Civil Aviation went about restructuring Air Traffic Control, Clyde dug his heels in. Though he still kept on flying, he steadfastly refused to obtain the appropriate pilot’s licence.

  It was then that the Department of Civil Aviation sent a directive, via my husband, insisting that Clyde obtain this certain category of licence in accordance with the type of planes he was flying. Of course, Clyde, being Clyde, was of the mind that having already been a pilot during the war a licence issued by the DCA wasn’t worth a fig.

  ‘A complete load of administrative rubbish’ was how he described the situation.

  So dear old Clyde completely disregarded the directive and continued on his unflappable way. Naturally, this type of behaviour riled the DCA. Yet they were caught between the devil and the deep blue sea because the only pilots who they could legally stop from flying were the ones who had been licensed under their own organisation and, of course, Clyde had refused to get that particular licence.

  Now a lot of people admired Clyde for this particular stance. They saw him as someone who wasn’t afraid to buck the system, a kind of Wild West maverick, a rough diamond.

  But t
he DCA didn’t see it that way. Yes, Clyde was a delightful feller and he was a proven pilot. No one could argue with that, what with his war record and all, but things were changing in Darwin. With so many people coming into Australia so soon after the war, the authorities just couldn’t have these self-willed pilots out there doing their own thing.

  For example, imagine the turmoil it might cause if a Constellation came in to land and there was Clyde doing a couple of loop-d-loops around the airstrip, which, I might add, was something that he’d been known to do. Another of his tricks was to put the wind up everyone by flying low over the open-air picture show at night or over people who were having a quiet picnic on the beach.

  Now this might have been a great lark for Clyde, but the DCA demanded order in the skies. So the Melbourne Headquarters became increasingly impatient with Clyde and they said to Fred, ‘You’ve got to get him licensed.’

  So Fred followed it up and this is where my story comes in.

  One evening everyone was gathered in the Darwin Club and the big talk of the moment was how Clyde had refused, yet again, to get his licence. There they all were, Clyde included. Now Clyde liked a few drinks and after a while he saw Fred talking to the local sergeant of police. ‘Watch this,’ he said to his group of mates and he came over to Fred and the sergeant.

  ‘Righto,’ Clyde said, holding out his hands. ‘Here I am, you might as well handcuff me now and drag me off to prison.’

  Then, as was usual with Clyde, he put on a big song and dance about the whole affair. Anyway, this skylarking about started to get up the nose of the sergeant and he said to Fred, ‘I’ll fix him.’ Quick as a flash the police officer took out his handcuffs and snapped them on Clyde’s wrists.

  Well, this was a great joke, especially to Clyde. He started wandering about the club, holding his glass in his handcuffed hands, amid much laughter and carry-on.