The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories

by Bill Marsh

  ‘Look what they’ve done to me,’ Clyde announced to all and sundry. ‘They’ve finally arrested me.’

  Oh, it was a real talking point.

  Anyway, as the story goes, the sergeant got sick of all this carry-on and went home. So when Clyde had had enough of the handcuffs and couldn’t find the sergeant, he came over to Fred. ‘Righto, Fred,’ he said, ‘the joke’s over. You can take these things off now.’

  ‘Sorry, Clyde, no can do,’ Fred said. ‘The sergeant’s gone home and he’s taken the keys with him.’

  ‘But you can’t leave me like this,’ Clyde retorted.

  Now Fred wasn’t beyond having a bit of a joke himself. So he said to Clyde, ‘Well, Clyde, the only thing that I can suggest is I take you down to the police station and you can wait there until the sergeant comes back on duty.’

  ‘When’ll that be?’ asked Clyde.

  ‘I think he’s gone to Alice Springs for a couple of days,’ Fred said in a matter-of-fact way.

  Well, Fred reckoned that you should’ve seen the look on Clyde Fenton’s face. The wind had really been taken out of his sails at that comment.

  Heaven

  I was stationed in Derby, living by myself at the time. There I was, a guy in his twenties with no commitments at all.

  My wife-to-be was a community nursing sister over in Wyndham, and every week she drove down to the stations around the Halls Creek area, giving immunisations and that type of thing. Then every second Thursday, in order to link in with her previous clinic trips, I flew up there to pick up her and a doctor, and we did the follow-up air trips.

  The standard procedure on those mornings was to get out of bed at about three o’clock. It’d be as black as the insides of a pig. I’d have a cup of tea, then drive to the airport, open up the hangar, push the Queen Air out, put the car in the hangar, and close the doors. Then I’d climb into this aeroplane, an aeroplane, mind you, that someone had just about given me free rein to fly. It was virtually mine. And I’d fire this monster up, stoke up all the radios, call up on the HF frequency and talk to Perth or Port Hedland, whichever one was on duty.

  ‘Perth (Port Headland), this is Foxtrot, Delta Victor, taxiing, Derby for Wyndham.’

  And they’d come back sounding surprised, as they always did, thinking ‘Who in their right mind would get out of bed at bloody three o’clock in the morning to go flying?’

  Me.

  So I’d taxi out, do all my run-ups and cockpit checks, then thunder down the runway, focusing on the instruments. As soon as I left the runway lights it was pitch black. Apart from the faint reflective light inside the windscreen, it was just a puddle of ink outside. Under those conditions there’s no horizon. No visual reference. No bugger-all. I’d just focus on and fly the instruments.

  Up I’d go. I’d turn left and climb towards 7500 feet. When I hit 7000 feet I’d engage the auto-pilot. Then I could relax. I was free.

  There I was in this magnificent aeroplane at four o’clock in the morning, nobody within a million miles of me for all it mattered. And I’d sit back and look out the window at billions and billions and billions of stars. Each and every one of them was mine. I was in heaven, and heading to Wyndham for the six o’clock pick-up of the doctor and the nursing sister.

  Kicking the Dust

  Well, it’s all just been pretty predictable stuff really. The evacuations that we’ve had to make out of here have gone off pretty much without a hitch. By ‘here’ I’m meaning Mount Vernon Station which is north of Meekatharra, in the central east of Western Australia.

  Anyway, it’s always amazed me how the Flying Doctor has been able to get in and out in quick-smart time. They’re pretty efficient, you know, the lot of them — the doctors, the nurses, the pilots. We haven’t even had any high-flaunting dramas about aeroplanes getting bogged in the bulldust or the mud like they have at other places. Still and all, there was one time I remember when the Flying Doctor plane was delayed from leaving our place, and that was for a bit of an odd sort of reason really, so I’ll tell you about that one if you like.

  As I said, the Flying Doctor plane has been able to get in and out in no time at all apart from this occasion when a young lad, a jackaroo he was, came off his horse and got his foot caught in the stirrup. Gee, he was in a mess. The poor kid had been dragged along the ground for a fair way and, among all that, the horse had trampled over him. I tell you, he was a pretty bruised and battered young man.

  Anyway, we sent out an emergency for the Flying Doctor. When the plane arrived, on board was a doctor, a pilot and a nursing sister. So they settled the young stockman down and had just loaded him onto the plane when the nursing sister decided that she’d better go to the toilet before they flew back to the Meekatharra base.

  ‘Sure,’ I said and directed her off to the nearest loo, an outside construction it was. ‘You go down this way and that, and it’s just around the corner, over there, in that direction.’

  Now one of the peculiarities of this particular toilet was that it had a metal door. So, when the sun shone on it, the metal expanded. Of course, we knew this and whenever we used the toilet we kept the door slightly open. But the nursing sister didn’t, and with all the kerfuffle over the young stockman it completely slipped my mind to tell her. To make matters worse, this was a warm day, a very warm day indeed.

  So off she went and the doctor completed what was necessary for the young stockman while the pilot did his pre-take-off checks. Some time passed and the nursing sister still hadn’t returned. So there we were, standing around, trying to fill in the time with idle chat. And we waited and we waited until eventually we’d just about exhausted every avenue of conversation from the price of beef right through to the current climatic conditions…and still she hadn’t appeared.

  By this stage, the patient was looking quite distressed, the poor kid. What’s more, the doctor seemed pretty anxious and the pilot was gazing at his watch then up at the skies then back at his watch again. So there we were, hovering around the plane kicking the dust with our boots, trying to think of what to talk about next, which we couldn’t because all the while we were wondering what the hell was going on with the nursing sister.

  Anyway, all this tension proved too much for my husband. ‘Oh gee,’ he blurted, ‘I don’t know, perhaps she isn’t feeling too well.’

  With this comment, the men turned to me. Being a female I put two and two together and came up with the obvious — that they weren’t too comfortable about knocking on a toilet door to find out what a woman’s problem might be.

  ‘I’d better go and check on her, then,’ I said.

  ‘Good idea,’ they chorused.

  So I went over to the toilet and tapped on the door. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘but are you okay in there?’

  ‘I’m in big trouble,’ came the plaintive reply.

  ‘What’s up?’ I asked, thinking the worst.

  ‘The door’s stuck and I can’t get out.’

  So I had a go at opening the thing and it was stuck, all right, stuck good and proper. What’s more, it wouldn’t budge no matter how hard I tried. Then I had to call the men around to have a go. God it was funny. If you can imagine the scene, there we were out in the middle of nowhere with these three men huffing and puffing and pushing and pulling at the door of the toilet which in turn was causing the complete structure to sway back and forward, and there was this poor woman stuck inside thinking that all her nightmares had come at once.

  But they eventually managed to free it.

  ‘One, two, three,’ they called and gave an almighty pull.

  The toilet door flung open and out stepped one very embarrassed nursing sister — as red as a beetroot, she was.

  ‘Well,’ she snapped, ‘shall we go then?’ And she strode off in the direction of the plane.

  Knickers

  I first became aware of the Royal Flying Doctor Service through a chap called Dr Clyde Fenton. That was back during the war, like, when Clyde was the Commandi
ng Officer of No 6 Communications Unit, out at Batchelor, which was about 60 miles south of Darwin.

  At that time, Clyde was working solely as a pilot, not as a doctor. What’s more, he had an excellent reputation as a pilot, one which was only surpassed by his dubious reputation of being a bit of a rogue, especially where the establishment was concerned. Clyde simply refused to obey their rules. In actual fact he didn’t obey much at all. He was pretty much a law unto his own. Still and all, I must say that, in my experience, I found him to be an extremely likeable and fair Commanding Officer.

  But as well as being a pilot and a rogue and, no doubt, a good medical man, Clyde was also a well-versed story-teller.

  There’s one story that sticks out in my mind, just for starters. This incident happened when he was a Flying Doctor, back before the war. It involved either a Tiger Moth or a Fox Moth, I can’t remember exactly. But it doesn’t matter because both aircraft were twoseaters. Now what I mean by the planes being twoseaters is that, in both the Tiger Moth and the Fox Moth, the pilot sat in the back seat and the passenger sat directly in front of him, in the front seat. And to make matters more difficult there was no direct means of communication between one and the other.

  Anyway, one day, Clyde got a message to go out to pick up Mrs so-and-so from some station property. Miles away, it was. This Mrs so-and-so was due to have a baby and they were keen to get her into the maternity ward so that they could keep an eye on things. So Clyde jumped into his plane and off he flew. But when he arrived, he checked this woman over and came to the conclusion that there was no real rush over the matter. In his medical opinion, she had another week or perhaps even two weeks up her sleeve.

  But to save himself another long trip out to the property and back, Clyde decided to take the woman back into the hospital anyway. So he positioned her in the front seat. He made sure that she was comfortable, then double-checked that she was okay. ‘Are you sure that you’re okay?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ she replied. Then he took off to return to the base. They’d been in the air for about half an hour when Clyde noticed that the woman seemed to be in some sort of discomfort.

  ‘She can’t be,’ he muttered to himself.

  But the further on they flew, the more this woman’s discomfort seemed to increase, and before long, there she was, twisting this way and that. Now the more that this woman wriggled about, the more Clyde began thinking that his previous diagnosis might’ve been a week or two off the mark. It’d happened to doctors before. You couldn’t always be right. Nothing’s 100 per cent certain. Perhaps the stress and vibration of the flight was bringing the baby on prematurely. But it was only when the situation reached desperation point and the woman attempted to lift herself out of the seat that Clyde’s concern turned to panic.

  ‘Hell,’ he said, ‘the baby’s coming.’

  So Clyde was left with no other option than to put the plane down, and put it down mighty quick, or there could be big trouble. Now it isn’t the easiest thing in the world to put a plane down in the middle of nowhere, especially when that ‘middle of nowhere’ happens to be nothing but desert and scrub. So he searched around the area and the first piece of half reasonable land he came across, he took the bit between the teeth and went for it.

  Now, as you might well imagine, landing a plane in those sorts of geographical conditions was a precarious exercise at the best of times. But with a woman on board who was on the verge of giving birth, Clyde was fully aware that any sudden bumps or violent shaking may well get the birthing process rolling before he could attend to the situation.

  But as luck and good flying skills would have it, Clyde managed to make a reasonably smooth landing. Then as soon as the plane came to a halt he shouted, ‘Keep calm. Keep calm. Breathe nice and deep. First, I’ll get you out of the plane and we can take things from there.’

  Then he grabbed his medical bag, jumped out and raced around to tend to the woman. It was at that point that Clyde happened to notice a strange, sheepish look on the woman’s face. Now this particular facial expression caused him to do a double take.

  ‘You are about to have the baby, aren’t you?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ whispered the woman.

  ‘Then why all the discomfort in the passenger’s seat?’ he asked.

  ‘Me undies got all knotted up,’ she replied.

  Love is…

  Remember back in the 1970s when they had those little logos — ‘Love is…something-or-other’? For example, ‘Love is…not having to say you’re sorry’. Well, there’s a saying around here that goes ‘Love is…not pressing charges’, and that stems from the time when we had an emergency flight to a town where there’d been a domestic dispute.

  What had happened was that this feller and his de facto wife had come home after a session on the grog, they’d had a blue and, amongst the turmoil, she’d picked up a large kitchen knife and knifed him in the chest. Down he went like a sack of potatoes with the knife sticking out of him and blood gushing everywhere. When the woman realised what she’d done, she panicked, rang the ambulance, and before they arrived she nicked off out bush.

  As you might imagine, it was quite a mess and the victim wasn’t in the best of conditions. That’s when we got the call to fly out and pick him up.

  Anyway, they brought this feller out to the airport so that we could load him straight onto the plane. There were a couple of policemen in tow, just in case. At that point the feller was conscious and still had the large kitchen knife embedded in his chest. Then, as we started to wheel him out to the plane, his de facto appeared out of nowhere. She’d seen us come in to land, realised what was going on, and had rushed out to the airport. But just as she started to run towards the plane, she was grabbed by the two police officers.

  If you can imagine the scene, there we are, loading this critically injured feller onto the plane. And there’s this woman being restrained by two policemen. And with the tears flowing down her face, she starts sobbing out at the top of her voice, ‘I’m sorry, darlin’. I didn’t mean ta do it!’

  And this feller, there he is with the knife sticking out of his chest. Well, he struggles to raise himself and he starts calling back at the woman, ‘That’s all right, sweetheart. I forgive yer!’

  Then she replies, ‘I love yer, darlin’, honest I do!’

  ‘I love yer too,’ the feller calls out. ‘And don’t worry about a thing, sweetheart,’ he says, ‘I’m not pressing charges!’

  Mayday! Mayday!

  It was, um, 19 October, actually. I was about nine months pregnant at the time and still working in Derby as a flight nursing sister. Not that there was much flying for me. I’d been thrown off the aeroplane because I was bigger than most by that stage with my bub being due fairly soon. Anyway, my husband, Jan, had gone off flying the aeroplane, doing a clinic circuit with a doctor and a nurse, and I was back at the base doing a radio session.

  You know about the radio sessions, don’t you? Well, I used to go on air and ask if anybody wanted drugs or medications for their station’s medical chest and, if so, I’d organise for them to be sent out. Also, sometimes people just wanted to ask general questions about health and so forth so that they wouldn’t make idiots of themselves when the doctor came on line. In other words, I did a lot of trouble shooting.

  So there I was chatting on to people and I got the strong feeling that Jan was listening in from the aeroplane because he often used to count the times that I said ‘um’ over the radio. As you might have gathered, um, it’s a little habit of mine, though I’m getting better. Anyway, Jan used to count my ‘ums’ and he’d give me a bit of backchat. It was just a fun thing, really.

  So I’d just finished my part over the radio and the doctor came in and sat down and said, ‘Good morning. And what’re the stations for medicals today?’

  Just at that point, Jan came over the radio. ‘Mayday! Mayday!’ he called.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ I blurted out, because I’m sort of a vocal person.

  ‘What o
n earth did he say?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘Mayday,’ I said. Then I asked Jan, ‘What’s your problem?’

  ‘My wing’s on fire,’ came the reply.

  Apparently, Jan had left Tableland Station with the doctor, the nurse and some patients on board, and they were heading down to Lansdowne Station, in the north-east of Western Australia. So there he was, flying along at about 3500 feet, when he looked out the window and the whole top of the left wing was going black and buckling. What’s more, the aeroplane was trailing a plume of black oily smoke.

  That’s when he called through with the mayday.

  ‘Okay, Jan. That’s okay,’ I kept saying as he explained the situation and gave his location, in case they went down. When he’d finished giving me the details, he said, ‘I’m going to the other frequency. Over and out.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘anything else I can do?’

  ‘No,’ he replied and radio contact ceased.

  Just then, one of our doctors who’d overheard our conversation came rushing in and said, ‘What’s he done to my aeroplane?’

  ‘Oh, he’s just had a bit of an accident,’ I replied, in a manner that came over as, perhaps, far too casual.

  Now my being so calm took everyone aback because they imagined the instant panic that they’d go into if they knew that it was their spouse stuck up there, at 3500 feet, in an aeroplane that was on fire.

  But it didn’t happen to me. Even though I knew that things must’ve reached an extremely critical stage for Jan to have put through the mayday call, it was almost like I had a premonition that everything was going to be okay. There was nothing to worry about. Jan was in control. Jan would save the day.

  Much to everyone’s complete amazement, after Jan had gone off air I carried on with our medical schedules, ‘scheds’ as they’re called. And the doctor carried on with me. So I just kept right on going and finished off the scheds, and when they were done we went back to find out what Jan was up to.