The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories

by Bill Marsh

  Also, of course, the doctor and the nurse have to place their absolute faith in the pilot’s assessment of the situation. Even if they’re terrified about what he’s about to do, all they can do is sit there. If you talk to some of the nurses, and I have asked this question, ‘Don’t you get scared when you go out on some of these tricky retrievals?’

  They’ll tell you that, ‘Yeah, there are times when we’re terrified, but we have complete confidence in the judgment of the pilots and the decisions they make.’

  So there was all that to be taken into consideration before they even landed the King Air. But then, what also astounded me, in that situation, was the absolute remoteness of where the retrieval had taken place. We’d travelled south for a week, without seeing a soul, to reach that 20-foot dune along the Canning Stock Route and the other two families had travelled north for a week, without seeing anyone. Just to give you some idea, the closest town was Newman, which was a good three or four days’ drive away — I repeat days — and when you have a little girl with a fractured femur, any sort of delay in getting treatment might mean she could suffer permanent damage or lose a leg or, possibly, even die.

  And it was only thanks to the professionalism and the courage of the RFDS crew that, on the same day this little girl fell out of the tree, they flew out there and plucked her out of the most isolated place I’d ever been in my life and had delivered her to a major hospital in Perth. So quite possibly a little girl’s life was saved. Well, her leg was saved and that’s the next most important thing.

  Now, this’s going to sound terribly naive, I know, but for me, the pilots, the doctors and the nurses of the Royal Flying Doctor Service are my heroes because at any given time they display that same courage and competence as they did in that situation with the little girl. On a daily basis they put their lives on the line for people who are complete strangers to them. They don’t care who these people are, or what their nationality is, or what religion they are. And it doesn’t matter to those pilots, doctors and nurses how those very same people probably wouldn’t take a similar risk for them. In fact, they wouldn’t even realise the risk. What’s more, the RFDS do it for free. How good is that?

  Dirt to Dust

  Right back in 1928, when the Flying Doctor Service first started in Cloncurry, Qantas used to supply planes for them. Then in about 1957, Qantas handed it over to TAA. So I became the third TAA pilot in Alice Springs, and that was in about 1965.

  By that stage I was familiar with flying around in the dust because, prior to joining TAA, I’d flown light aircraft all over northern Australia. Then when I joined TAA, they based me in Charleville and I was flying DC3s down to Birdsville every Sunday night. That’s when Birdsville was a scheduled service. We’d go as far as Adelaide one week, and Broken Hill the next week. I remember we also used to overnight in Windorah, where we’d stay at the local pub. Oh, we had some great times there until we inadvertently drove a Land Rover through the front fence of the pub. After that the publican wouldn’t let us stay there. She wouldn’t have a bar of us.

  But that’s another story, though it was ironical that about two years after going through the fence we had an engine failure out at Windorah and the plane needed an engine change. That meant we had to stay overnight so, naturally, I thought that the pub would be the place to go and get a room. And as soon as I walked in the front door, the woman who owned the pub, she took one look at me and she shouted, ‘Hey, you, I told you before, get out and stay out!’

  So that was that, and I had to find somewhere else to stay.

  But anyway, because I was used to flying in the dirt and the dust, out around Birdsville and all those places, TAA management rang me up one day and said, ‘How would you like to go to Alice Springs?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said and so I went to Alice Springs.

  And there was certainly plenty of dust out that way because there was an eight-year drought going on. Even the gum trees were dying. That’s true. You’d drive in from the airstrip, into Alice Springs, and there’d be no undergrowth at all, and even the big gum trees along the Todd River were dying.

  Mine was supposed to be a two-year posting but I enjoyed myself so much, and I got on so well with everyone, that they left me there for three years roughly, up until 1968. It was during that time that I was seconded into the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

  In Alice Springs, in those days, the Flying Doctor Service only ran the radio base, that’s all, and the Commonwealth Government used to foot the bill for the doctor, the nursing sisters, the pilot and the aircraft. Then, as time went by, and the RFDS gradually started buying their own aircraft and using their own pilots, TAA bowed out of that operation.

  But back in the mid-60s, they didn’t have any of the fancy aircraft they have today. In Alice Springs, the plane we used was a twin-engine De Havilland Dove. The Dove was the first civil aircraft built by the Poms after World War II and, for its time — 1946 — it was a remarkable aircraft. It had two 370 supercharged Gipsy Queen motors with fully feathering props, pneumatic undercarriage, flaps and brakes. It had a fuel system that came out, many years later, in the DC9, that you could operate manually or by booster pumps which, for its day, was an excellent system. We could put eight hours’ fuel on, which gave us enormous range for a light aircraft of that era. They even had engine fire bottles, which was unheard of in light aircraft, back then. Plus the Dove was the only IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) aircraft in Alice Springs and I was the only instrument-rated pilot. So, naturally I got every dirty trip. And over the three years I was in the Alice I’d say I transported around fifteen hundred patients and conducted near on two thousand medical clinics in small towns, Aboriginal communities and out on cattle properties. In fact, my area extended north to Newcastle Waters, west to the Western Australian border, east to the Queensland border and south over the South Australian border. To give you some idea just how vast the landmass was, someone once got a map and they superimposed England, Scotland and Wales into the area we — the Alice Springs RFDS — covered.

  But, with the dust, as I said, there was an eight-year drought going on, and when I arrived in the Alice, they were keeping sand off the station homesteads and stockyards with bulldozers. All the grass and all the herbage had gone. There was nothing left but drifting sand and dirt. It was so bad that the blowing sand used to bury the runway markers, even in Alice Springs.

  Now here’s a very strange phenomena. I remember, one morning, I taxied out and there was unlimited visibility. It was as clear as a bell. I did an engine run and everything was right to go. Then, just as I was about to take off, I looked up and, to my amazement, the dust was rising up out of the ground, vertically. I repeat, vertically.

  It was unbelievable. I’d never seen anything like that before I went to Alice Springs and I’ve never seen it since leaving Alice Springs. There was no wind. It was dead still, and this dust cloud just rose up, out of the ground. And I’ve got no solid explanation as to why that would’ve happened. I can only guess that, as the sun warmed up the earth, it created a vertical current which lifted the dust up. So from having unlimited visibility, by the time I took off, I only, probably, had less than 300 metres visibility. And that all happened within ten minutes.

  Another time I was coming back into Alice Springs after I’d been on routine medical visits, right out near the Western Australian border. It was about a half hour before dark and when I was nearing Ayers Rock there was unlimited visibility. But my sixth sense kept saying, ‘There’s something wrong here.’

  We weren’t in any dust or anything. There was no wind. I just had this feeling, you know, that conditions just seemed right for the dust to come.

  Well, I had two doctors and two nursing sisters with me and one of the doctors was sitting in the cockpit, so I said, ‘Do you mind if we stay at Ayers Rock. I don’t like the weather very much.’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ve just got a feeling that the
re’s some dust coming up.’

  So I called up Alice Springs: ‘What’s your latest forecast regarding dust?’

  ‘There’s no dust to mention,’ they said. ‘It’s fine. It’s beaut. Unlimited visibility.’

  Now you’ve got to remember that, in those days, the only radio aids and runway lights were in Alice Springs, Oodnadatta and Tennant Creek and, by that stage, we were still about 300 miles from Alice Springs. So we were due to arrive some forty-five minutes after last light. As it was, we could land at Ayers Rock and we had accommodation there. So we could stay there if we needed to, but Alice Springs said, ‘No, it’s fine in Alice Springs. You’ll have no problems at all. It’s beaut.’

  We still had a cattle station to visit. That was our last chance to stop. But I still had the inkling that something wasn’t quite right so, while we were at the cattle station, I called Alice again and I said, ‘Are you sure there’s no dust there?’

  ‘Unlimited visibility,’ they said.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, but I still wasn’t convinced.

  Anyhow, if I really needed an alternative I still had enough fuel to continue on to Tennant Creek. So we flew out and then, when I was about 30 miles out of Alice, I called up again and they said, ‘Sorry, visibility’s now down to zero in dust.’

  ‘Well, thanks a million.’

  Anyhow, I decided to do one instrument approach at Alice Springs, then divert to Tennant, if need be. And when I got down to minimum flying level I could just make out the lead-in lights. So I followed them in and, plonk, we landed safely on the ground. But honestly, the dust was so thick that I had trouble finding the taxiway to the hangers. And my wife was coming out to pick me up and, when she arrived, she said, ‘Oh, that dust’s terrible. I had to keep stopping the car on my way out because I couldn’t see anything on the road.’

  And that dust had come from nothing.

  Then another time, see, we had to be checked every six months for our instrument rating renewal and, anyway, the bloke came up to check me and we flew out over the South Australian border to Ernabella Mission. Ernabella was, I suppose, about 250 nautical miles away. And it was a dusty trip; a very, very dusty trip.

  Anyway, I finally found my way to Ernabella Mission and when we got on the ground, the bloke who was supposed to be checking me, he said, ‘Well, I haven’t seen anything since we left Alice Springs so it’s got me absolutely rooted just how you found your way out here.’ He said, ‘I couldn’t understand why you kept going. I was expecting you to turn around and go back to Alice Springs.’

  Now I didn’t tell him but, you know, because we were flying out in these areas all the time, you could just about find your way through anything. And what I’d done was, I knew that you’d have all the red of the soil and then there’d be the white of the salt lake, and just the other side of the salt lake there was a road that ran down to Ernabella.

  So I just came down through all the red dust and, when I could just make out the white of the salt lake, I knew, exactly, where I had to turn right and follow the road to Ernabella. But I didn’t tell him that because you don’t give away your trade secrets, do you? And he said, ‘Well, I’m rooted. I didn’t see a thing the whole trip.’

  And that just about covers some of the experiences I’ve had flying with dust and dust storms.

  Dobbed In

  Two things before we start. First, about the medical chests that all the station properties, and so forth, have. The Royal Flying Doctor Service provides those free of charge and there’s about eight hundred of them throughout Western Australia and they’re worth about $1200 each. Oh, I think that some of the bigger mining companies might pay for theirs.

  A while ago I remember there was a doctor here in Derby, and he used to say, ‘You could wait for up to five hours in a big city hospital to see an emergency doctor. Whereas, if you’re in the bush, thanks to the Royal Flying Doctor Service, you can talk to a doctor within a minute on the radio or on a telephone. You’ve got over $1000 worth of free drugs at your disposal and, within two hours, an aeroplane, which has all the equipment you’re ever going to need, will be there to pick you up. And it’s free of charge, not only in this state, but anywhere throughout Australia.’

  The only people the RFDS actually charge for their services are workers’ compo cases and overseas insurance travellers. But the thing is, after the Flying Doctor Service gets you there, to wherever you’re going, you do have to find your own way home. The RFDS doesn’t bring you back. And when that happens you have the PAT (Patient Assisted Travel) Scheme to help you. I think there’s a PAT Scheme in every state, though most probably it goes under a different name. Now I’m not sure, but I don’t think you even have to pay for that service. You just go to the PAT clerk at the hospital and they’ll organise everything for you.

  The second thing I’d like to mention is just how strong the CWA (Country Women’s Association) is here in Western Australia. We do a lot more than make scones and cakes and stuff and sell them at small street stalls, along with the occasional raffle ticket or two. Yes, we still do those types of things but we’re also an extremely strong political lobby group. So much so that, these days, the government either run or they bow when they see the CWA coming. For example, it was through our efforts that the first remedial teacher and the School of the Air teachers were provided with a car. We also lobbied strongly for the Flying Doctor Service to employ their own doctors instead of using hospital doctors. By employing their own doctors you have greater continuity of service by properly trained people who are familiar with all facets of RFDS procedure. And that only happened five years ago, up here in Derby. So that’s the strength of the CWA.

  Now as for stories, most of what I remember happened during the Royal Flying Doctor radio sessions. How it all worked was that, just like in other states, we also had the infamous ‘Galah Sessions’ where everyone could get on the radio and chat with their neighbours and all that. They went from midday to one o’clock every day. The ‘Galah Sessions’ were really strong up here until about 20 years ago, which was when the telephones came through the Kimberley.

  Prior to the arrival of the telephones, everything was organised through the RFDS radio. Not only were there the usual emergency calls and the medical sessions with the doctor but you also organised all your P and C meetings, all your CWA meetings, your Ag Department meetings over the RFDS radio. Plus, you ordered your cattle trucks, ordered your food through the RFDS radio system and, of course, everyone within cooee who was able to listened in.

  How the day panned out was: there was a morning medical session at seven o’clock with a doctor on the other end of the radio. So if you were crook you told the doctor — along with the rest of the Kimberley — what was wrong with you or your family and, hopefully, the doctor could help treat you. If the doctor couldn’t help you, it was more than likely that someone might chip in with some suggestions.

  Then there were eight o’clock, eleven o’clock and three o’clock sessions where the telegrams were read out over the radio. These arrived from the post office and were read out from the RFDS base. Also, if you needed to send a message, you called in to the base on your radio and that message was then phoned through to the post office where it was sent out as a telegram.

  And, of course, the School of the Air also shared radio facilities with the RFDS. In fact, Port Hedland School of the Air still have their offices combined with the RFDS. And that service was just wonderful for our kids when we were out on Gibb River Station.

  But the School of the Air sessions were hilarious, mainly because the teachers couldn’t see what merry-hell the kids were getting up to. I remember that twice a year all us parents who were home tutors and their kids, and the governesses and teachers would get together and attend a seminar-meeting at the Broome Camp School. And at this camp us parents used to perform skits for the teachers, just to show them what the kids got up to behind the scenes, and you’d get these new teachers watching our performances and they’d g
o, ‘Oh my God, is that what really goes on?’

  One skit we did was about a session that was called ‘M and M’ (Music and Mayhem). ‘M and M’ was held early in the morning and was designed for the kids to have some exercise. So you’d have your child sitting beside you and you’d go on the air and the teacher would tell the kid what exercise they were supposed to do, then they’d say, ‘Okay, Johnny, are you jumping around there?’

  And Johnny would be just sitting there looking completely bored with it all, and the teacher would say, ‘Okay, then, how did you go, Johnny?’

  And little Johnny would put on this huge act like he’s completely exhausted and he’d huff and puff into the radio, ‘Really well, Miss. That exercise was a tough one.’

  Another skit we did was about when they’d send out Christmas recipes which showed the kids how to make like, you know, those milk-ball things made with apricot and coconut and all that stuff. So we’d act out how the kids would be mixing up all this squishy stuff and we’d have the ‘teacher’ pretend to come on the air and ask, ‘Now, how are you doing out there, Jenny?’

  Then we’d have the person who’s playing the part of poor little Jenny, well, she’d be up to her elbows in this gooey stuff and, all of a sudden, she’s expected to pick up a microphone, and say, ‘I’m fine. Things are going real well, Miss.’

  Of course, with the School of the Air sessions, you’d also get a very clear insight as to what was going on at all the other properties. We had one lady out on a station near Halls Creek. They were just starting up back then so things were pretty rough. You could imagine, at that early stage, they just had a shed and not much else to live in. But this lady was a real character and her boys were just so full-on, if you know what I mean. And one day this little boy who was in my daughter’s class, you could hear him sounding really upset, so the teacher asked, ‘Are you alright, Donald?’