The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories

by Bill Marsh

  Anyhow, Mum said we weren’t going anywhere. She reckoned I’d die if I was moved. So then they settled me down the best they could and they waited for the Flying Doctor to come on air. See, at a certain time of the morning the Flying Doctor Service kept the channel clear and if anybody had any issues they’d be able to get on the communications radio and talk to the doctor. But, because it was Christmas Day, it just happened to be the only time of the year that the Flying Doctor base wasn’t open for their usual morning doctor’s session.

  I think the Canopus call sign in those days was something like ‘ABS 6-CANOPUS’ and you’d get on the radio and say, ‘ABS 6-CANOPUS calling Broken Hill, calling Flying Doctor.’

  So that’s what they did, and they just kept calling and calling but they couldn’t raise anyone at the Flying Doctor base in Broken Hill. To make things even more difficult we didn’t have any 240-volt electricity coming into the house. All we had was 32-volt power and the radio for the Flying Doctor; it ran on a 12-volt battery. And of course, with all this continual calling and calling, our transceiver used a lot of power which, in turn, kept old Butch Batty busy, running batteries backwards and forwards from the outside generator room and swapping them over.

  Just to give a bit of background: Butch was a real identity of the district. He was a former clown who was working with Dad in those days. He used to call Dad ‘The Engineer’. But poor old Butch was an alcoholic and every now and again when we’d have to take him into town to see the doctor or get his glasses fixed or something he’d get on the grog, then he’d come back out home and dry out.

  Mum said that, on one particular occasion, they went to get Butch from the pub and when they got him outside there was a little feller — a young kid — selling newspapers and Butch just put his hand in his pocket, dug out what was left of his money and gave it all to the kid.

  And Mum said, ‘Oh Butch,’ she said, ‘what’d you do that for? That’s all the money you’ve got left.’

  ‘Missus,’ he said, ‘the poor little feller was battlin’.’

  See, old Butch reckoned that he didn’t need the money back in the bush so he just gave it all to the boy. Anyway, that’s just a bit about Butch, and when I was unconscious after drinking the kero, he spent all his time swapping the batteries over so that we could stay on the transceiver calling Broken Hill. Actually, it was my mum who was on the radio, doing all the calling because, apparently, my father was nursing me. So things were pretty desperate.

  Now, I’m not too sure how it works, though I think whenever you made an emergency call into the Flying Doctor’s base it used to light up an instrument panel. But it wasn’t until after the doctor had had his Christmas lunch and come back out to the base that he saw the emergency light was on. So he jumped straight on the radio and said, ‘Where’s the station calling the Flying Doctor?’

  And Mum was back in a flash, saying it was her and, as I said, there was my dear old dad, the man I had this incredible bond with, at his wit’s end, cradling me in his arms. This is interesting. As I just mentioned that, the emotion’s all just rushed up in me. Sorry about that. So, yeah, well, and, well, then Mum hooked into the doctor and the doctor told her what to do. I don’t know exactly what the instructions were but he told her what particular medications to give to me from out of our Flying Doctor’s medical chest. And he also confirmed that, you know, my mother had done the right thing by me and to just continue to nurse me through it gently and, along with the medication, I’d be okay; I’d survive, which I did. And to this day I’ve still got scars on my left lung and whenever I have an X-ray I’ve always got to explain to the people that I got a scarred lung from that particular experience with the kero.

  So I mean, they didn’t have to fly me out or anything but there were plenty of times when the Flying Doctor did fly out to Canopus. In those days, when I was growing up, the doctor was Dr Huxtable and Vic Cover was the pilot. I’ve got photos of the family and all of us standing by the Flying Doctor’s plane because Mum and Dad used to put on so many different fundraisers, especially after my stuff happened. I’ve even got cuttings from the newspaper in at Renmark where, you know, they wrote that Canopus Station raised something like £2500 for the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

  For the fundraisers, Dad and Mum ran a woolshed dance every year plus a cricket match. I remember when we’d get up early and Dad would drive us into Renmark to get the ice and lots of ice-cream for the kids, which was in those big old canvas bags. And he’d bring home a heap of kegs of beer for the adults and they’d set up the kegs under a shady thing they called a bow shed. Basically, a bow shed was just a few sticks with some green mallee laid over the top of it, and that was the pub. And for the cricket match, Dad actually poured a concrete wicket out in the middle of the airstrip and, to this very day, I reckon I could just about walk you out to it, blindfolded.

  Also, I remember how Mum used to get cardboard tea packets and she’d cut them straight through the middle with a sharp knife and pour the tea out into another container. All year long she’d save these empty tea packet halves. Then before we had a fundraiser she’d cover them all with leftover Christmas paper or whatever coloured paper she could get — or we’d both do it, me and her — and she’d make little handles and attach them to the boxes, then she’d fill them with homemade lollies, coconut rough and all that stuff, and all the kids that came along would get a couple of packets of lollies. Everything was free. I didn’t see any money changing hands so they must’ve paid through the gate or something to raise the amounts of money they did.

  Now, I’ve just remembered another story I was told. It was when Mum was pregnant with me. The airstrip was just off the side of the house and, anyhow, on one occasion the Flying Doctor flew out to Canopus Station to give my elders, Andy, Wally and Marion, smallpox injections or something like that. So they landed and then the crew came over to the house and the nurse said, ‘Okay, who’s gonna be first?’

  And my brother Wally, who was always the cheeky one, he raced forward, looking real tough, and he said, ‘Oh, me, me, me, I’ll be first.’

  ‘Okay,’ the nurse said, ‘pull down your pants.’

  Then the nurse got the needle out and started to get it ready for the injection. But when Wally saw the size of the needle, oh, he was off like a shot and he bolted through the scrub and they chased him everywhere, trying to catch him. But he was too quick and they all got tired, so then they decided that they’d get him later on, when he turned up back home again.

  Anyhow, Andy was the eldest bloke so he got his needle, then Marion got hers. But young Wally was a pretty wise young feller and he hid out in the bush until he saw the Flying Doctor plane take off before he decided to come back home again. I must add at this juncture that Wally could also make up a pretty good story when the need arose because, when he eventually turned up later in the afternoon, he snuck in home, pretending he had a sore bottom and he announced, ‘I’ve already had my needle so I don’t need another one.’

  ‘How’s that?’ everyone asked.

  And Wally replied, ‘I went and sat on a porcupine!’

  Rabbit Flat

  In 1975 and ’76 I worked for a charter company who contracted to the Royal Flying Doctor Service in Alice Springs. We had a Beechcraft Baron. Anyway, I was wondering if you’ve heard the story about Rabbit Flat? It was in all the newspapers and magazines, as well as being on television and radio.

  Of course, you know where Rabbit Flat is, don’t you? Well, it’s in the Northern Territory, out on the Tanami Track, on the way to Halls Creek, roughly 600 kilometres north-west from Alice Springs and about 150 kilometres from the Western Australian border. If you can imagine, it’s typical Tanami desert, flattish country, just spinifex. So there’s not a lot out there apart from this roadhouse on the Tanami Track at a place called Rabbit Flat. It’s actually privately owned by a couple called Bruce and Jackie Farrands and, at the time this occurred, Jackie was pregnant and was about six weeks away from giving birth.
Actually, I can give you the precise date: it was 6 August 1975.

  Anyhow, the night before — on the fifth — I got a phone call from my boss asking me to take off in the Beechcraft Baron early the following morning to arrive over Rabbit Flat just on first light. Apparently, the Flying Doctor Service base had received a radio message via either Perth or Darwin or somewhere and it looked like Jackie had gone into labour. Bruce couldn’t get in direct contact with the RFDS at Alice Springs, himself, because of the poor atmospheric conditions. Then just after the message had arrived the conditions turned so bad that radio contact was cut completely and they couldn’t get any more information about Jackie.

  So we took off before sunrise and we flew out to Rabbit Flat. There was just myself and a nursing sister, Maureen Eason. I can’t remember exactly but it took us something like an hour and a half, flying out to the north-west, and we arrived just after first light at Rabbit Flat. We circled over the roadhouse to let Bruce know we’d arrived then, when we landed, he came out in his vehicle to pick us up.

  The first thing Maureen said to Bruce was something along the lines of, ‘Has anything happened yet? Is Jackie okay?’

  ‘Oh sure,’ said Bruce. ‘She’s already given birth.’

  Maureen was quite surprised at that news so she said, ‘Oh, so how’s Jackie and how’s the baby?’

  ‘Well,’ Bruce replied, ‘the first baby’s fine.’ Then he said, ‘And so is the second one.’

  So there were two of the little buggers. Twins; both boys.

  And no one knew. Not even Jackie’s doctor knew that she was expecting twins. Anyway, the babies were fine. Bruce had them wrapped up in cotton wool, in a washing basket. So Bruce and I, we sat down and had a cuppa tea while Maureen attended to Jackie and got her ready to be transported back into Alice Springs. We’d taken a humidicrib with us so Maureen put the baby boys in the humidicrib and we put Jackie on the stretcher, in the Beechcraft. Then just before we hopped into the aircraft, Bruce said to me, ‘Oh, this’ll be good publicity for Rabbit Flat, eh.’

  ‘Oh yeah, okay,’ I said, and I took off.

  Well, it was a bit strange for Bruce to say something like that, you know, about wanting publicity for Rabbit Flat, because he was such a quiet sort of bloke; a bit of a loner, really. Well, you’d have to be to even contemplate going out there to live in a place like Rabbit Flat, in the first place, would you?

  But anyway, on the way back into Alice Springs I began thinking that he really must be keen on seeking some sort of publicity. So after I landed and my services were no longer required, I raced over and there was a phone in the corner of our hangar, and I rang the local ABC Radio in Alice Springs. A male voice answered the phone — I don’t know who it was — and I said, ‘Do you want a good story?’

  He said, ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘the population of Rabbit Flat doubled last night.’

  Now, the last thing I expected was to be quoted verbatim. But the next thing I know, it actually started hitting the headlines as a human interest story. I’m pretty sure it was on the front page of The Australian. If you go back and look at 7 August 1975 you’d probably find it in the paper, there somewhere. It even made the Women’s Weekly, and I think it probably went into Pix or Post and most of those popular magazines at the time.

  So it was a big story and it even went international because people in England even started ringing up Bruce. It was also actually written up in some publication or other over in England. Oh, Bruce had phone calls from everywhere, all over the world. So then it became a bit of a stampede out to Rabbit Flat, there for a while. But it got a bit too much for Bruce because he was left out there to deal with it all by himself until Jackie and the babies, Daniel and Glen, were ready to go back home.

  Then, I think it was ‘A Big Country’, well, they went out there and did a television program on Bruce and Jackie and their lives in Rabbit Flat. In fact, just recently, ‘A Big Country’ approached Bruce again because they were re-running some of their old stories and I think they wanted to do something along the lines of ‘A Big Country: Twenty Years On’. So they rang Bruce about doing a follow-up program. But Bruce’s a bit shy of publicity these days. In fact, he’s not real keen on it at all. He reckons he had enough back in ’75 to last him a lifetime.

  Rissoles

  I reckon I might’ve been about one of the first recipients of the Flying Doctor Service. This was in 1929, back in the depression era when no one had two pennies to rub together. Things were pretty tough and Dad was out in the bush with the railways, so my mum took work anywhere she could to get some money. Anyhow, she got this job, working as a domestic on a cattle station called Davenport Downs. Davenport Downs is on the Diamantina River, in the channel country, in southwestern Queensland.

  I was only about two or something so I can’t remember exactly what happened but, apparently, there was a black gin — an Aboriginal woman — who was working in the kitchen as one of my mother’s helpers. Anyhow, this gin was doing some mincing; mincing up leftovers to make rissoles. And so, yeah, she sat me up on the table where she was doing this mincing and she must’ve turned away or something because I stuck my hand in the top of the mincing machine and it took me finger off, right down to the first joint. It was the first finger — the index finger — of the right hand. Yep, right down to the knuckle. So she must’ve still been turning the mincer and she didn’t see me stick my hand in the thing. I mean, I was only two or something so I lost the top of my finger in the mincer.

  Now, there would’ve only been the old peddle-type radio back then and I presume that’s how they got in contact with the Flying Doctor. So they came out to pick me up in what would’ve been, back in those days, an old canvas plane; an old biplane, an Avian or something like that. I think the Avians were about the first ones the Flying Doctor Service used. There’s one up at the Museum in Longreach. I’m going to Longreach sometime this year because I want to find out for sure what exactly happened, you know, whether my name or my mother’s name is on their records out there.

  Anyhow, the Flying Doctor came out and they flew me and my mother from Davenport Downs back into Boulia Hospital. And, as they did in those days, they just took what was left of the minced up joint-bone out, pulled the skin back over it and then they sewed the fingernail back on. So I’ve got a nail on my knuckle, yeah, but I don’t know where they got that from. Perhaps they fished it out of the rissole mince.

  Then when we got back, the black gin had taken off somewhere. I don’t think she’d ever seen an aeroplane before so when she saw the Flying Doctor plane come and take me away she probably thought she’d killed me and I was being taken off into the spirit world by this strange thing that flew in the sky.

  Anyway, that’s my story. As I said, I was only about two at the time and I’ve still got the fingernail growing out of the knuckle of the index finger on my right hand and, no, I don’t know what happened with the rissoles.

  Slim Dusty

  I suppose you’ve heard of Slim Dusty the singer? He’s dead now but back in 1985 I published a book called Slim Dusty Around Australia. Basically, it was a collection of photographs, with only about two pages of writing, and it was about his concert days and all that sort of thing.

  I’m not really into music, but I was just a fan, that’s all. And how it all come about was that I was working in the Public Service and in my spare time I’d travel around with Slim and take lots of photographs. Like, I’d go behind the scenes. And I’d go into towns where he’d been and go to the local newspapers and, you know, I’d go to some of his record store appearances on the day he was to sign autographs and I’d attend some of the awards that he got, even the ones he received outside the music industry.

  Anyhow, over time the collection gradually built up. So, in the end, I sorted them all out and put it together and I included about two hundred and fifty photos in the book, which was about one hundred pages long, and then I had a thousand copies printed and, really, the rest i
s history. They’ve all gone now, but that was my little mark on history.

  Then in the 1980s, after I left the Public Service, I did some volunteer mission work up in the Kimberley region, up in the far north of Western Australia. I did a year in Derby, about four years at Lombadina Aboriginal Mission, another year up in the Kalumburu Aboriginal Mission, then another year in what was originally known as Port Keats, which is now the Wadeye Aboriginal Community.

  When I was in Derby I ran the School Hostel, on the outskirts of town, there. See, the church had a boarding hostel for the little Aboriginal school kids who lived up that Gibb River Road. And they’d come into Derby for the school terms and they’d board at the School Hostel and go down to either Derby Primary School or to the Catholic Primary School. Our job was to look after them and feed them and clothe them and provide recreational activities for them and things like that and then, on their school holidays, they’d take off and go back to their communities.

  Then one Sunday night, when I was in Derby, I was listening to the local ABC Radio’s ‘Country Music’ program and they were having an appeal to raise money for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. And I knew that Slim was a great supporter of the Flying Doctor Service. I think he even sung a song about it and I’m certain that he did a couple of concerts over in Charleville, where he donated part of the proceeds to the RFDS.

  Anyhow, I still had a copy of the book with me so I rang up the radio station and asked if they wanted to auction a book. And when I explained what the book was about, well, the ABC got really rapt in it, you know, because everybody up there loved Slim Dusty and they played him all the time. Anyhow they agreed to auction it over the radio, amongst all the listeners, and, I mean, I was only selling it for about $10 a copy and I think they ended up auctioning it for somewhere between $250 and $300.