by Bill Marsh
But the attitude of the woman hadn’t changed one little bit. ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘it’s alright.’ And she packed the placenta up and she wrapped the baby up and she wandered off to get a taxi downtown so that she could catch the next bus straight back to Tibooburra.
I tell you, it’s amazing some of the mums you come across. She was a tough one, alright. And this was her tenth child. But I did feel for her poor husband. I imagine he would’ve been in the bad books for quite a while, after she got home.
So that was one incident, and the second one was…well, actually, you do have to laugh at times, don’t you? As I said, it’s another one about the strength of spirit but in a very different and funny sort of way.
This happened around Easter time and we got a call from the bemused nurses up at Tibooburra saying that they’d just been out in the ambulance and picked up a man who’d been wandering down the Barrier Highway in quite a distressed state. Now, it was extremely hot at the time and, as it turned out, this man was schizophrenic and he’d either broken out, or got out, of a Psychiatric Hospital near Morisset, which is just south of Newcastle, on the central coast of New South Wales. How on earth he found his way out to Tibooburra, I couldn’t tell you. I wouldn’t have a clue.
Anyhow, he’d told the nurses at Tibooburra that the reason why he was in the area was that he was off to pick pears. Now, mind you, we are talking about the far north-western corner of New South Wales and, as you might imagine, the nearest pear orchard could’ve been anywhere up to 1000 or so kilometres away. So I think he was in the wrong place.
But, that’s not all. What really got the nurses going was that this poor man was not only off to pick pears but he’d also somehow got it in his head that he was the Easter Bunny. So when they found him, he was walking down the road stark naked, apart from wearing his underpants on his head and, for added effect, he’d stuck a carrot up where he shouldn’t have — up his rectum. But the nurses said that he wasn’t violent or anything because, apparently, when they went out to get him, they simply stopped and asked him if he’d like to hop in the back of the ambulance and in he hopped, no problem at all.
Anyhow, first of all, we found out where this man’s father was and contacted him because we thought he might be worried about his missing son. But when we got on to his father and explained the circumstances all he said was, ‘Yes, he does that kind of thing, quite a bit. You should’ve seen what he did last Christmas.’
So then, we flew out to get him and we took him back to Sydney and, again, he got in the plane, no problems at all. But, oh, he was totally off the planet. He had no idea where he was or who he was, other than believing he’d come out to Tibooburra to pick pears and that he was the Easter Bunny. And, what’s more, there was no way he was going to let us take his underpants off his head or take the carrot out of his rectum. In his mind, he was the Easter Bunny and that was it. So he stayed that way the whole trip back to Sydney. But you’d think it’d be uncomfortable, wouldn’t you, particularly with the carrot.
The Flying Padre’s Story
You may well ask, What connection does an American have with the Australian Royal Flying Doctor Service? Well, to begin with my wife, Becky, is one of several Americans who have worked for the RFDS. She’s currently the Tourist Facility Supervisor at the Broken Hill base. The Museum there also identifies Reverend Dr John Flynn’s ethos of a Mantle of Safety to serve the people of the outback. That not only includes pilots, doctors and nurses, but also ministers on patrol. Over the years these Padres have travelled by everything from camel, bicycle, motor bike, and automobile — as Flynn’s successor, Reverend Fred McKay, did in an old International truck. Then there have been a few more fortunate ones, like myself, who fly an aeroplane. I’m known as a Flying Padre. I can reach a destination in hours where, in earlier days, it could’ve taken days or even weeks.
I’m the seventh Flying Padre, with the Uniting Church’s Far-West Ministry — currently in its fortieth year. I am currently flying our third aircraft, a 1974 high-wing, single-engine Cessna 182, which is a great aeroplane for remote airstrips and extreme conditions.
But before I tell my story, just a bit of background. I’m originally from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, USA, which is where you’ll find industries such as Quaker Oatmeal and Collins Radio. My first love was aviation but, at the age of eighteen, when I took my physical for the ‘draft’ I was told, ‘Sorry, you measure 203 centimetres. We can’t take you for the Air Force or any of the services because you’re just too tall.’
Then, when I got on the bus to return back home, I remember very clearly asking myself, ‘So what else do you want to do with your life?’ And an internal voice — and I suppose it had greater dimensions — replied, ‘Well, I’ve always liked church. I’ll go into church work.’ It wasn’t an angry voice but more of an ‘Okay, God, you win, take me’ kind of thing. So that was the way I decided to go.
Then Becky and I met at university, after she’d returned from a Brazilian high school exchange. She saw me singing in a musical group for their orientation week. Then in the second week I met her at a church coffee house. It was love at first sight. That night, I walked her home, and I’ve been walking her home ever since. We married in 1969.
Becky was also aware of my passion for aviation. My first posting, following seminary, was to a small village up near the Canadian border. There was a little airport and flight instructor in Milan, New Hampshire. So when Becky got a job as a State Social Worker, it was just a case of, ‘Hey, we’ve got a little money. Go get your flying lessons.’ Six hours of lessons later I flew my solo and I finished my licence in quick time.
But we soon learnt that hot summers were short, usually only a week or two, and the long, dark nights of winter could last for months. It could reach 40° below zero (Fahrenheit!) and it seemed like shovelling snow was everyone’s hobby. I could tell you about the time I tried to keep the Volkswagen’s engine oil warm overnight. I was advised to plug in a light bulb by the engine, then put a blanket over it. Not only was the oil warmed but, a couple of hours later, the blanket and the car caught fire. The good news is that, conveniently, there was snow everywhere and we saved the car by throwing snow on the engine compartment. I could also tell you about the nails in that house becoming so cold in the dead of winter that they’d contract and pop like pistols being fired at close range. Ministry can be so exciting!
So, it was a difficult two years for us. The highlight was my learning to fly and organising a successful 1974 air show. Four groups benefited: our own Methodist parish, an orphanage in South Carolina, the Catholic church down the road, and Father Tony Gendusa, a flying priest in Rabaul, PNG (Papua New Guinea).
However, before another New Hampshire winter came Becky and I would move to Melbourne, Australia, where we thawed, retrained and tested ourselves in many ways. I had accepted a hospital chaplaincy internship at the Austin Hospital, Heidelberg. After eighteen months, I happily moved on to teach at St Leonard’s College, in East Brighton. Becky worked at Trans-Australia Airlines.
After two and a half years living in Australia we moved back to the States, to Atlanta, Georgia, where our son, Matt, was born. Then when my residency in Pastoral Counselling was finished, I became the Director of the Atlanta District Counselling Service. It gave me eight years of building skills, which would come in very handy later. We left ‘Hotlanta’ for central New Hampshire for seven more years of good pastoral town and rural country work before I ended up serving as a Church Pastor near Boston, Massachusetts.
Boston was a tough placement especially when you see churches losing their vision and wearing down their memberships. You could liken it to when someone you love loses their way. So, for a break, we came over to Australia for holidays. We were at Narromine, in central New South Wales, visiting the parents of an Australian friend who was studying in Boston, and I remember as we drove past the local airport, on the way to the Dubbo Zoo, our friend’s father asked, ‘What’s your hobby?’ And I told him tha
t I truly loved flying and church work.
‘Well,’ he replied, ‘you know, we’ve got a Flying Padre position open in Broken Hill.’
And I asked three questions: ‘What’s a Flying Padre?’, ‘Who broke Broken Hill?’ and ‘Where do I apply?’ Then it took eight months or so but everything got resolved and we started work in Broken Hill on 1 May 2002. And though tragedies do happen, the job’s a delight; the people have been absolutely wonderful. Here in the outback, I don’t have to shovel snow, and I haven’t set fire to my automobile…not yet, anyway.
Now, to my story: I was minding my business one cold and blustery Sunday in, gosh, I think it was back in September 2003, when the news first reported that Mrs Luscombe had gone missing. She was a Broken Hill resident who suffered from dementia. She lived alone, on the south side, near the Broken Hill Airport, where a carer, a neighbour and some relatives kept an eye on her.
Every day she’d walk part of the perimeter of the airport with her dog, Dazzie, a blue heeler cross, and occasionally a neighbour’s dog would join them. But when Mrs Luscombe hadn’t shown up by dark a neighbour became concerned, even more so when the neighbour’s dog returned home alone. Basically, all Mrs Luscombe was wearing for weather protection that day was a light jacket. So the police were called, the relatives were notified and a full-blown ground search was organised that Sunday evening.
Becky’s office, at the RFDS base, was just a stone’s throw from the search headquarters at the airport. So, with still no sign of Mrs Luscombe by Monday morning, after dropping Becky off at work, I stopped in and — as a New South Wales Regional Police Chaplain — I offered to fly my Cessna in an aerial search. I was well aware that people had previously gone missing into the vast surrounding desert, never to be seen again. It was an urgent situation.
Because of Mrs Luscombe’s condition, she wore a signal-emitting necklace that sent out a beep, beep, beep to a tuned receiver. One of the relatives said that they had put fresh batteries in the necklace. We only hoped that she was still wearing it. So I got into my Cessna with a couple of SES (State Emergency Service) people who had a radio and an antenna receiver system to track the necklace. We took off and spiralled south and north from the airport, thinking that Mrs Luscombe and Dazzie, the dog, were more likely to head toward town rather than going out in the bush. But, after two and a half hours without a response from our receiver I thought, ‘Well, surely they’ll find her in their wide-cast ground search.’
But, you know, the ground search continued on Tuesday then on the Wednesday and still without any sign of her. By Friday morning the weather had warmed up and I got a Police Search Director’s call saying, ‘Look, we’re going to have to shut down the search but, for the sake of the family, would you mind taking just one more aerial run?’
I was happy to do that. They double-checked the radio equipment to make sure everything was working properly. It was another very windy day and I wanted to go slowly to do a visual search as well. I started my increasing spirals and then laps on the southern side at about 700 feet above the ground. Then we were about 10 or 12 miles south of Broken Hill when Josh, the chap who had the signal meter said, ‘Turn left!’ So I did and he called out, ‘Mark it.’
Then, Leslie, the SES volunteer in the back of the Cessna, marked the latitude and longitude from her hand-held GPS (Global Positioning System). We did this four times, from different directions, measuring the numbers each time. Below us were two water-filled dams and a couple of powerlines. Being windy I wanted to avoid getting fried on the wires, but I got down as low as possible and when I saw something of colour in the water, my first thought was, ‘Gee, I hope that’s not her.’
At this stage, because we were just tracking a piece of jewellery that might’ve popped off as she’d walked along, we couldn’t positively confirm if we’d found Mrs Luscombe or not. When we landed back at the search base we marked out the spot on a map and handed copies to the ground searchers. Then I waited on the ground for another ten minutes before I overflew the motor bike searchers and others and I circled the exact spot to give them direction. And that’s where they located Mrs Luscombe, lying near the dam.
By the time I landed back at the airport I still hadn’t heard the actual outcome. But as I was tying the Cessna down, one of the ground staff, who was nicknamed ‘Flies’, came over and his voice broke as he said, ‘They found her…and she’s alive!’
I was then informed that Mrs Luscombe had been found lying in a roughly dug hole, dehydrated, sunburnt and semi-conscious, though still communicative. But because of the rough terrain, the SES people had to get a four-wheel-drive vehicle in there to retrieve her. From there she was driven with as much care as possible to a waiting ambulance, before going on to hospital. So we all felt pretty good and when I returned to the search headquarters, the extremely anxious family was now shedding tears of relief and happiness.
So that’s how Mrs Luscombe was found. I believe she’s now living in Adelaide with family, and has had extra years of life, care and love. And with the Uniting Church Flying Patrol celebrating its fortieth year, what a memory that particular event is for me. And to think that it’s the same satisfaction felt, almost daily, by the Flying Doctors’ staff. I just wish everyone could be a part of such an experience.
But, of course, Dazzie, the dog, was the real hero. Apparently, it was he who’d led Mrs Luscombe to water. Then, when a hole was dug, that faithful dog had laid on top of her to keep her warm enough to avoid freezing.
Now, don’t quote me on this. But I heard a story sometime later that one of the family came to visit Mrs Luscombe and because she was a victim of dementia, naturally, they didn’t want to scold her for what had happened. But quite understandably, the family member said to her, ‘You know, you really gave us a fright.’
And in a moment of clarity, I understand Mrs Luscombe’s response was, ‘Well, you know, I didn’t have such a good week either.’
The Souvenir
In 1958 I was working up on the west coast of the Cape York Peninsula at a place called Rutland Plains Station, which is about 180 mile north of Normanton. The property, itself, was about 1500 or 1600 square mile, and it bordered on an Aboriginal settlement, up on the Mitchell River, called Kowanyama.
Now, I did two long droving trips that year, of about five weeks each, taking bullocks from Kowanyama, down the Mungana Stock Route to the railhead at Mungana. Anyhow, just before the last trip we were mustering up some eight hundred bullocks and the Head Stockman from Rutland, well, he came to me on the quiet and he said, ‘Now, Goldie, I could use a feller like you, so there’s a job here after yer’ve delivered this mob, if you’d like it.’
Good. That was fine by me but then, during the droving trip, one of my molars — I forget now if it was a pre-molar or a back molar, but, anyway — it started aching. And I tell you what, if you’ve got a toothache while you’re out droving and you just can’t go to sleep, you generally end up doing a night watch for someone else, you know. But anyway, after we had the bullocks trucked at Mungana, I came back to Rutland to work there and, at that stage, the molar wasn’t quite as bad.
But then, after about another three months, this toothache came back and it began getting worse and worse until, eventually, an abscess grew on it and I had a huge swollen jaw. And, you know, with all the pain, you try everything from putting tobacco in the thing or if you drink enough brandy or whisky that deadens it sometimes, and cloves, they’re good, too.
At that time we were at a mustering camp on Rutland Plains Station named One Mile, which was about 15 mile from the homestead. It was called the One Mile because it was 1 mile from the Kowanyama boundary. So the Station Manager from Rutland said that my best chance would be for me to catch up with the Flying Doctor at the Kowanyama Aboriginal settlement, on his next monthly clinic visit.
‘Okay,’ I mumbled. ‘Good.’ Then he told me to ride into Rutland homestead on such and such day and he’d drive me the 20-odd miles over to the settlement to me
et the Flying Doctor.
Well, the day finally arrived and I rode into the homestead and the manager drove me over. It was dark when we got to Kowanyama and the doctor, Tim O’Leary, his name was, well, he had all these Murries — that’s what they called the local Aborigines — he had them all lined up, giving them injections, checking them over and so forth, doing a clinic. Now, Tim was a great character and a very well known and liked doctor with the Royal Flying Doctor Service, and after he’d finished treating all the Murries, I remember the manager saying to him, ‘Tim, I’ve got a white stockman here, Jack Goldsmith, aged twenty-four and he’s got a jaw like a lumpy jaw bullock.’ Lumpy jaw’s a disease that bullocks get.
‘So you’re Jack Goldsmith?’ Tim O’Leary said.
And I said, ‘Hello, so what have you heard?’
Then he gave a sort of grin. ‘Oh, only rumours,’ he said, ‘just rumours.’ Then, he said, ‘Okay, let’s have a look at this tooth.’ And after he had a bit of a poke around he said, ‘I shouldn’t even attempt to pull that molar. It’s got an abscess on it and a bad one at that.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’m not leaving here until it’s out.’ And I tell you, I wasn’t going to budge an inch until that molar was gone.
Anyhow, he says, ‘Okay then, I’ll give it a go. Sit on that box.’ And there was this box alongside a post in the building; just a wooden box, you know, about 70 pound or 50 pound, in weight. It’s what they used to put butter into.
‘Take your belt off,’ Tim said.
Now, I didn’t know what he was on about but I took me belt off, anyway, and I gave it to him. Then he got the belt and he tied my head to the post, by the forehead, so I couldn’t move. So he strapped my head to the post, and then he started to work on the tooth, with just a huge pair of pliers, under the light of a dull globe, hanging down from the ceiling. And he pushed and he pulled and he yanked it this way and that way. I doubt if he even used anaesthetic and, if he did, it didn’t do nothing to ease the pain. By this stage I was starting to feel pretty faint with it all, I can tell you. But the molar wouldn’t budge.