by Bill Marsh
Victorian Connections
Just because you live in a state like Victoria, with its small land area and very little outback, it’s no reason to assume that you don’t have the need for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, and I’ll tell you why.
It was New Year’s Eve 1994, very early, at about two o’clock in the morning when we got the telephone call from my youngest son, Ian, who lived in Western Australia, to say that my other son, Neil, had had this accident on Rottnest Island.
It’s quite a long story really, but Neil was on Rottnest holidaying with his family. In fact, I’d spoken with him just the day before, on his mobile, and he was saying just what a great time they were all having. But Neil’s wife had gone back to the mainland to keep an appointment that day and Neil had stayed there, on Rottnest, with their children. Neil, his wife and their children had a cabin, and some, practically, life-long friends were also there, staying in another cabin, with their children. Neil had spent that day with his close friends and all the children had been playing games and what-not. Then by night, all the children were tired so they went to bed in Neil’s friend’s cabin and, as Neil rode off on a bicycle to go back to his own cabin, they said, ‘We’ll meet you on the beach tomorrow.’
On Rottnest Island they only have push-bikes. There’s no motor traffic on the island apart from the official stuff like a few buses and what-have-you. So that’s what Neil was riding, a push-bike.
It was a downhill ride from Neil’s friend’s cabin and we simply don’t know what happened. Neil could’ve hit a quokka (small wallaby), because they move around at night, or maybe the front wheel could’ve gone into a hole, because the place wasn’t lit. Well, it is lit now, but it wasn’t then. The police also ruled out foul play because his wallet and everything was still in his pocket when he was found.
So, we don’t actually know what caused Neil to have the accident, but he went straight over the handlebars and fell on his head. The bike wasn’t even damaged. This was before helmets were compulsory. After that they did make helmets compulsory. But he fell on his head, which rendered him unconscious, and the strange thing was, there wasn’t even a mark on him, so he wasn’t injured in any other way.
Luckily, a nursing sister and her husband were walking back from the town and that’s when they found Neil, lying unconscious. Of course, they didn’t know at that time if it could’ve been the result of foul play. But if they hadn’t found Neil he might well have laid there until daylight and he could’ve died. The nursing sister could tell that there was a real problem, so she got her husband to ride back into town, on Neil’s bike, to get help from the police and a doctor, which he did, and also an ambulance drove out to as near as they could, to pick up Neil.
Rather than wait until morning, the Flying Doctor was called and they took Neil straight to Jandakot Airport. Then, I suppose, he was transported by ambulance from there to Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, where he was put on life support. And that’s when we got the call.
Anyhow, my eldest son, who was with me at the time, he and I flew from Victoria to Western Australia on the first plane we could get, and my two daughters followed on a later flight.
But the brain injury was too great. Neil was kept alive until we all arrived, but he never regained consciousness. Then two days later, after all the various tests were done, he was pronounced brain dead. By that time the whole family was there. But one thing that I am thankful for is that, if it wasn’t for the Flying Doctor Service, Neil would never have reached the hospital alive and we would have never have reached his side in time.
Neil had just turned forty, the previous October, and I’d been over for his birthday party and he was as fit as a fiddle; a fine physical specimen. But people were not all that conscious of organ donation back then. It wasn’t publicised as it is now, so I asked, ‘Did Neil sign his licence as an organ donor?’
And the answer was, ‘No.’
I said, ‘Well, I feel that he should be an organ donor.’
And there were a couple of ums and ahs.
I said, ‘He’s going to be cremated, isn’t he? What good is his body going to be? You’re not going to preserve it, if it’s cremated.’
Of course, the organ donor people were there at the hospital, as were Neil’s doctors, and Neil’s doctors said, ‘We want you to understand that we’re always here for the patient and we don’t have any connection with the organ donor people, so it must be your decision.’
Then we found out that Neil also had an unusual blood group and I said to the doctor, ‘How’s that possible? My husband and I had perfectly ordinary blood groups and I know that Neil’s my son and I know my husband was his father.’
‘Well,’ the doctor said, ‘that’s quite possible. It’s not unusual.’
So finally the family came around to my way of thinking as regards to organ donation. And there was, in fact, a heart patient — a family man — with that same blood group, who was waiting and then there were two kidney people, and Neil’s bone tissue was also used. But they don’t take any organs that aren’t being waited for. His liver wasn’t taken. The only organs that were required at the time were the ones they took.
And that was all made possible because of the speed with which Neil had been transferred to Perth by the Flying Doctor Service — that his organs were then available to be donated to people awaiting transplants. That, at least, gives us some comfort. And, oddly enough, Neil’s organs were flown back to the eastern states; back to where he was born. So that was a strange one. But it was quite a remarkable thing and I do believe it helps the healing process — it really does — to know that the body is being used, and is made possible, to save someone else’s life.
In actual fact, I had a wonderful letter sent through the organ donor people. You don’t have any direct contact with the people who have received organs, but this lovely letter arrived and it said that this particular person — I don’t even know if it was a man or a woman — was looking at two legs, of the same length, for the first time in their life. And after a little more rehabilitation they were hoping to walk perfectly normally, for the first time in their life. And that was such a wonderful letter to receive. What’s more, Neil’s two children have grown up into the most delightful people, extremely well adjusted, and we all keep in close touch.
So that was one story. Now, there’s a second part to our close Victorian connection with the RFDS and it was that our granddaughter, Melissa — the daughter of my oldest son — was living on the central coast of Western Australia, at Carnarvon. Her husband was actually teaching there and, in 2001, six years after Neil’s accident, Melissa was riding a friend’s horse and the horse slipped. It came down with her on it, and her leg was crushed under the horse. The only way Melissa could get back for help was to get back up on the horse, which she managed to do with great difficulty.
As it turned out, Melissa’s leg was very badly broken and it needed a lot of work on it, as did her ankle. A rod was put in and all sorts of things, so she was literally screwed up. But the thing was, she kept on being terribly sick. I mean really, really sick and the doctors said, ‘Well, you don’t get sick with a broken leg.’
An ultrasound proved that Melissa, unbeknown to herself, was six weeks pregnant, which was why she was being so sick. So then they stopped all her treatment immediately because, being pregnant, she couldn’t have any more X-rays.
But it’s 900 kilometres from where she was at Carnarvon to the Royal Perth Hospital and the Royal Flying Doctor Service flew her up and down on numerous occasions and, as you’ll know, they never charge. They were quite wonderful, and she flew up and down with her leg in plaster for a lot of the time she was pregnant.
Actually, she spent a lot of time on those crutches because her leg was so crooked she couldn’t walk properly. She had a terrible time. But now, I’ve got a beautiful great-grandson. I go to Western Australia as often as possible, especially for birthdays, Christmas and weddings. And that’s just one of my great
-grandchildren. I’ve got another three in Melbourne.
And so that’s why I, for one, Lady Ena Macpherson, am such a staunch supporter of the RFDS.
Water, Water, Everywhere But…
Lionel: It was in about 2000 when all this happened. If we did the trip now we’d go later because I remember it was wintertime and it was freezing in the mornings and it was very wet. So I think it must’ve been around April or maybe a little bit earlier when we first set off from Nhill. There was just the three of us: Bill Day, Rex Bunge and myself — Lionel Ferris — and we only took one vehicle. The idea was to get up to Halls Creek, in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, then do the Canning Stock Route, which was something we’d talked about for quite a while.
Now, I’m just trying to think which way we went to get to Halls Creek because we were nearly a fortnight getting onto the stock route and another fortnight coming down. A lot of people go the other way, but we didn’t. We started at the northern end and came back in the opposite direction, if you get what I mean. But Bill Day’s got a fair account of it in his diary so you’d better let him fill in the gaps.
Bill: Well, before we start, you’ve sort of really got to know Lionel to appreciate what he’s all about. He’s a feller that consistently down-plays things. He’s unassuming to the extreme. In other words, what anybody else thinks is an important story, he just brushes it off as if it’s an everyday occurrence, or at least he tries to. Then he’s also got one of those really dry, wry senses of humour. Like he used to be a helper on some of our outback tours and, on those trips, one of the first things we’d do was to get everyone together and let them introduce themselves by telling something about their life, and Lionel used to always rock them by saying that he left school at the age of thirteen because, by then, he was old enough to realise that it was severely interfering with his education.
So that’s Lionel, and he’s got lots of sayings like that. But he’s a wizard musician — he can just about play anything — and yeah, he’s probably told you he’s a bachelor. And he’s a collector and, believe me, if Noah kept two of everything, I reckon Lionel’s gone one step better because I’d say he’s got just about three of everything, and in all sorts of conditions. You just really need to meet him one day.
But yeah, that trip was quite an experience for him, I’m sure.
Okay, so we headed off from Nhill in western Victoria. There was only the one vehicle and three of us: myself, another chap by the name of Rex Bunge and Lionel. We went up through the Gawler Ranges, across the Stuart Highway, over the Oodnadatta Track to Oodnadatta, right up through Dalhousie Springs, then out to Andado Station. Andado’s Molly Clarke’s station. It’s an extremely remote property out on the north-western edge of the Simpson Desert. Old Molly’s the owner of the place. She’s a bit over eighty now and she still lives out there. Then, from Andado we went back into Alice Springs for supplies and spent a couple of days there, then we crossed the Tanami Desert to Wolfe Creek, up to Halls Creek.
At Halls Creek we refuelled and so forth before we started off down the Canning Stock Route, and we were probably about four or five wells down when we heard that the stock route had been closed due to the wet weather. And boy-o-boy, was it wet. But we just kept plugging on because we’d heard that some people were still coming the other way. I mean, it wasn’t totally impassable or anything like that and we weren’t chopping the hell out of the place because most of the rain was down the bottom end, which we still had to get to, of course.
Then, not far from the bottom end, Lionel first started to show signs of getting, you know, something wrong with him. Yeah, just a bit of stress. And then, when he finally sort of said that he couldn’t pass any urine I thought, ‘Hello, we’ve got troubles here’ because basically he had urine retention.
Lionel: Of course, had I known I was going to have all the trouble, well, I wouldn’t have gone out into such an isolated area in the first place. But everything seemed to be working fine. Then as we went down the stock route I started having just a bit of trouble with my prostate. At first I didn’t say anything because I thought it might spoil things for everyone. But then, on the last part of the journey down the Canning, we were actually camping on the station property and that’s where it came on.
Still, I wasn’t too bad for a while. You know, I’d go for a walk about every hour or so and that seemed to keep me going. But before too long I had to walk more often and then it got to the stage where I couldn’t really walk at all and I just had to lay there. I couldn’t drink or eat anything either, not that I felt like it, anyway, mind you. But I had no idea you could get so crook with something as simple as that.
So then, it sort of knocked me for six really, and that’s when Bill and Rex decided they’d better get help. The trouble was, of course, we were still a long way from anywhere and so the first thing we had to think about was whether we’d go back or continue on. Anyway, I wasn’t too keen on retracing our steps so we opted to go on.
Bill: It was in the evening when Lionel sort of realised he had trouble. Then the next morning I got on the RFDS radio to the Flying Doctor base at Meekatharra and they advised us to go to Wiluna where there was a doctor and a hospital.
So that’s where we headed and because of the state of the track we did it with great difficulty. I tell you, I’ve never seen water running up hill, but it very nearly was, and it was still raining. Anyhow, we basically travelled non-stop to Wiluna and we got Lionel to the doctor there and they fitted a catheter to him, which relieved him greatly. And then, after the doctor removed the catheter, we thought, ‘Alright, well, he’ll be okay now.’
Still and all, the doctor suggested that we stay in Wiluna for two or three days just to keep an eye on things, which we did. Well, because of the wet conditions nobody was allowed out of town anyway so we had to stay there. In fact, it was so bad that the town had run out of fuel because no one could get in to supply them, and we were about the only ones that had any.
Lionel: Well, they finally got me to Wiluna and I went to see the doctor and he fitted me with a catheter until he thought he had me right. And I thought I was right, also. Everything seemed to be working as it should.
Bill: Lionel was quite convinced that he was fine by then, too. And after the doctor had given him the okay, we went to the coppers and they said, ‘Righto, well, you’re the only ones in town who’s got fuel — if you want to go, you can.’
By then the track was okay, so we took off and headed south and we stayed at Leonora overnight. It was still raining but Lionel seemed to be going well so we said, ‘Righto, we’ll start out going home along the Anne Beadell Highway.’
So we told the coppers at Leonora where we were going and they said, ‘Well, okay, but there’s already been somebody stuck out there so, you know, be careful and let us know when you get through.’
‘Okay,’ we said and so we went out east of Leonora to a little mining village — I can’t think of the name of the place now. Then about a day and a half later Lionel’s problem returned, only, this time, it was far more serious. Anyhow, Rex and I had a bit of a talk about the whole thing and we decided that we really had an emergency situation on our hands. So we called up the RFDS again and I’m not exactly sure which base station we got in contact with. Kalgoorlie would’ve been the closest place but it mightn’t have necessarily been the right time of the day for radio communications. Somehow I have an idea we couldn’t get in contact with either Meekatharra or Kalgoorlie on the low frequency so we used either 6890 and we got in contact with Port Augusta or it might’ve been 6950 and we got on to Alice Springs. I can’t remember which.
Anyway, they said, ‘Where’s the nearest airstrip?’
It was probably mid-afternoon by then, so we had to make a decision as to whether we’d go up to Neale Junction and north to Warburton or down south to Rawlinna, which is on the east-west railway line. Well, we had a bit of a think and we decided that if Lionel was really crook, then Rawlinna was at least hea
ding on our way home.
Now, seeing that the radio conditions where we were at that time were not really good because of the bad weather and the lightning and so forth we arranged with the RFDS that we’d phone them when we got to Rawlinna. And so we set out toward Rawlinna and, I tell you, the rain just got heavier and heavier.
Lionel: The weather had come in by then and we had to go through some pretty heavy downpours and, with so much rain, it formed huge waterholes all along the track. But, fortunately, it was solid underneath. I was pretty crook by then and so I was lying down in the back of the vehicle, a Nissan Patrol, and, oh, it was very rocky. In fact, one of the blokes likened it to driving over an everlasting cemetery because it seemed as if we were going over rocks the size of tombstones.
So, yes, it was terribly rough, particularly for me in my condition, and also, of course, you couldn’t see what was ahead of you, on the track, because there was so much water. Not only that, but another problem was that there were other tracks branching off the one we were on which confused the issue. Anyhow, luckily, Rex had brought his GPS — Global Positioning System — along and so we tracked ourselves with that, just in case we got lost. So we’d be going along and Rex would say, ‘Take the track on the right.’
And sometimes Bill would say, ‘Are you sure?’
And Rex would say, ‘Yes, I think so.’
So it was a good job that Rex had that GPS because even though by now it was at night, we couldn’t have navigated by the stars anyway, you see, because it was so overcast with all the rain.
Bill: Believe me, it was quite an eventful trip, in extremely difficult conditions, driving at night, through water, while trying to follow the track. To keep ourselves alert Rex and I took it in turns, driving two hours each. As for the state of the track, well, in the sandhill country it was alright but once we got out onto the actual Nullarbor Plain it got worse from the point of view that any shallow depression was covered with water. So where there was water racing across the track, before we attempted to drive through it, we had to get out and wade across to see how deep it was. And believe me, in the early hours of the morning it was freezing cold. What’s more, you didn’t know whether you were going to drop into a washaway or what.