by Bill Marsh
So I’d just started trying to locate the strip and the woman from the volunteer ambulance crew must’ve seen the plane up in the air and so she came back over the radio and said, ‘Air Ambulance. Air Ambulance, are you lost?’
Well, I mean, when something like that is broadcast over the radio network then every Tom, Dick, Harry and Mary knows that you’re lost. So I came back and, in a very embarrassed manner, I replied with, ‘Oh, I’m just having a little bit of difficulty in finding this strip.’
Then the ever-helpful woman from the ambulance crew comes back on again and she says, ‘Air Ambulance, Air Ambulance, we’re just over here.’
Which wasn’t much help at all because, if you’re in an aircraft and you’re hundreds of feet or so above the ground and you can’t even find the airstrip, how in the hell are you going to see someone waving at you to let you know that they’re ‘just over here’? Where’s over here? So yes, that was a little embarrassing for me and it also made me realise that while these ambulance volunteers really do try their best, sometimes they just don’t get it.
Another one, I suppose, that could cause confusion is the term to ‘hold position’. I was coming down from Port Pirie to Adelaide one time and a similar sort of confusion over terminology happened en route. Now, when you’re out and about, you often get diversions, and I was probably about 100 kilometres north of Adelaide — just a bit north of Port Wakefield — and I got a call that I had a Code One out of Renmark, which is over near the Victorian border, in the Riverland area of South Australia. A Code One’s an urgent response.
Anyhow, I was just about to call up Traffic Control to alter my flight plan and request a diversion to Renmark, when a second phone call came into the RFDS base saying that they had another Code One out at Wudinna. Wudinna’s west of Adelaide, over on the Eyre Peninsula. That meant we now had two Code Ones, but they were in opposite directions. Of course, this caused a real dilemma back at base and so, until they decided who was to go where, they called me back and said, ‘Please hold your position over Port Wakefield while we decide which place we’re going to send you to.’
And of course, being in an aircraft, the flight nurse just started laughing, because by saying, ‘Please hold your position’ — it almost came across like they wanted us to stop the aeroplane, dead still, in midair and hold it there until they’d decided where to send us. In reality, of course, what we were doing was holding our position by flying around in circles which, I may add, then had Air Traffic Control wondering what the hell was going on with this plane going around and around, circling over Port Wakefield.
Now, I’ll tell you this last one, though we’d better not mention any names. But this particular pilot had just moved from Port Augusta down to Adelaide. He was an excellent pilot and was always very efficient. You know, he was one of those guys whose motto may’ve been along the lines of: let’s get the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible so that the patient can receive treatment as soon as possible.
Anyhow, this pilot was in the King Air and he was asked to go to Keith, in the south-east of South Australia, to pick up a patient. Again, I must stress that it wasn’t an urgent flight. But from the air, a lot of these small towns look very much the same and they also have very similar-looking airstrips.
So the pilot flew down to Keith but, actually, he mistakenly landed a few miles short at another place called Tintinara. So he landed at Tintinara instead of Keith. And I suppose you’d have to say that, because of his efficient manner, this particular pilot could get a little bit impatient at times. So when he landed at Tintinara and there’s no ambulance in sight, he gets on the radio and says, ‘Where’s this bloody ambulance? We’re here and you’re not.’
And the ambulance crew comes back and they say, ‘Where are you? We’re at the airstrip, waiting.’
So he came back and said, ‘Well, I’m here and you’re not.’
‘Well, we’re here and you’re not,’ they replied.
Then he thought he’d better take a pause and have a bit of a think about things. And that’s when he worked out that he’d landed at Tintinara instead of Keith.
‘Won’t be long,’ he said.
Wouldn’t be Alive
My name is Alex Hargans and I had my ninety-third birthday two weeks ago. These days I’m aching a bit with osteoporosis but I’m still going to have a new hip put in in a few months’ time and the doctor told me that I’ll be the oldest person he’s ever performed that sort of operation on. So there you go.
But what I want to talk about is that, in the previous Flying Doctors book, there was a story titled ‘A Piece o’ Piss’. It was all about a big head-on accident, involving an elderly couple, out on the dirt road between Halls Creek and Fitzroy Crossing, up in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. I believe it was told by a friend of Penny Ende’s, who’s the nursing wife of the Flying Doctor pilot who attended that accident. The pilot’s name was Jan Ende. Well, that story was about me and my wife, Edna, and I’d like to tell my side of things because, to this day, I truly believe that if it hadn’t been for the flying skills of Jan Ende, the RFDS pilot, I wouldn’t be alive.
Okay then, here we go. Well, back in 1973, the wife, Edna, and I decided that we’d like to go on a big outback trip in my fairly new V8 Fairmont. So we left our home, here in Bathurst, which is in the central east of New South Wales, and we headed up into southwestern Queensland, to Charleville, then on to the Stockman’s Hall of Fame at Longreach, before getting on to the Barkly Highway, which came out just above Tennant Creek. That’s where you’ll find the memorial to John Flynn, these days.
From there we headed north along the Stuart Highway to Darwin. We fossicked around there for a while then we drove back down to Katherine and took the Victoria Highway across into northern Western Australia before heading south, down the Great Northern Highway to Halls Creek.
Mind you, I don’t know why they call them highways because they’re not up to scratch as far as highways go. Back then, most of them weren’t much more than poorly graded, corrugated, gravel roads, with lots of potholes which were overflowing with that very fine dusty dirt they describe as bulldust. I might add that they’re not too wide either so when you come across one of those huge cattle tucks, or road trains as they’re known, you’ve got to be extremely careful, as I was to find out.
Anyhow, our aim was to go and have a look at the tourist resort place of Broome, over on the west coast, then return to Halls Creek and go across the Tanami Track to Alice Springs, then back home again to Bathurst.
Well, we were on our way to Broome and we’d pulled up for petrol at Halls Creek and I was talking to the owner of the place there and he said, ‘Do you mind if I give you a bit of free advice?’
‘I don’t mind at all,’ I said. ‘I’m always interested in a bit of free advice.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘from here on a lot of road trains use this road and there’s also a lot of bulldust and these fellers know the track like the back of their hand so they don’t slow down in the bulldust and there’s been a few accidents lately involving people from the east coast who stop and wait for the dust to clear before they move on. And while they’ve stopped they’ve been hit by someone coming up from behind them. So my advice to you is,’ he said, ‘whatever you do, don’t stop. If you come across one of these road trains just slow down a bit, but don’t stop.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Thanks for that.’
And so we headed off towards Fitzroy Crossing. Then along the way we saw one of the big road trains coming toward us and it was drafting up a huge cloud of bulldust. So I switched on my headlights and I slowed down and kept well over to my left, off near the edge of the road.
Well, the bloke at the petrol station had been right because the bulldust that the road train kicked up was so thick I could only see about two car lengths in front of me.
Anyway, just as the prime mover had almost passed us, I caught this flash of a nickel-plated bumper bar coming straight a
t me, overtaking the road train in all the dust. It turned out to be a feller driving an old Holden and we found out later that he was towing a great big trailer with no brakes on. He also didn’t have his headlights on. My estimate would be that he must’ve been doing at least 100 kilometres per hour and we were probably doing about 40. So the closing time was pretty brief.
Even so, I think I managed to get my foot on the brake. Though that didn’t do much good because, when we collided, the engine of the Fairmont got knocked back under the seat and my right hip got displaced about 6 inches. Most of the damage was done to the driver’s side of my vehicle, so I was pinned in the car. I couldn’t move at all. I had the dash up under my chin, with one knee threaded up through the steering wheel. Still, I managed to say to Edna, ‘Could you get out and undo the bolts underneath the seat so that I can get the seat back?’
And even though, due to the impact of the seatbelt, Edna had a number of broken ribs, she still managed to get out of the car on her side, the passenger’s side. Anyway, she went and had a bit of a look around, then she came back and said, ‘Look, the back of the car’s broken and the tyres are flat, and it’s on the ground.’
Now, because his truck had kicked up so much bulldust, the first driver hadn’t seen a thing and so he’d kept on driving. So there I was, stuck there, out on this pretty lonely stretch of road and, I can assure you, it was very painful.
Another thing that really, really frightened me was that I always carried my spare petrol on the roof-rack of the Fairmont, in a couple of those spitfire wind tanks. And when the collision occurred, the roof-rack kept going and petrol went everywhere. So all the while I was trapped inside the car, and I couldn’t move, there was this strong smell of petrol around the place. And my immediate thought was that: ‘If somebody decides to light a fag to steady their nerves, then I’m well and truly done for.’
So I said to Edna, ‘Go and see the people in the other car and tell them not to strike a match.’
And Edna went over to speak to them, but I think the driver of the old Holden had a fractured skull and a ruptured spleen or something so he wasn’t too interested in lighting up a fag at that stage. And the two women that were with him, they both had broken arms, so even if they wanted a fag — they couldn’t light a match because they couldn’t use their arms.
Then after a little while a drilling rig team came along. I forget how many vehicles they were travelling in but they were in a bit of a convoy and they stopped and chucked a big hook through where the windscreen used to be and they pulled the dash away from me. Then finally, they got my knee out from under the steering wheel and dragged me out through the back window of the Fairmont.
The next thing, a PMG (Postmaster-General) bloke came along and he had a two-way radio, so he got on to that and he sent out a call. Now, I may be a little bit wrong here but I think that the manager of Christmas Creek Station heard this call and then he came out with a tall antenna on the back of his utility and it was he that actually called the Flying Doctor base in Derby. And naturally the RFDS said they’d fly out as soon as humanly possible.
And the rest of the story is pretty much as it was written up in ‘A Piece o’ Piss’. You know, about how the drilling rig people and the PMG bloke, along with the Manager from Christmas Creek Station, they blocked off a section of the road and everyone who stopped got out of their vehicles and helped knock down the ant hills and clear the stones and stuff off a straight section of the road so that the RFDS plane could land.
Then Jan Ende flew out with the doctor and a flight nurse and he managed to put down the Queen Air aeroplane on that rough bit of straight road. And then came the other real scary bit with our dodgy escape out of there. Because, in reality, the bit of road Jan had to take off along was far too short for the type of aeroplane he was flying, particularly with its increased passenger weight. So he really had to gun the Queen Air to get it back in the air again and he just made it because, in doing so, the propellers shredded the shrubbery as he inched the plane off the ground.
Both the vehicles were written off, of course, and I never saw my fairly new V8 Fairmont again. Anyhow, Jan and I have kept in touch ever since the accident. Incidentally, he’s coming over in August, so I’ll probably see him again then.
I’ve since lost my mate, Edna. I lost her about three years ago now and had she lived for another couple of months, we would’ve been married for sixty-nine years. And, you know, life’s pretty lonely without Edna — real lonely, in fact. And we never had a row, not over all that time. Never a row, and we did everything together, everything that is, apart from the five years and sixty-five days I was serving in the Air Force during the war.
But there’s a little bit of a twist to the story about that accident and it’s one that I haven’t really mentioned too much before. It’s got to do with the generosity of humanity. Because, see, Edna and I, we were married back in 1934, in the Depression era. We had a very basic wedding, at the Methodist Manse in Bathurst, with just a couple of witnesses. There were no bridal bouquets or any of that sort of stuff, just a vow and a kiss and that sealed it for life. We were married, and that was it.
As you might know, things were very bad in 1934, you know, with the Depression going on. Unemployment was rife and so times were tough. Actually, I remember when Edna used to go shopping with just sixpence in her purse — yes, just sixpence — and she’d buy threepence worth of soup bones and threepence worth of soup vegetables, and she’d make up a huge pot of soup and we’d try and string that out.
Anyhow, the way the dole worked in those days was that if you weren’t resident in a town, you could only get the dole once. So the people that were on the dole had to line up outside the police station and get interrogated by the cops. You know, they’d ask, ‘Why did you lose your last job?’ and ‘Where was your last job?’ All that sort of stuff, and some of them were quite strict about it. And so, about lunchtime, fellers who were down and out would come around and they’d say to Edna, ‘Missus, I’ll cut you a barrow load of wood in exchange fer a feed.’
And Edna, being Edna, would always reply with, ‘Oh, there’s no need for you to cut wood for us, but you’re welcome to stay for a feed.’
‘Oh, thank you, Missus,’ they’d say. ‘Thank you very much.’
When that happened, Edna would just add an extra cup of water into the soup pot so there was enough to go around.
So that was away back, during the Depression era, in the 1930s. Then in 1973, after we had the accident out on the Halls Creek to Fitzroy Crossing road, whilst Edna and I were recovering in the Derby Hospital — and I must say that they treated us extremely well up there — I got a letter from one of the down-andout blokes that’d visited us a few times during the Depression. And in the letter he wrote, ‘I don’t know how you’re fixed for money, but I read about your accident. I remember your kindness to me, the meals that I had at your place and I’m enclosing $20, just in case you’re a bit short.’
So, wasn’t that fantastic? And he was a Scotchman, too.
Final Flight
There’s one really memorable trip that sticks in my mind. That was back on 9 February 1981 and I guess it turned out to be one of the main reasons why I gave flying up, in the end.
Of course, I’d been flying for a long time before then. Actually, I first joined the RFDS as a flight nurse back in 1976. That was up here, in Derby. Then after two years of constant flying, I just wanted a break and go overseas for three months with some friends. I already had six weeks’ holiday due to me, then I wanted to add to that another six weeks’ leave without pay. Anyhow, the Health Department, in Perth, who administered all those sorts of things — and from a long, long way down south, I may add — well, they just said, ‘You can’t do that. We won’t give you leave without pay.’
So, then I resigned and I decided to take a whole year off. And when I was finishing up, the lady down in Perth who did the interviewing and the hiring of people for the Health Department, she
said, ‘Don’t worry, when you come back, just give me a call and I’m sure we can do something for you.’
‘Okay, thanks,’ I said and off I went and had a wonderful year of travel.
Then when I returned from overseas I went to stay in my parents’ house at Mareeba, in far north Queensland, and it was a desperate case of, ‘Well, seeing I’ve got no money left, I’d better get a job.’
So, I wrote to the lady in Perth telling her that I was back in Australia and was enquiring about another position. I also explained that I wasn’t available for about three or four weeks because my parents had gone on holidays and I’d promised to look after their house and garden. Next thing I know, a telegram arrives from Perth saying, ‘Come immediately. We’ve got a position available at the Port Hedland RFDS base.’
Then I had to telegram back to say, ‘Look, as I stated in my letter, I’m not available. I can’t do anything for another three weeks.’
Anyhow, so then I thought they’d naturally go ahead and give the position to someone else. But when my parents returned home, the position was still available so I went to Port Hedland. But I didn’t like it that much because Hedland was all emergency stuff. They didn’t fly clinics out of Hedland whereas they did out of Derby and it was the clinic work — the people-contact — that I used to enjoy so much. I mean, you know, the emergency stuff was also in Derby and you had to do it, but I didn’t thrive on it, if you understand what I mean. Anyhow, I did four months in Port Hedland and then, when a position came vacant up at Derby, I jumped at it. So yeah, in all I’d done my first two years with the RFDS in Derby, took a year off, and then I started up there again in 1979. And I was very pleased about that.
But the constant flying does tend to wear you down after a while, and it was a couple of years later, on 9 February 1981, when we got the call from Balgo Aboriginal Community. By then we’d increased our RFDS fleet in Derby. We now had two pilots and two aeroplanes — a Queen Air and a Beechcraft Baron — though, mind you, we still had just the two flight nurses. But that’s the way it went in those days, and so I was one of the flight nurses.