The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories

by Bill Marsh

  With Gibb River Station being the closest place to where the Main Roads crew were camped, they drove him in and asked if we’d call the Flying Doctor Service and get them to come out and treat him. In the meanwhile, the guy asked for some morphine to ease the pain. Apparently he’d been badly burnt before with a motor bike accident and so this poor bloke he just knew what he was going to have to go through with all these terrible burns. You could actually tell that he was thinking, ‘Oh, not again’, if you know what I mean.

  Back in those days, the RFDS medical chests contained morphine in both injectable and tablet form; the injections, of course, being the much quicker acting. I mean, we don’t have morphine in the medical chests any more because of the chance of it being abused. But I just couldn’t bring myself around to give him an injection, no way, so I gave it to him as a tablet instead. Then, just before the RFDS plane came to pick him up, it came out in discussion that we actually did have morphine in the injectable form. But I just told him that I didn’t have the confidence to give him a shot. ‘Oh bugger!’ he said. ‘If I’d known about that I would’ve given myself the injection!’

  Oh, he was a big bikie sort of feller. So it was obvious that it wouldn’t have worried him too much to have given himself an injection. But there was no way that I was going to give him one.

  Then there was another occasion when I just couldn’t give an injection. It’s one that really stands out in my mind. It was with a little Aboriginal boy, Devon. He’s still around town, here in Derby, but he was only about seven months old when this happened. It was also during the time that my husband and I were out on Gibb River Station.

  As usual, these things always seem to happen in the wet season. I don’t know why, but the wet’s always the worst time for accidents and illness and so forth. Anyhow, Devon’s people — his Aboriginal people — came up from Mount Barnett Station and they were all playing cards with our lot at Gibb River Station. Then, as it does quite often in the wet, a huge storm hit us in the afternoon and the house creek just went whoosh and the water level came straight up. We were then flooded in which meant that these Aboriginal people couldn’t get back across the house creek to get out to the main road to go home. So they were stranded, and they had this little baby, Devon. He was just there with his grandma and so he wasn’t being breastfed or anything. And because they weren’t supposed to be staying overnight they hadn’t brought along any of the baby formula to feed him with.

  Anyhow, they brought this baby, Devon, up to me and asked if I had any baby formula, which we didn’t. At that time we didn’t even stock baby formula in our store on Gibb River. I tell you, after that we certainly always did. Anyhow, oh, this poor little baby, he was just so sick and I noticed that he had a swollen fontanelle — you know, the little bulging part in his head. Not only that, but he was also very lethargic which to me straight away signified that he could well have had meningitis.

  So I got on to the Flying Doctor base in Derby and they suggested that I go to the medical chest and give him an injection. Now, you’re supposed to put the injection in the bum, but I just couldn’t do it, and especially not to a little baby, no matter how sick he looked. I’ve seen one of these injections given and, from the reaction, it was really difficult to get the needle into someone, plus it hurt like hell. So you know, I just said to the doctor, ‘I’m really, really sorry but no, I can’t; not to a little baby like that.’ I said, ‘I just can’t give him an injection. I just can’t do it. Is there any other way of treating him?’

  Anyhow, we then had to put little Devon on 1000 micrograms of penicillin, as a liquid, which, mind you, is a huge dose of penicillin for a child. But to make matters even worse, with all the rain and the creek having risen so much, the Flying Doctor pilot couldn’t land on our strip because it was too wet.

  And the Aboriginal people kept saying, ‘Why can’t they come?’

  ‘They can’t come,’ I tried to explain, ‘because the airstrip needs to dry out before the Flying Doctor aeroplane can land on it.’

  ‘Then why can’t they get a chopper (helicopter) to come out for him?’

  ‘They can’t,’ I said. ‘They just can’t. It’s too overcast for even a chopper to get in.’

  Really, there was nothing we could do but sit and wait until the airstrip dried out because, basically, we were stranded. Of course, in the meantime this little fella, Devon, was really struggling. Then I remembered that we had some baby yoghurt in at the clinic and so we fed him with some of this baby yoghurt mixed with water. We also had Sunshine milk but we didn’t give him that because it probably would’ve made him sicker. And dear me, he’d just look at you with this big pair of eyes and your heart just went out to him. He was just so sick, the poor little man.

  Then — and my memory’s a bit vague here — it was either the next morning or the next afternoon when the RFDS were able to get a plane in. By then the weather had cleared and the house creek had gone down. The house creek does that. It just goes up and down, up and down, like a yo-yo, with each storm, if you know what I mean. But with the Gibb River Station airstrip, it only needs a few hours of sun and it’s alright. So they flew in and they got little Devon and they took him into Derby Hospital, with his grandma.

  And Hugh Leslie — who was the RFDS doctor at the time — well, he rang me after and he said, ‘Cheryl, you did a really, really good job.’ He said, ‘He has got meningitis but I think he’ll be okay.’

  So I felt really proud and very relieved about that, and Devon’s nanna also told me, ‘Oh, Missus,’ she said, ‘you shoulda seen him. When they bin give him that bottle, he bin like it’s all he wanted.’

  And that really sticks out in my mind because meningitis is pretty deadly, you know. The poor little fella could’ve easily died. I really should’ve given him the needle but you know, again, I just didn’t have the confidence. So that’s why these days when I see Devon around town I always get a good feeling about that. I guess that he’d probably be about fourteen by now, maybe fifteen.

  But there was one old lady who I did give needles to, and that was quite a funny one, in the end really. Old Maggie, it was. She was a beautiful old Aboriginal lady. She used to work in my garden and things like that when we were out on Gibb River Station. And this time she had a terrible dental abscess, so we rang up and we were told that she had to be given one penicillin injection per day, for four straight days.

  On the first of the four days, she came into my house and she was nearly as bad as me, so to help her relax I got her to lie down on the bed and I said, ‘Wriggle your toes, Maggie. Get ready.’

  So she wriggled her toes and I took a deep breath to prepare myself and then one…two…three…and I gave her the first of these daily needles. Anyhow, so that day went okay. We survived it, both Maggie and I. So that was day one. The next day Maggie seemed even more tense, you know, which of course made me feel even worse. So we go through the same procedure: ‘Lie down, Maggie. Wriggle your toes,’ and I somehow managed to give her the needle. So we both survived day two. Then on the third day Maggie arrives and she’s even more tense than the day before and I’m even worse still. She’s shaking. I’m shaking. She breaks out in a cold sweat. I’m already in a cold sweat. But we survived the experience…just. Then come the fourth day she arrives even more tense than the previous three days put together, and by now of course I’m just a complete wreck. Absolute. So I asked her straight out, ‘You feel pretty good today, Maggie? You feel okay now?’

  And she looked at me with such a look of great relief on her face and she said, ‘Yeah, I’m feelin’ real good Missus.’

  ‘Good,’ I said, ‘then how about we won’t worry about the needles today, aye, Maggie?’

  ‘Nah, Missus!’ she said. ‘We don’t worry about that no more!’

  She didn’t want them. I didn’t want to give them. And when I told her ‘No needles today’ she was out of there like a shot. But, oh, they’re terrible things to give — just terrible, you know. And t
hat’s the only time I’ve given injections and I don’t ever want to give another one again unless, that is, as I said, it’s in an absolute life and death situation.

  Joe the Rainmaker

  Well, it stirs me up a bit just thinking about some of the things I could tell you, especially about the Aboriginal people. But stories like this must be told. They must get out there. Now, don’t get me wrong — and I want to make this very clear — this isn’t your usual Flying Doctor story. This is not a story like that. In actual fact, the only connection this story has to the RFDS is that it was told to me by two nursing sisters, Brenda Preston and Barbara Struck, who at the time were in charge of the Australian Inland Mission Hospital at Birdsville, up near the South Australian-Queensland border.

  Now, I guess you’d know that the Australian Inland Mission [AIM] was the precursor of the Royal Flying Doctor Service in as much as John Flynn was the driving force behind the AIM setting up care facilities and hospitals in remote areas and sending trained nurses out to work in them. Then the Flying Doctor Service was later formed, more or less to support those services of the AIM, plus, of course, any of the other outback support organisations. That’s how the RFDS came about.

  Anyhow, the AIM Hospital in Birdsville was opened in 1923, and two women by the names of Grace Francis and Catherine Boyd became the first nursing sisters there. It then became their responsibility to provide what was the only community-based health services in that area. And, mind you, it was an area that covered something like 1000 square kilometres. So it was quite vast. What’s more, these two women were also responsible for acute first-response emergency care, general outpatients, home and community nursing services, health education and promotion. They also gave advice on public health matters, as well as providing pharmaceutical supplies, basic radiography, administration — the lot — plus they were also, at various times, called upon to provide veterinarian and dental assistance.

  Now, my first contact with the actual township of Birdsville didn’t happen until much later, in the early 1960s, which by then was when the two nursing sisters, Brenda Preston and Barbara Struck, were in charge of Birdsville’s AIM Hospital. At that time I was running the administration for a French mob called the Compagnie Générale de Géophysique, and we were part of a seismic survey party that was constructing a road across the Simpson Desert. That road, or track really, was known as the French Line. Anyhow, Nursing Sisters Preston and Struck became my first port of call for back-up medical support when we were working through that area. So basically I had an office in a caravan out in the desert, and if anybody got sick or was injured I’d take them into the Birdsville Hospital. By that stage, in 1963, the population of Birdsville consisted of eight whites and sixty-three blacks.

  Anyhow, I got on very well with these two nursing sisters and they told me some amazing stories, and one of those stories was about an old Aboriginal man called Mintulee, or Joe the Rainmaker as he became known. And I believe that this is a very special story and, like I said, it’s one that must be told. But, first, to give you a bit of background. As a young man, Mintulee, as he was originally known, was among just a handful of survivors of an 1888 massacre that was conducted by the Queensland Native Police (QNP). That massacre occurred at a permanent waterhole, at a place called Kaliduwarry, which is on the Eyre Creek. The policeman who organised the massacre was a feller called Sub-Inspector Robert Little and, apparently, what had led to the police attack was the killing of a station cook near Durrie, on the Diamantina River.

  Now, that particular massacre by the QNP was timed to wreak the maximum effect on some two hundred to three hundred young Aborigines who were known to be assembling there at Kaliduwarry. As to just why they were there was that on a regular basis great gatherings of Aboriginal youth were held and these gatherings attracted eighteen-, nineteen- and twenty-year-old Aborigines from as far away as St Vincent Gulf to the south, and the Gulf of Carpentaria to the north. These occasions or gatherings were known as ‘Warrthampa ceremonies’ and they were held to celebrate the sexual maturity of those Aboriginal youths who were sent to represent their hordes or, as we would call them, tribes. To explain a little further: see, the Aborigines lived in quite small communities that consisted of around thirty people and there were up to eight of those smaller communities within the larger horde. That’s how it worked.

  But of course to get two or three hundred natives congregated all together in the one spot provided the perfect opportunity for the Queensland Native Police, because they could just burst in and kill the lot of them. You know, some pastoralist might’ve simply got in touch and said, ‘Hey, they’re all gathering out near our place.’ So then the QNP came out and of course they were armed with rifles and so forth and so they just went in and, at Kaliduwarry, they hacked to death something like 200 innocent souls. And like so many of these atrocities — and there’s no doubting that there have been a great many throughout white history in Australia — the official description of such an event was of it being merely ‘a disturbance’. So then it was a case of, ‘Oh, wonderful. Job well done, chaps’, and all the records were destroyed.

  And I know I’m getting off the track a bit here but to me that’s one of the things that us white Australians are really saying ‘Sorry’ for. It’s not simply for just the taking of the Aboriginal children — ‘the stolen generation’, as it’s been called. It’s also for all the massacres, the murders and the poisonings of the waterholes that have occurred over time. And, believe you me, there are many horrific stories that have been completely blotted out from our history.

  Anyhow, that’s just some of the background. So this Mintulee, or Joe the Rainmaker as he later became known, and about four or five of his Wangkangurru mates managed to escape the vengeance party at Kaliduwarry that had been led by this Sub-Inspector Robert Little, and they limped back into the desert. The story follows on that a year later Sub-Inspector Robert Little was said to have fallen from his horse in Birdsville and died of a broken neck. He was subsequently buried in the Birdsville Cemetery — and I’ll tell you more about that later at the end of this story.

  So then more than ten years passed before Mintulee and what remained of his Wangkangurru horde finally emerged from the southern Simpson Desert to make camp by the Diamantina River, within sight of the township of Birdsville. Like so many of the other native refugees they were attracted by the number of white settlers and their promises of ‘keep’ in return for work. But of all the Lake Eyre hordes, to the best of my knowledge the Wangkangurru were the last of the Aboriginal peoples to have direct contact with Europeans and, in doing so, they were also the last to relax their own ways in favour of white man’s culture. So it must’ve been a pretty big shock that after all those years of living in freedom, no sooner had Mintulee arrived out of the desert and set up camp by the Diamantina River than he was placed in the care of the local Protector of Aborigines and given a number. Henceforth Mintulee was known by his white protectors simply as ‘J11’.

  Now, how he then got the name of Joe the Rainmaker was that a feller by the name of George Farwell solemnly declared that Joe had told him how he’d once made the Diamantina come down in flood. And with Birdsville’s annual rainfall hovering around the 5-inch mark — that’s if it was lucky — Joe felt duty-bound to relieve all droughts with his well-prepared rainmaking rituals…in return, of course, for a few shillings for his successes. In her book From City to the Sandhills of Birdsville, Mona Henry, who was herself also a Birdsville AIM nursing sister from around 1950, actually wrote of Joe’s rainmaking requirements, and I quote: ‘In bygone days it was human blood, but, in these civilised times, he [Joe the Rainmaker] had to be content with animal blood. Emu feathers, if available, built into a mound over the rainstone, helped bring success to the ceremony. When he was ready he would sing the tribal rainsong and, like Gandhi, was fast to bring results. Rainmakers must be good weather prophets, as I have yet to hear of one dying of starvation. When sufficient rain had fallen, Joe woul
d visit the settlers to collect his fees.’

  Anyhow, one time during the early 1960s, when I was visiting Birdsville, Nursing Sisters Preston and Struck went on to tell me about the last days of white treatment for Joe the Rainmaker. By that stage he was quite old — well into his nineties — and even though he was dying in at the AIM Hospital, Joe remained adamant that he wanted to return to his people and await his end, in as natural a manner as possible. But as was the way in those days he was strapped down to his hospital bed for his own good and safety. Then, after he’d been held in his bed for three days, he eventually persuaded the two nurses to release him from the hospital. That they did and so Joe the Rainmaker returned to his camp on the banks of the Diamantina and he positioned himself under a tree, where he could have a good view of everything that was going on. You know, he could see the piccaninnies running around and he was able to see the women going out digging and the men going out hunting and when they’d come back in they’d all see him under the tree.

  And the two nursing sisters told me that Joe the Rainmaker survived under that tree for six months. He didn’t eat much food and he only asked for water, yet being among his adopted horde and seeing them go about their lives, and being visited constantly by anyone coming and going about the camp, he was kept happy and was fulfilled until the day he died. And isn’t that such a great lesson for us more modern-day white Australians, where we tend to stick our aging grandparents or whoever in some God-forsaken nursing home and try to forget about them? Anyhow, as it turned out Joe the Rainmaker ended up living to be ninety-five years of age and he died in the September of 1955.