The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories

by Bill Marsh

  And here’s the nice twist to the story: see, what they did was, when Joe the Rainmaker died, Joe was buried only about a foot away from Queensland Native Police Sub-Inspector Robert Little’s grave and in doing so, in silent retribution to the perpetrator of the Kaliduwarry massacre, they laid Joe with his feet on a slight incline towards the head of Little’s grave. That’s how I first saw their site in 1963, then, a few years later, when I went back to Birdsville, I saw, they’d erected a headstone on Joe’s grave and the white cross that had been on Sub-Inspector Robert Little’s grave was missing. And that’s the story, pretty much as it was told to me by the two Australian Inland Mission nursing sisters, Brenda Preston and Barbara Struck.

  Laura

  What greatly helped me during my time as a pilot with the Royal Flying Doctor Service in Queensland was the fact that already having been a farmer and earth moving contractor, I could actually relate well to the people on the land and had an appreciation of the demands of their lifestyle. Also what came in very handy was my many years of remote area flying, and that gave me the experience and ability to access the roads, paddocks, clay flats and bush strips, with regard to the capabilities of both the aircraft and myself, as a pilot.

  That being said, flying still threw up many challenges, especially before the introduction of GPS (Global Positioning System). One such case occurred at Laura, a small remote Cape York location west of Cooktown. Laura held a number of festivals, the two major ones being the Laura Festival, which was a big indigenous dance festival, and then there was the local Laura Races. And of course from time to time there would be a few flare-ups, or altercations, at these festivals, which meant that medical attention or even an evacuation was required.

  There was one time I remember being called to Laura on a very wet and foggy night to evacuate a local who was thought to have broken his neck in a horse accident. I flew out there with a female doctor and on our arrival Laura was shrouded in stratus cloud. So, with severely limited visibility, before coming below lowest safe altitude I got in contact with Percy Trezise. Percy was a local identity and I knew that he’d flown his own aircraft to Laura to attend that particular festival. He was a former TAA captain who by this time had done a lot of flying throughout Cape York. Now, because I knew that Percy had his aircraft at Laura, I wanted to speak to him on the radio and ask him if he’d let me know when I was over the top of the strip.

  Anyhow, I got in radio contact with Percy and while I was getting directions I circled for about fifteen minutes without being able to see anything. Not a thing. All the while, the female doctor on board had the headphones on and so she was listening in on our conversation. And because of the tone of Percy’s and my discussion, plus our obvious lack of visibility, I think the poor doctor might’ve started to get a bit concerned about the situation, because at one stage she decided that just maybe the patient didn’t have a broken neck after all and perhaps the evacuation could wait until the following morning!

  Still, I’d been to Laura hundreds of times before and, knowing the area as well as I did, I assured the doctor not to worry because, with Percy’s help, I felt confident of being able to carry out a safe landing. Now, I’m not sure if she was all that convinced about my ability but I went ahead anyway and carried out a let-down safely in heavy cloud. I then advised Percy that when I thought I was on final approach I’d put on my landing lights and he could inform me as to exactly where I was in relation to the airstrip. I then continued descent and, much to the relief of the doctor, all went according to plan. With Percy’s help we had no trouble landing and, later on, the take-off to evacuate the injured person also went without a problem.

  Now, while we’re talking about the festivals out at Laura, another sort of funny thing happened. On an earlier occasion we’d been called out there at night to evacuate Cecil, an Aboriginal employee of Susan and Tom Shepherd. Susan and Tom were from Artemis Station. Cecil had gone off to the festival and had, unfortunately for him, got into a ‘blue’ — a fight — and his stomach had been cut open quite badly with a broken bottle. We’d been advised that there was — and I quote — ‘already a doctor on the scene’. Apparently this doctor had been attending the festival and we were assured that he’d look after Cecil until our arrival.

  So we flew out there to Laura. The only trouble was that when we arrived it turned out that the doctor who we’d been assured was already on the scene, looking after Cecil, was actually an eye specialist, who I attended regularly. Of course, this injury of Cecil’s was a little out of the ordinary to what he usually dealt with on a daily basis. So I think the eye specialist was just as glad as poor old Cecil was to hear the throb of our noisy engines in the distance. And all went well with our landing and take-off on that occasion.

  But another time when I had a bit of a mix-up was during an election and, naturally, the people of Cape York Peninsula had to make sure they exercised their right to vote, along with the rest of us. To that end Susan Shepherd loaded up her ute with people from her property to go into Laura for voting day. The trip in went without incident and everyone cast their vote. But then on their return journey an altercation occurred between one of the indigenous women and her bloke. I’m not sure what it was about, whether it was of a personal or political nature, but without thinking of the consequences, mid-altercation, this woman simply picked up her port — suitcase — and stepped off the back of the ute. Now, unfortunately, the ute was travelling along at over 60 kilometres per hour and so the woman suffered quite severe head injuries.

  Anyhow, that night I received a call from the RFDS doctor to say we were needed to evacuate this injured woman from Kimba Station — Kimba being the nearest station to where the accident had occurred. So we took off in the Queen Air and headed out to Kimba. Being set among thick scrub as it was, I knew Kimba Station would be difficult to locate, especially at night. But, as was standard practice, I was fully expecting to be guided to the remote property by some car lights lining the strip, awaiting our arrival.

  On this occasion, for some reason or other that I’ve forgotten, that didn’t happen. I couldn’t see anything at all. But then after flying around for a while in the dark I finally saw some lights on the ground and so I headed in that direction. When I arrived over the property, there were still no car lights to greet me so, by using the Queen Air’s landing lights, I picked out the strip near the house and landed there safely. A vehicle soon arrived on the scene and out popped a very surprised family. I looked at them. They looked at me.

  ‘This isn’t Kimba Station, is it?’ I said.

  ‘No,’ came the reply. ‘This is Violet Vale Station.’

  Anyhow, they were able to give me directions and about half an hour later we landed safely at Kimba Station and the evacuation took place without further confusion.

  Lombadina

  Back in the 1980s I was working in a voluntary capacity, up in the Kimberley region in the far north of Western Australia. If you know that area, I worked for about four years at Lombadina Aboriginal Mission. I also worked for a year in Derby. Following that I spent a year up at the Kalumburu Aboriginal Mission. Then I worked for another year in what was originally known as Port Keats, which is now known as the Wadeye Aboriginal Community. And with the Royal Flying Doctor Service having a base at Derby, most weeks they used to fly out to all those places to run medical clinics plus, at the drop of a hat and normally at night — and usually in the worst of weather conditions — they’d fly in for emergency ‘medi-air-vacs’, as we called them.

  So yes, you could say I’ve had some ‘interesting’ times at some of those Aboriginal communities that have been linked in with the RFDS. Take Lombadina for example; I think there were about two hundred people there in the mid-1980s. Back then, they had a pressed gravel airstrip, made up to a certain standard, which was similar to most of those other places I worked at in the Kimberleys. Lombadina had a generator as well, though from memory, I don’t think it had the capacity to be able to light up the ai
rstrip. Anyway, the generator was too far away from the airstrip to run the necessary electrical lines or what-have-you.

  So of course when there’s a night emergency, first of all there’s the having to go out in the middle of the night — and, as I said, it was usually in the most atrocious of weather conditions — and sort out the kerosene lamps to light the strip for the plane to come in and out. The kero lamps were built like a large double cone, with a big reservoir of kero and a wick on the top. They had a good, big light but their only problem was that they lacked any decent wind protection. So if it was too windy or, you know, if it was too wet and stormy to light the kero lamps, which happened a lot up there, you had to con all the blokes into getting out there in their four-wheel drives to line up alongside the airstrip.

  For the plane to land safely, you lined the cars up at a good distance apart and they’d be pointing alternately across the airstrip so that their lights weren’t aimed at each other. You could say that they were sort of like in a zigzag formation and then you had one or two vehicles right down the very end, on low beam, so that the pilot could gauge where the end of the strip was. And of course there were other things to sort out like always having to clear the cattle off the airstrip. They were a particular danger, especially at Lombadina. We had free range cattle up there and so we had to make sure they didn’t get in the way of the plane. So that was all good fun, though I suppose everyone’s heard all those type of stories.

  With Lombadina, I don’t know what the legals were, but away back when the Sacred Heart Nuns and St John of God were the mainstays of the missions, the original people up on the Dampier Peninsula — the Bard Tribe — gave the land to the Church. In those early days the place was just about self-sufficient; you know, for meat, bread, vegetables and so forth. So there wasn’t too much they had to bring in, other than fuel and things like that. Then over time the particular religious orders gave the Aborigines the leasing rights to the land, plus the cattle, plus all the windmills and the stockyards that were dotted around the place. We ran the vegetable gardens and the bakeries and the mechanical workshops and all those sort of self-functioning things that were needed to keep the place going. Then over time the Aborigines also took over those functions. Take the bakery, for instance; rather than ship bread up from Broome they had someone baking the mission bread in a nice wood-fired oven and when I ran the store I sold that bread in the store on a commission basis. That’s how it worked.

  Of course the Aborigines were very itinerant. Sometimes they lived in Broome, sometimes they’d come back out to the mission at Lombadina or they might even go and live more traditionally out on their original beach locations and things like that. And other than the usual weekly clinic duties that the RFDS ran, some of the sort of emergency casualties we’d have were things like childbirths, general accidents and injuries and — you know, I shouldn’t say it — but there were the injuries from fights and things like that which was usually the result of some alcohol-related dispute or the like.

  But the traditional mourning ceremonies were something very interesting. Different cultures might do it a different way but, with the Bard people, the way they did it up there was that they had what was called a ‘smoking ceremony’. Now, I’m not an Aboriginal anthropologist or anything so you’ll have to check the facts on this, but it was all to do with smoking the spirits away or as a cleansing process to release the spirits out of the body. And sometimes there were lots of little fires made from gum leaves that were set around the coffin and at other times they carried the coffin past a big fire and the winds blew the smoke across it. Then, you know, because it was a Christian Mission, after the smoking ceremony 90 percent would then have a Catholic Mass in the church followed by a normal Christian burial, which was held in the cemetery just right behind the church.

  I remember one extremely moving ‘smoking’ they held was when they brought back the body of one of the old-time Aborigines to Lombadina. It was one of the old male Elders. They flew in at night for that one and so we had to light up the airstrip. The old man had died and I think the RFDS took the body to Derby for an autopsy, or for some sort of legal thing, then they brought him back for their traditional mourning ceremony, which was this ‘smoking’.

  So the RFDS plane landed at night and the Aboriginal people came up and they took the body — the coffin — out of the plane and I think they took it back to the house of one of the Elder’s relatives. The coffin was still closed, and they had a mourning ceremony with those people and that’s when they had the smoking ceremony. Then after that they had the traditional Christian Mass and burial. That was quite a big one, that was. Well, I know I’ve gone off the track a little but really what I’m trying to get across is that the Royal Flying Doctor Service was a very strong link up there, all throughout the Kimberley region, in so many and varied ways. So yes, they are a great organisation and, personally, for me, the time I spent up there was an unreal yet a really great experience.

  Long Days, Great Times

  You could just about title this story ‘The Longest Day’, because to begin with the Royal Flying Doctor Service base in Alice Springs rang me at home at two o’clock in the morning and said, ‘We’ve had an accident case up at Tennant Creek. It’s pretty serious so could you fly up there and bring them back down to the Alice?’

  In those days, Tennant Creek only had one doctor and a few nurses and I knew that the surgeon was in Alice Springs. So I said, ‘Yeah, no problem.’

  So we jumped in the De Havilland Dove and I took off at about three o’clock in the morning and we headed off to Tennant Creek. I’d say that it would’ve taken us about two hours to fly up there, then we spent about half an hour on the ground, then two hours back — which is four hours’ flying time — so I guess that would’ve had us back in the Alice at around 7.30.

  We also had a short routine medical visit scheduled for that day. That was supposed to finish at about midday or one o’clock. Now, you don’t like to change those if you can help it, because at these remote stations and settlements everyone comes into town especially to see us. So after we got back from Tennant Creek I said, ‘Look, let’s still do the routine medical visit.’

  Okay, so we did the medical visit, then we’d just got back into Alice Springs when the hospital rang up and said, ‘Do you feel like flying back to Tennant Creek? We’ve got a real serious case of peritonitis.’

  From memory the appendix had burst and one thing had led to another and things didn’t look too good, so I said, ‘Yeah. Righto, no problem. I’ll go back to Tennant Creek.’

  So I flew to Tennant Creek for the second time that day and I’d just arrived home again when the phone rang. It was the surgeon in Alice Springs — I knew him quite well — and he said, ‘Neil, they tell me you’ve already had a bugger of a day. Well, I’m having a bugger of a day, too. I’ve got this woman here but the longer we keep her on the anaesthetic machine, the more chance she’s got of getting brain damage.’ He said, ‘Look, I’ve done everything I can possibly do up here and I’d really like to get her down to Adelaide straightaway.’

  As it happened, I was the only pilot up in Alice Springs at that time who could do the trip because the De Havilland Dove was an IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) aircraft and I was the only instrument rated pilot around the place. So it had to be me. ‘Righto,’ I said. ‘Yeah, we’ll go.’

  As soon as that decision had been made, they then had to make enough space in the Dove to fit in the anaesthetic machine. And so, while I was flight planning, the engineer was busy stripping the seats out of the aircraft so that we could fit the anaesthetic machine and everything else in. I’d say that the machine itself must’ve been about 8 or 9 feet long and about 3 feet wide so it only just barely squeezed in the door. Then I also wanted to scrape every ounce of fuel we could get into the tanks, and so they were filled to the absolute. Actually, in the end we were a little bit overloaded, but I don’t think I even bothered with a load sheet.

  Anyhow, so t
hen I took off for Adelaide. By that time it was probably about eight or nine o’clock at night. On board with me were the female patient of course, plus a doctor and a nursing sister. But because we didn’t have 240-volt power, the doctor and nurse had to work the anaesthetic machine manually. They had to do all the pumping and everything. And on that trip I was in cloud the whole time. I didn’t even see a star. Not a single one. It was pitch black. I never even saw a single light on the ground or anything. And normally when you’d go on a long trip like that, the nursing sisters had a big flask of coffee or something to help you keep alert. But that wasn’t the case on this occasion. They were so flat out in the back, caring for the patient and doing the pumping and so forth, that they didn’t even get the chance to come up and chat with me. So the only thing that kept my sanity was talking on the radio and watching the DME (Distance Measuring Equipment) tick over.

  Anyhow, as you might be able to imagine, I was pretty stuffed by the time we finally began our descent into Adelaide. And when we broke out of the cloud, at about 500 feet, it was as clear as a bell. And with seeing the lights of Adelaide and then there ahead, less than a mile in front of me, was the runway, oh gees, I tell you, Adelaide was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen. And I still reckon it’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen because, as I said, for five hours I hadn’t seen a thing outside the cockpit, not even a star. Nothing.