The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories

by Bill Marsh

  So that’s what the doctor was going to do this day. And when Leo walked onto the aircraft he was as fit as a fiddle. He was scared, naturally, but he was medically okay. It was only an hour and a half flight back to Alice Springs and he’d died by the time we were landing in Alice Springs. The doctor told me that he’d been trying to get an adrenaline shot into Leo’s veins, but he said it was like trying to put a needle into a piece of string because all Leo’s veins had collapsed from the shock of him being ‘sung’.

  Now, I don’t know if you believe in those sorts of things — like pointing the bone and being ‘sung’ — but Leo certainly must’ve believed in it. Amazing, isn’t it? He walked on the aircraft, unaided, and he was dead within an hour and a half.

  The Sweetest Sound

  I would like to tell you just the one story. It may be a little bit long-winded but it’s a magnificent story I believe, because it was something that personally happened to me. When I first joined the Royal Flying Doctor Service, about ten years ago, I went out on a clinic run and we flew out to a property called the Pinnacles, which is up in the Cape York area of Queensland.

  Now, if I could just sort of set the scene for you. As the aircraft landed at the Pinnacles I looked at the four horizons. It was the dry season so it was a pretty dry and unforgiving land that stretched out before me. In fact, there was a cruelty and harshness about it. But, given all that, I suppose the emotions that went through my mind at that particular time were of an overriding beauty. And I suppose that it was my first realisation or understanding of where the great architects of verse — the likes of Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson and Dorothea Mackellar and so forth — got their inspiration to write about this wonderful land of ours.

  But, even apart from that, I felt rather blessed because after we flew in, the original white pioneers of the Pinnacles were there to visit the Flying Doctor. As I said, it was a clinic trip and these two people had long retired. In fact, they were well into their eighties at this time, and they needed to see the doctor on that day. So they were there, waiting, and it was just a marvellous coincidence that I was there to meet them. And while I was looking out at, you know, these barren never-never lands of ours, I happened to say to the old man, ‘Just what gave you the fortitude to come out here?’

  And without hesitation he simply replied, ‘The Flying Doctor.’

  And it was at that moment the penny dropped, because I remember many years ago I either read it or heard the words of a speech that Sir Robert Menzies made when he was Prime Minister. And Sir Robert Menzies said something along the lines of, ‘The greatest single contribution to the development of inland Australia was Flynn’s Flying Doctor Service.’ And it hadn’t really sunk in until I was standing there with these two old pioneers at the Pinnacles.

  But what was to really blow me away was a statement that I’ll basically take to the grave with me, because it was just so wonderful. This old man’s beautiful old wife, she looked at me and she said, ‘Stephen, the sweetest sound in all the world is the sound of the Flying Doctor aircraft overhead.’

  When she said that I conjured up a mental image of her as a young lady giving birth to their first child. So I verbalised that to her and she gave me a bit of a wise smile and said, ‘Yes, you’re right, that certainly was a pretty tough time and the Royal Flying Doctor Service got me through that one okay.’ Then she went on to say, ‘But, really, it was many years later when our eldest son was about thirteen and he’d fallen from his horse.’ And she pointed to the ground, only metres from where we were standing, and she said, ‘I sat right over there and I cradled my precious son’s unconscious head in my lap and I cried and I prayed and I cried and I prayed and then I heard the Flying Doctor aircraft overhead. That was the sweetest sound.’

  Well, honestly, let me say that when a beautiful old pioneering lady tells a new chum on the block a story like that, well, she truly reached forward and indelibly touched my soul. And, you know, in various fundraising appeals now, for many years, the RFDS has used her statement, because it pretty much depicts, I think, how a lot of people out in those remote lands feel about the Flying Doctor Service.

  The Wrong People

  Actually, I was up in Whyalla for ten years, working as a pilot with Air Ambulance, before I was transferred to Adelaide. Then I guess I was probably only down here for twelve months or less when they decided it’d be a much better set-up if Aero-medical and the Royal Flying Doctor Service came under the one umbrella. I think it all might’ve had something to do with the way both the federal and state funding bodies worked. But it wasn’t really such a big difference for us because the pilots with Air Ambulance just changed uniforms and became Flying Doctor pilots. It was as simple as that, and that would’ve been around 1990. So you could say that I’m in about my sixteenth year with the Flying Doctor Service, as such, but I was with Air Ambulance ten years prior to that. So that’s twenty-six years in all, which is a fair time.

  But it’s really a fascinating job. Of course, like any type of employment it has its ups and downs. Probably its biggest drawback is the rotating shift work. That gets you down occasionally, because with the longer shifts we’re actually on page (on call) at home for a twelve-hour period and if it is a Code One or a retrieval we’ve only got forty-five minutes from the time we get paged to ‘doors closed’ in the aircraft. That means that, virtually, you’ve got to be in your uniform at all times because when you get paged you have to drive to the airport, get the forecast, check the aircraft and everything and be ready within that forty-five-minute time frame. Of course, if it’s just a normal routine-type transfer, you get more time and that’s sixty minutes’ notice.

  A normal type transfer would be, say, taking a patient from somewhere like Port Augusta Hospital to the Royal Adelaide Hospital, as well as transferring people back home. To some it may sound a little bit odd to be using an expensive aircraft for moving people around like that but in reality it’s probably more feasible to do it by air than by road. Because, firstly, it’s important for the road ambulances and their crews to remain stationed within their community, just in case there’s a disaster or something. And, secondly, if an ambulance crew’s driving someone from Port Lincoln to Adelaide, they’d have to travel during the day, overnight in Adelaide, then drive back home the next day. So the community would be without an ambulance, effectively, for two whole days. Whereas if you’re using an aircraft, in a normal shift we might fit three of those type of transfers in. So really, by using the aeroplane you’re saving up to six days work for an entire ambulance crew. What’s more, it’s less stressful for the patient to travel by air.

  But the patients don’t know all that. I mean, sometimes they don’t even realise they’re going to travel with us. They may think they’re going by road but the ambulance only takes them as far as the local airstrip where they’re loaded onto the aircraft.

  Though you do get some mix-ups. Now, I won’t mention any names of course, but some years ago one of our pilots flew over to Kingscote, on Kangaroo Island, in South Australia, to pick up a patient. So he gets to Kingscote and he lands and he’s greeted by a despondent looking ambulance crew.

  ‘Where’s the patient?’ the pilot asks.

  ‘Sorry,’ they said, ‘we haven’t got him.’

  ‘What do you mean, you haven’t got him?’ the pilot asked.

  ‘He escaped from the hospital and we can’t find him.’

  So the pilot had to turn around and go back to Adelaide without the patient.

  And there’s another one that I think was extremely funny — and I must stress that this was back before Aero-medical came under the umbrella of the Royal Flying Doctor Service. I just want to make that nice and clear. Anyhow, the chaps from Air Ambulance were asked to fly down to Hamilton, in south-western Victoria, to pick up two patients and bring them back to Adelaide for some minor treatment or other. These two people were ‘sitting patients’, which means they weren’t serious cases so they could make their own w
ay out to the airstrip, without the need for an ambulance. Anyhow, the instruction came through that these patients would be waiting for the plane to arrive.

  Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the Hamilton airstrip or not but back in those days there wasn’t much there. Anyhow, they’d just landed the Chieftain at Hamilton when these two people walked across to the aircraft and said, ‘Have you come to pick us up?’

  There was nobody else about so the pilot and the nurse said, ‘Yes. Hop in.’

  So they loaded the two patients into the plane, where they were made nice and comfortable. ‘Thank you. Thank you,’ they kept saying. ‘You’re very kind.’

  Then just after they took off, one of the passengers leaned over to the pilot and said, ‘So, what’s the weather going to be like in Melbourne today?’

  ‘Melbourne?’ asked the pilot.

  ‘Yes, we’ve purchased two tickets to fly over to Melbourne to do some shopping.’

  So it was a case of, ‘Oops, we’ve obviously picked up the wrong two people.’

  Things that Happened

  On 21 August 2001 the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators awarded me a Master Air Pilot Certificate — number 868 — which, as it states, is ‘awarded in recognition of skill, experience and service in the profession of aviation’. In all, I was a pilot for over forty years, and twenty-one of those were with the Royal Flying Doctor Service. So would you like to hear about some of the things that happened when I was with the RFDS? I’ve got a few notes already written down here that Bob Rogers, the ex-President of the Royal Flying Doctor Service in Queensland, requested for his book on the organisation. Now, I’m not a great storyteller, as such, so do you mind very much if I pretty much read from what I wrote for Bob’s book?

  Okay, I suppose there’s been many memorable, and not so memorable, incidents that have happened over the twenty-one years I was flying with the Royal Flying Doctor Service. But, as is my way, I’ve never been one to be totally governed by rules and regulations. That’s just not me. So I’ve been hauled over the coals by the DCA (Department of Civil Aviation) on a few occasions, perhaps the most ironic being one time out at Jundah.

  Jundah’s in south-western Queensland and we were called out there to pick up a patient who was suffering the DTs (delirium tremens) due to the severe effects of alcohol consumption. Because of this condition, the patient was quite difficult to handle and by the time we talked the person into getting on the aircraft an approaching dust storm had turned things quite dark. So it was a very big dust storm. Anyhow, I wasn’t unduly bothered because, as was normal in such situations, I organised for some cars to light up the airstrip and, along with the aircraft lights, we took off safely and the patient was delivered.

  Not long after that particular event I received a ‘please explain’ from the DCA saying that the shire clerk out at Jundah had reported the incident of my taking off in such poor conditions, by using just the headlights of a few cars and those of the aeroplane, as being unsafe. So I fronted up and dealt with that. But the irony of it all was that not long after, we were called back to Jundah at ten o’clock one night to evacuate someone who’d suffered a heart attack. So it was obviously dark. When we arrived there we discovered that the patient was the same shire clerk who’d put in the complaint to the DCA. And I can tell you, he was very pleased to see us arrive, and this time there was certainly no complaint about my taking off in the dark, aided by just the headlights of a few cars and those of the aeroplane.

  Another memorable night-time event occurred at Nockatunga Station, in the south-western corner of Queensland. We were urgently required to fly out there for an evacuation. Of course, when landing an aeroplane it’s standard procedure to land into the wind. To that end, as I always did before I left base, I checked with Nockatunga as to what the wind direction was and the lady there advised me that the wind was ‘an easterly’.

  By that stage, people were aware of my requirement of using the lights of three cars in a V shape to assist a night-time landing, so that was organised by the time we got out there. The only trouble was that the lady’s understanding of ‘an easterly’ was that the winds were going to the east and not coming from the east. So an easterly is, in actual fact, a wind that is blowing in from the east. Consequently, on her bad advice I found myself landing downwind and rapidly running out of airstrip. And that really put the wind up the ‘light keeper’ in the car right at the end of the strip. Because as I was trying to pull up the aeroplane, he came to the rapid conclusion that there was no possible way that I could stop before I hit him, so he bailed out of his vehicle, post haste. Yes, he was out of that car in a flash and he took off.

  Anyway, fortunately I was able to pull up without incident. But from then on, whenever I was checking the local conditions I made doubly sure that I phrased my questions in such a way that that type of mistake never occurred again.

  But back in the days when cars were used quite extensively to act as runway lights, you really did have some close ones. One of the blokes I really enjoyed flying with was Dr George Ellis. George worked with me in Cairns for a couple of years. And there was one particular night that gave him great cause to worry.

  There was a child on Hurricane Station who’d been diagnosed with leukaemia. At that stage the child was able to remain at home, though evacuations were needed from time to time when treatment was required. Anyhow, again it was night, but on this occasion the people helping to light the airstrip proved to be a little too enthusiastic, because as we were coming in to land George exclaimed, ‘Gee, Phil, those cars are parked pretty damn close together.’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, trying to gauge if I could land between them without losing our wings.

  Then, just as we were about to land, an extremely nervous George asked, ‘Do you reckon we’ll make it?’

  ‘No,’ I said, and we ascended at the rate of knots, weaving our way among the hills, which was a great relief to George.

  Now, while I’m on about landing in difficult spots: at one stage in the late ’70s, the Cairns Post reported how I’d landed my Queen Air aeroplane on a, quote, ‘winding mountain road, in the Mount Surprise area’. Well, I’d say to that, ‘Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers.’

  The true story is as follows: a group of lads were driving over to Karumba, in the lower Gulf area, when they rolled their car about 15 kilometres out of Mount Surprise. It was quite a bad accident and we were told that the boys may well have spinal injuries. Again, George Ellis was the doctor-on-call and he advised the locals not to move the lads until we arrived.

  Naturally, George wanted me to land as near to the accident scene as possible. I’d done a number of road landings over the years, and just as long as the distance between the trees on either side of a reasonably straight stretch of road was sufficient to land the plane, I could see no problem in achieving that. I’d already been in radio contact with the police from Mount Surprise about all this and requested that they organise for the white roadside posts to be removed for approximately 2000 feet, which they did. Consequently, while it may have looked like a very close thing to those on board the Queen Air aeroplane, including poor George, I landed, again, without incident.

  Then after getting help to manually turn the aircraft around we were able to taxi back, closer to the accident site. There the boys were treated by George and the nursing sister, who were then able to use the appropriate shifting techniques to prevent possible further spinal injuries. Once again that evacuation demonstrated the versatility of the Queen Air as being the ideal aircraft for RFDS operations.

  Though not all landings went so well. Around 1976, with big rains and flooding across north Queensland, we were called out to Gunnawarra Station, which is south-west of Mount Garnet. Tom Atkinson, the son of the owners, was seriously ill and the doctor decided that even though the weather was terrible, Tom needed to be evacuated to Cairns Base Hospital. When we took off at about midday, this time in a Beechcraft Baron, we could se
e the Barron River had broken its banks and spread across the Smithfield floodplain.

  Following a routine flight we landed on a rather damp Gunnawarra airstrip and were met by Vern Atkinson, Tom’s father. Tom was loaded onto the aircraft but, as we taxied for take-off, the nose wheel bogged and, in doing so, the wheel-strut was badly bent. We then radioed the engineers in Cairns who suggested we somehow weld the strut in a fixed down position.

  Tom was then off-loaded and we all spent the night at Gunnawarra discussing how we’d make the repairs. Being surrounded by practical blokes — myself included — the following morning we took two pieces of angle-iron out to the plane and, by applying weight on the tail, we lifted the nose wheel off the ground and were able to weld the angle-iron to brace the strut. With the job now done, Tom was then reloaded and we made the slow and wet journey back to Cairns, with the landing gear fixed down.

  As I half-expected, later in the week the DCA contacted me again. I fully appreciated it was a reportable incident. An investigation was launched with lots of questions being asked. But, in the end, the department decided that, although it was an unusual procedure, under the circumstances they decided not to prosecute. So no further action was taken against me, as pilot in command. And that was another run-in with the DCA.

  Another beautiful Atkinson property was the Valley of Lagoons, at the headwaters of the Burdekin River. We conducted regular monthly clinics there so we were well known to the owners. On one occasion we were called there after a mustering accident involving Mark Atkinson, the son of Ivy and Bob, from Glen Eagle. Mark was in a bad way with a broken pelvis and other injuries. This time I was in the King Air and again rain had been falling, which made the airstrip quite a challenge. We landed fine but then, as we taxied, the plane became bogged and we needed to be very practical in solving the problem. So, together with the owner, we used a tractor to tow the aircraft out onto firm land and this second time the take-off went without a hitch. Anyhow, the DCA didn’t find out about that one and so there was no further mention of the incident.