When the Dust Settles

by Cook, R

  The conversation continued, but I couldn’t be persuaded to get in the helicopter.

  ‘All right then,’ said Dad patiently, ‘I’ll go back up with Zebb and he can bring me back once we all know where we’re going.’

  But feeling sorry for Dad, as I didn’t want him getting airsick, I gave in.

  ‘OK, you wait here and have a cup of tea,’ I said. ‘I’ll go with Zebb for a bit and come back soon.’

  I climbed into the chopper – they were the last steps I’d ever take.

  The R22 is a small, compact aircraft designed in California in the 1970s for private business and flying schools to run at low cost. It has one main powered rotor with two blades for lift and a tail rotor for control. The cabin, which has two seats side by side, is enclosed, although most pilots take the doors off when flying, to more easily see the landscape below. It is by far the most popular aircraft used in Australia for mustering. Having flown my gyro for the last year, I preferred my craft but I certainly had no problem flying with Zebb. We became mates a few years earlier when he began flying for us. He wasn’t much older than me and started having children with his partner Kylie, at a similar time as I did with Sarah. It was good having a mate around on the station, a smart stockman and gun pilot. Pulling on a headset and microphone, we took off and flew out to the cut-off point, the area that I had flown last so Zebb didn’t have to waste time covering old ground.

  ‘It’d be great if you can go up this range,’ I said loudly, pointing to my left. ‘I reckon it might be worth a look.’

  I pointed out a few more areas as we flew along. The day was going well and I was happy that my idea to muster this area looked to be paying off. Using Zebb’s camera I took some great photos of the stock and the lake on what would turn out to be a historic day. While Andrew continued with the cattle on his side of the lake, Zebb buzzed around his side, keeping them moving forward. Looking down at the mob stretching out as the cattle walked along, I became a little worried they may have stretched too far apart, so after being up in the sky for twenty minutes, I asked Zebb to fly me back to my gyro. I wanted to work the wing while he gave the tail a bit of a hurry along, keeping them tighter together. Having just moved a troublesome bull along we climbed back up to around 250 feet at sixty or seventy knots and were just above some heavy timber beside the lake when we struck trouble.

  It felt like the wheels had fallen off, or as though someone had knocked a car out of gear as it sped along. Suddenly we were no longer powering along; instead, the arse-end of the chopper was beginning to sag. I glanced at Zebb, who I thought had backed off the power and was making a turn in the sky to chase some cattle below us, but his face told a different story. As he yelled at me to hold on, a chill went through my spine. Zebb immediately lowered the collective lever and wound on the throttle, hoping desperately for a response from the helicopter, but none came. As we began to fall into autorotation, where only the wind through the blades was slowing our drop, I could see Zebb’s eyes frantically scanning the ground below for a clearing among the timber. There was no real option other than one small area a short way ahead. Without time to hesitate he went about trying to land safely.

  ‘Scotty, we’re going in,’ called Zebb on the two-way.

  By putting the collective lever to the floor, he changed the pitch of the rotor blades, allowing the helicopter to fall at speed with an upward flow of air. A freewheeling clutch allows the rotor to turn even if the engine is failing or not running. Zebb also set the cyclic control stick, tipping the blades to an angle that would allow us to land at the clearing. It wasn’t a big area, perhaps half the size of a tennis court, with fewer big trees but still plenty of small wattles. On an ordinary day under ordinary circumstances, no pilot would land there, but this was no ordinary landing. When we had just fifty feet to fall, he pulled back on the stick in an attempt to slow our descent. My heart was in my mouth, but I wasn’t scared. I had flown with Zebb many times before and I knew just how skilful he was and how much he had practised autorotation.

  Despite the lack of power, Zebb showed his skill by throwing the machine left and right, to avoid branches as we came in. Unluckily, as we levelled with the top of the timber, the tail rotor smashed into a small tree only a few metres tall, ripping the tail end from the rest of the chopper. Again Zebb pulled back on the stick to flare out and slow us down, and this time pulled in the collective. The helicopter hit the ground hard on a forward angle, sliding on the skids for about two lengths, before clipping a small stump and flipping us over onto the left side. The rotor blades flopped around in the dirt, bending but not breaking while kicking up sand and dust. When the blades stopped, the body of the aircraft spun instead, taking us on a cartwheel and slamming us down again on the passenger side. As quick as it had begun just a few seconds earlier, the fall was over.

  My eyes opened. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. Both of us were upside down, hanging from our seat belts, Zebb above me. I was on my back, my neck and head jammed in the top of the door frame, which was now the bottom corner of the cabin, with my knees and legs dangling back towards my face. It was like the whole weight of the chopper was resting on my head, bending my neck forward so my chin was resting on my chest. What scared me the most, as I surveyed the wreck from my precarious position, was the lack of pain. I couldn’t feel a thing. The engine was still whirring away behind me, until Zebb undid his belt and was able to turn it off. He then kicked out the front windshield before pulling himself out.

  ‘Oh fuck, Rob, are you OK?’ he called out to me.

  ‘Yeah mate, I think I’m fine,’ I replied, finding it difficult to speak.

  ‘Well come on then, get out,’ he said.

  As I tried to move away, nothing happened. Again I tried, but my body wouldn’t move.

  ‘I can’t move, Zebb,’ I said, realising I was in a bad way. ‘And I can’t feel any part of my body at all.’

  ‘Stop fucking around and get out,’ he said, hoping I was joking.

  ‘I’m serious mate. I think the chopper is on my head, can you lift it off me?’ I asked.

  As he grabbed the wreck and rocked it sideways, it was like I was being electrocuted from the top of my head down to my feet and back up again. My whole body lit up like I was hit with 240 volts. I was on fire. Something had taken hold and shaken me so hard, it took my breath away and I found it hard to breathe.

  ‘Fuck, don’t move that again,’ I pleaded with him.

  He leaned in to the cabin and gently shook my arm. I could see my arm move but couldn’t feel it. It looked like a piece of rope, sagging beside me. Part of me thought the bones must have been shattered for it to shake so loosely like that. Almost simultaneously, a thumping started in my head and my back started to burn again. It dawned on both of us that I really was up shit creek.

  Realising our predicament, Zebb moved quickly to turn off the fuel and take out the battery in the hope nothing would spark a fire. Somewhere above us I heard the thud of the second helicopter, knowing Andrew wouldn’t take long to find us. I envisaged him going to get help so I could go to the hospital to get fixed up. It was that simple. Andrew hovered nearby and had a chat with Zebb before taking off to get help.

  Having been knocked out plenty of times before, I knew that I was beginning to lose consciousness. An eerie dullness swept over me as breathing became a struggle. Trying to think of nothing else, I just tried to concentrate on breathing.

  ‘We’re going to have to do something here, Zebb,’ I whispered.

  We both knew you shouldn’t move a person with a suspected spinal injury. We both knew we could do more damage by doing so, but I couldn’t breathe and if we didn’t take action, I could well die. No one was coming in a hurry to help me, so we needed to make a decision. A big decision. It wasn’t easy for Zebb to listen and trust me, as it was ultimately up to him whether or not he would move me.

  ‘If it ends badly mate, I won’t hold it against you,’ I said reassuringly. ‘But I re
ally need you to straighten my body out.’

  Taking a deep breath, he released the seat belt, leaving my body to flop down on top of my head. He then grabbed my feet and straightened me, extending my legs out of the cabin through a gap between the door and the ground, a space created by the left skid propping the chopper up a little off the ground. While the move could have been disastrous, it proved OK with me – I could breathe again. It was still hard and laboured but I could breathe as long as I concentrated. Neither Zebb nor I spoke, and the silence of the Tanami struck us. There wasn’t a sound; we were so remote that if Andrew hadn’t been flying with us, we could have been there for days. My thinking was interrupted by a dripping sound. It was a welcome distraction from the silence, until I realised it was the smell of avgas wafting past my nose. There wasn’t much we could do about it so we left it be, hoping there would be no fire.

  Again I could hear the sound of the second chopper returning and I wondered to myself who Andrew would have picked up. Would it be Dad or Shane? While Shane was a good mate, I was hoping it would be Dad. I figured if this was the end and these were my last moments at least I could give him a wink and say goodbye. Dad was my best mate and I wanted him there at the end. Dust swamped me and the wreck as the other chopper landed, and while I couldn’t taste it, I could feel the gravel between my teeth. As I heard the footsteps of someone close, it was Shane who reached in and gently patted me on the head.

  ‘It’s all right mate,’ he said. ‘We’ll get you out of here soon. I’m just going to put some shade up while we wait.’

  Shane had always been a controlled and organised type of bloke who paid a lot of attention to detail. He had done emergency response training at the mines and would have been well prepared to provide first aid. Even so, I did have to wonder to myself why Shane had come before Dad. He quickly put up an old sheet to protect me from the hot sun and dust. While Andrew took off again to get Dad, the smell of avgas around me was getting much stronger. Because of the way the chopper was lying, the fuel was leaking onto the roof and then running down the small gutter on the side, to fall in front of my face. The fumes were overpowering.

  ‘Guys, if there’s a sign of a fire, please drag me out by the legs,’ I told the boys. ‘Don’t let me lie here and burn.’

  That smell has stayed with me ever since the crash and even now when I smell avgas, it takes me back to that very moment. The boys were talking to distract me from the situation I was in, but my head was elsewhere. I wanted to ask them to pass on my love to Sarah and our two boys in case I missed out on a chance to do it myself. When I had finally built up the courage to ask, the thundering chopper again cut me from my thoughts, bringing with it my Dad. I could hear him walk up and take a breath, as though the scene had shocked him, but I couldn’t see his face to tell. He squatted down beside me and reached in with one of his unmistakeable weathered hands.

  ‘You’ll be right old mate,’ he said lightly touching my cheek. ‘We’ll get you out of here.’

  When I felt that familiar old hand, that’s when I knew things would be all right. For some reason, having him there reassuring me made me confident I would get out of this mess. Immediately my attitude started to change and I realised I had to go home and tell my wife what had happened myself. It was my responsibility and I owed her that. Suddenly I wasn’t thinking about dying, I was worried about the challenge ahead, which involved staying in control of my breathing and ultimately staying alive.

  In the background, an army of people were working together to get me out of there. Dad was using the satellite phone to talk to Mum at the house and Mum was calling whoever she could to get help. Andrew was asked to fly to the Tanami Gold Mine to pick up a paramedic called Michelle Gough and bring her back in the first instance. When they arrived an hour or so later, Michelle’s training kicked in and she looked after my every need. While they had been waiting, the boys wanted to create as much room as possible around me, but removing the frame of the chopper was proving difficult.

  ‘Well, I’ve got this bloody Leatherman we could try,’ said Dad, grabbing his pocketknife.

  I remember smiling to myself at the thought that this knife was the only thing they could find to cut the metal. Dad was the first in our family to have a Leatherman, which we had nicknamed the MacGyver knife, after the TV series. It didn’t matter what job you were doing, whether it was cutting up a cow, pulling down a fence or fixing a vehicle, you were nothing without your Leatherman. It was laughable when he held up the knife with its little serrated blade. But while covering my face with his hat, he went about attacking that roof with the blade in one hand and a pair of pliers in the other. Sure enough after a little wrangling, Dad cut off the roof and framework, opening up the chopper. Michelle quickly put a neck brace on me, a drip in my arm and started examining the rest of my body. Soon they moved me over to the shade of a tree. I couldn’t see much other than the sky, a tree and anyone who stood over me. An ant crawled up my face and I didn’t feel it until it climbed onto my eyeball.

  The Royal Flying Doctor Service was called, but of course a plane couldn’t land anywhere near where I was so they had to find a way to get me back to the airstrip. Word got through to another pilot who had flown for us before – Mark Sullivan from Limbunya Station, several hundred kilometres north of Suplejack. Mark owned an R44 helicopter, which has four seats and could land at the small clearing. It was hoped they could lay me across the back seat or floor on a stretcher and fly me over to the airstrip at the homestead. So without wasting time Mark flew down to the nearby Lajamanu Aboriginal community, picked up a full-body stretcher from the health clinic before flying on. Zebb and Andrew took an axe to the nearby trees to clear a large enough area for the R44 to land. Mark was then able to land by mid-afternoon, bringing two doctors from the Flying Doctor plane with him. As a very experienced pilot he took a moment to survey the damage and crash site before him. He could see the bend in the chopper’s skids and the marks along the ground where the machine had slid.

  ‘At least we know you got it on the ground nice and straight,’ he said to Zebb. ‘You did what you could do, good job.’

  Zebb was taking the accident hard and at times cursing himself. I knew just how hard he had tried to land without crashing, but it was difficult for me to reassure him given the state I was in. But for someone of Mark’s calibre to let him know that he’d done very well was important for both of us.

  As they loaded me into the back of the R44, I began to ‘vague out’ as the drugs kicked in. I’m not sure if I remember what happened or I’ve created a memory from what I was told. But with my head stuck out one side of the chopper and my feet hanging out the other, we took the quick flight over to the airstrip where the RFDS plane was waiting for me. Sarah was there, but I could barely talk by that stage.

  At least I’m still alive, I thought, as I drifted off.

  We had crashed at 10.20 a.m. on 30 September. Now, as the sun was falling over the desert, we were finally taking off for Alice Springs hospital. It was a team effort to get me there and I will be eternally grateful to all those who helped me.

  11

  SCREWED FACE

  It wasn’t quite the reaction my brother Brad and partner Rebecca Clark were expecting when they excitedly rang home with the news of yet another grandchild on the way. Brad’s joy was soon forgotten as he heard of the helicopter crash from our distraught mother. For my family, it shed new light on the definition of ‘accident’, even though they’d become accustomed to receiving bad news over the phone about my various misfortunes …

  Back in 2003, having recovered from my enormous blood blister, which burst while on the back of Sticks and Stones, my rodeo career was moving ahead well. I continued to divide my time between the station and the rodeo circuit. Even missing out on months of rodeo action due to injury, I was still lucky enough to be leading the points on the all-round cowboy title going into the Queensland finals. It was good enough encouragement for me to keep travelling
and improving on each individual event. An opportunity came for me to advance my cowboy career when I was asked to ride at the Royal Queensland Show, known as the ‘Ekka’. It would be the second year in a row that I’d take part in the special event showcasing Australian bush life, inspired by the Year of the Outback. Each night for the duration of the Ekka, a group of cowboys would put on an old-style buck-jump show in the main arena in front of thousands of show-goers. There were no chutes. Instead, two horsemen would lead out an unbroken bronc under the shine of the spotlight, all the while trying desperately to hang onto the horse. It was our job to then get our stock saddle screwed down, climb on and put on a hell of a show for the audience. It was easier said than done; some broncs would stand relatively still, making our job a little easier, but others would really go to town – rearing, striking, kicking and stepping all over us. But when once our backsides hit the saddle, we were encouraged to crack our whips, fan the bronc with our hats and generally do anything to make the ride look as rank (rodeo-speak for ‘tough’) as possible. It was a wild show for the Brisbane city folk and tourists who may not have been exposed before to rodeo and country life, albeit a slightly exaggerated one. The event proved to be so popular in 2002 that the company and cowboys were invited back the next year.

  The week-long spectacular was turning into an endurance test for the cowboys. Every night, at least one rider would come away with a fresh wound: damaged shoulders, twisted ankles or a torn groin were the regulars. Along with the socialising, it was hard work finding the strength to ride night after night, but hell, was it fun! Every night was different depending on how the horses behaved; sometimes the boys were thrown and other times they’d ride them into the ground. We were gearing up for the fourth night as the contractor, Kerry Hall, approached me and offered me an easier night out.

  ‘Mate, I’ve been trying you out a bit over the last few nights. You got by some of the rough ones. Tonight I’ll cut you some slack,’ he said.