The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories (17 page)

Now Barton’s an interesting place. Ever heard of it? Not many have. It’s a small railway siding out in the Nullarbor, at the start of the world’s longest straight stretch of track, leading from there to eternity, then further on to Kalgoorlie. There’s bugger-all there these days apart from millions of flies and a fluctuating population of between one and six, and that’s counting the stray horses and camels. Even for the most imaginative of real estate agents, the best that could be said about Barton is that it’s ‘nestled comfortably among endlessly rolling red sandhills’. Beyond that you’d be scratching for compliments.

Back a few years ago when the railways scaled down, there was an old German bloke by the name of Ziggie, a railway worker of some sort, a fettler maybe. Anyway, with all the kerfuffle Ziggie decided to retire after thirty years on the job. But instead of retiring to the Big Smoke of Port Augusta like the rest of the workers out that way did, he thought, ‘Vell, bugger it. I’ve no family, novere to go. Zo as-t long as-t zee Tea and Sugar Train still delivers vater and supplies, I’ll stay in zee Barton.’

The trouble was that he’d been left with no place to live. So for the next couple of years he wandered up and down the track with a wheelbarrow picking up the sleepers which had been cast aside during track maintenance. And out of those he built a huge three-roomed bunker, complete with a patio where he could
sit and sip on his Milo and watch the sun set over the endlessly rolling red sandhills.

Now you may think that the mention of him sipping on Milo, instead of a gin and tonic or a cold beer or something of a more refreshing nature, was a slip of the tongue. But it wasn’t. Old Ziggie drank nothing but Milo. In actual fact, his staple diet was Milo, oranges, potatoes and, as the strong rumour had it, canned dog food. Yep, you heard it right…canned dog food. Canned dog food, Milo, oranges and potatoes for breakfast, dinner and tea, and a good brand too, mind you.

So Ziggie settled down to life at Barton along with his seven dogs. And he’s had a good many more than seven dogs in his time because he keeps a collection of their skulls. If you go to Ziggie’s place, the one made out of discarded railway sleepers, there they are, all these dog skulls lined up, along with the empty cans of dog food and the empty Milo tins which he uses as an antenna for his short-wave radio.

But other than being the collector of dog skulls and a connoisseur of fine dog food, oranges, potatoes and Milo, old Ziggie just happens to be one of the best informed individuals that you’re ever likely to meet. As you might imagine, there’s not too much for him to do out at Barton except to listen to his short-wave radio, which he does day in, day out. Ziggie knows more about the goings-on of the world than anyone I know. What’s more, he has an opinion on any subject and if he doesn’t he’ll soon make one up.

So life’s a pretty solitary affair out at Barton which, in turn, causes the Bartonites to get mighty suspicious when a blow-in lobs into town. Not that many do,
mind you. Maybe one or two each decade or so. But just enough for the locals, including Ziggie, to have formed the solid impression that the rest of the world is inhabited by…weirdos.

And so it was that one of the locals wandered out at the crack of dawn one day and discovered that some bloke, a blow-in type, had appeared from God-knows-where in the middle of the night and had been bowled over by the Tea and Sugar Train as it was pulling into the siding. The evidence was right there for all to see. There was this complete stranger, sprawled under the front of the train, out to the world, comatose in fact, with his head split open, stinking of grog and looking on death’s door.

‘Typical of these blow-ins, aye,’ someone muttered, to which there was total agreement.

Of course, the train driver was upset. But as he said, ‘How the hell could I have bowled someone over when the train only travels at snail’s pace?’ And there were those that saw his point of view. See, it’s been rumoured that the driver of the Tea and Sugar Train wasn’t given a timetable upon departure from Port Augusta. Instead, he was handed a calendar because it really didn’t matter when he arrived in Kalgoorlie, just as long as he did, at some stage of the year.

Naturally, not long after Ziggie had appeared on the scene he’d come up with a theory about the accident. He reckoned that the train hadn’t hit the blow-in, but that the reverse had occurred. In fact, upon closer inspection, Ziggie deduced that the bloke had been so pissed when he’d staggered out of the sandhills and into Barton at some ungodly hour of the night that he’d walked headlong into the stationary train. Crack!
Split his head open and down he’d gone like a sack of spuds, right under the front wheels, and hadn’t moved a muscle since.

After much discussion the Flying Doctor from over in Port Augusta was called. And while the blow-in lay prostrate under the train, the discussion raged as to whatever reason the bloke might have had to be wandering around the desert in the middle of the night. And so the discussion continued right up until the locals saw the plane land. Then they put a hold on things while a ute was sent out to pick up the doctor and the nurse.

It was during the brief respite that Ziggie organised the making of a bush stretcher. The reasoning behind that was to save precious time so the blow-in could be placed into the back of the ute as soon as the doctor had checked him over. So they slung a bit of canvas around a couple of bits of gidgee then rolled the unconscious bloke onto the stretcher.

When the doctor arrived he went through the full medical procedure. ‘This bloke’s in an extremely critical condition,’ he concluded. ‘So, fellers, when you pick up the stretcher take it nice and easy.’

Now, constructing a house out of railway sleepers may have been one of old Ziggie’s fortes but making a stretcher out of a strip of canvas and a couple of bits of gidgee apparently wasn’t. Because, when they lifted the stretcher, the canvas gave way and the blow-in went straight through and hit his head on the railway track with an almighty thud.

‘Holy Jesus,’ someone said, ‘we’ve killed him fer sure.’

But almost before those words had been spoken, the blow-in miraculously snapped back into consciousness.
What’s more, to everyone’s surprise, particularly the doctor’s, the bloke sat bolt upright. He took one look at the menagerie of faces gawking down at him, then a quick glance out at the endlessly rolling red sandhills.

‘Where the bloody hell am I?’ he squawked.

‘Barton,’ came the reply, to which the blow-in got up, shook his head and staggered off down the track, leaving the doctor mystified and locals only more reassured at the weirdness of humankind in the outside world. This, of course, included Ziggie, who wandered back home to tuck into a nice hearty breakfast.

It all started when the old airstrip out at Pete May’s place was forced to close over winter. For those who don’t know, and I guess that there’d be many, Pete May’s place is near Elliston which is on the Eyre Peninsula, in the Great Australian Bight. So, anyway, with the airstrip being out of action, it meant that the Flying Doctor couldn’t fly in if there were any medical emergencies or if there’d been a serious accident.

We reckoned that it just wasn’t good enough. So some people went to Council and complained. They reckoned, and quite rightly too, that either the old airstrip should be upgraded or an all-weather strip be built on a new location. Council agreed in principle but they said that everything was in limbo just at the moment because they were awaiting the outcome of current grant applications to the state and Commonwealth governments. So, when the various governments reckoned they didn’t have any money for airstrips and the like, the ratepayers made such a big song and dance about it that a public meeting was called.

An engineer chap came to the meeting with the recommendation that the new airstrip should be placed over the Elliston Swamp which was within half a kilometre from the front door of the hospital. But, without funding, Council said they couldn’t afford to go ahead. It was then that the people offered to volunteer their services, vehicles and equipment, on the proviso that Council was prepared to foot the bill for the fuel
and maintenance on the vehicles and equipment plus lend us some Council labour.

With Council agreeing to that proposal, the first step was to remove the hills. Blasting started around the end of October. That was a mammoth task in itself, one which caused Council to snaffle every stick of explosive held by all the other councils throughout the Eyre Peninsula.

When the majority of the blasting had been completed we got an expert to come down from Coober Pedy to remove what was left. But because we didn’t have the money to pay the bloke, the owners of the motel offered him free accommodation while the pub provided his meals. Another chap came in after that with a stone picker and broke up the rubble.

Then nothing much happened over Christmas, with the harvest in full swing. But straight after harvest the Airport Committee approached various people and community groups in the area seeking their help and support.

Now Elliston’s only got a population of just under 300, with around 800 in the district, but within two weeks vehicles and machinery appeared on site. There were about six double-axle tipper-trucks and several smaller single-axles. There were bulldozers, graders, tractors, the whole works. Some started digging out the quarry while others were working on the sandhill. The sandhill itself ran virtually halfway along the proposed airstrip. But when the job was finished it’d been flattened into the runway and was mixed in with over 100 000 tons of fill from the quarry.

All the community got involved: farmers, townspeople, storekeepers, even the surfers. We
worked rosters and shifts. Those that had to stay in their shops or businesses donated food or helped with morning tea. Anyone who hadn’t brought any lunch along could get a free one at the local cafe.

Luckily there was no need for the Flying Doctor during the four weeks that the bulk of the work was done. Still and all, babies were born during that time. I’m not sure now if it was one or two. But something’s for certain — with everyone working flat out I don’t reckon that many would’ve been conceived.

Then after the job was completed there were two openings. The first was a political affair after some money had miraculously appeared out of government coffers to pay for the lighting and sealing of the airstrip. Not that we didn’t appreciate it, mind you, but that opening was a fizzer in comparison to the second one.

The second opening was the real one. It was the one for the people. There was a true carnival atmosphere. Aircraft came from all over. There were fly-bys, lolly drops, parachutists, games and free gifts. We were just so proud of what we’d done that we had a special car sticker made up which read: WE BUILT AN AIRPORT.

We’ve got a lot of Aboriginal people up here. They’re great, the kids especially. They’re so friendly and inquisitive. You get a lot of pleasure out of working with them. I love it.

Why just the other day I went over the Western Australian border to a place called Kiwirrkurra. We were picking up a woman who’d actually had a baby that morning and the baby was a little bit small so we were going to transport them both back to Alice Springs where we could keep a closer eye on things.

Anyway, we arrived a bit early.

Now I don’t know if you’ve ever been out that way but the airstrips are just red dirt with spinifex growing along the side and a few sandhills around the place. And usually they have a little lean-to which is the ‘airport terminal’, so to speak, and this one had a little corrugated-iron lean-to. A real classic it is, all done up in the Aboriginal colours, with a sign which read:

I’d always wanted to get a photograph of the Kiwirrkurra ‘airport terminal’, so on this occasion I’d brought my camera along. So I took the photo. The next thing, the four-wheel-drive police vehicle turns up
and there’s about twenty kids in the back, on the top, all over the place, and they jump off and run over with their huge welcoming smiles.

‘Hullo, hullo, hullo,’ they’re all saying.

‘Oh, I’ve got my camera here,’ I said. ‘Do you mind if I take some photos of you all?’

Then they all push in front of the camera, and there’s these twenty kids calling out, ‘Just one of me only. Just one of me only.’

I didn’t have that much film but I took a few photos anyway. Then I saw that one of the kids has a tattoo on his arm, you know, one of those lick-on tattoos.

‘What’ve you got there?’ I asked.

So he shows me. Then all of the kids lift up their shirts and they’ve got these tattoos stuck all over their stomachs and up their arms. Everywhere they were.

‘Oh,’ I said, to one of the kids, ‘can someone take a photo with just me and you mob in it?’

‘I’ll take the photo. I’ll take the photo,’ said the oldest one.

Then he grabs the camera and starts clicking away taking lots of photos. And all the kids want to be in on it. One jumps on one of my hips, another jumps on the other hip, and another kid stands behind me with her hands on my head. And they pack in tight around me. So there I am posing with these kids who are laughing and carrying on and I can feel something moving through my hair.

‘Oh yeah,’ I’m thinking. ‘No worries, it’s just that the kid behind me’s playing with my hair.’

So we finished the photograph and I looked around at this kid, the one who’d had her hands on
my head, and I noticed that she’s not only got the most beautiful smile that you’re ever likely to see but she’s also got a half-melted Mars Bar dangling from her fingers.

We were flying out to Tibooburra to do a clinic one day when we received an urgent request to divert to Noocundra, in south-western Queensland. Someone had been severely burnt. The odd thing was, though, the chap who put through the call couldn’t stop laughing. Naturally, we thought that it mustn’t have been too serious, and we said so. But the chap, the one who was laughing, was adamant that the victim was badly burnt and, yes, it was anything but a laughing matter, which he was, if that makes any sense.

As the story unfolded, it’d been a stifling hot day in Noocundra and a few of the locals were in the pub attempting to escape the heat. The problem was that a large tiger snake was thinking along similar lines. It appeared in the pub and had a look around. But when it saw the accumulated gathering, it decided that it didn’t like the company and headed off to the next best place it could think of, that being the outside toilet, one of those long-drop types. So out of the pub the tiger snake slithered, down the track a bit, into the outside toilet, and disappeared down the long-drop where it was nice and cool.

Now this chap saw where the snake had gone and he came up with the bright idea of incinerating it. He downed his drink, put on his hat, went and got a gallon of petrol, wandered back through the pub, down the track a bit, into the outside toilet, and tossed the fuel down the long-drop where the snake was. The
problem was, after he’d tossed the petrol down the long-drop, he searched through all his pockets and couldn’t find his matches. So he wandered back inside the pub.

‘Anyone seen me matches?’ he asked.

As I said, it was a very hot, still day in Noocundra, stinking hot, in actual fact. So after he found his matches, he thought that he may as well have another drink before he went back outside and sorted out the snake. Meantime the petrol fumes were rising up from out of the long-drop and, with there not being a breath of a breeze to disperse them, the toilet soon became nothing short of a gigantic powder keg.

After the chap had downed his drink, he grabbed his matches and put his hat back on. ‘I’ll be back in a tick,’ he said. Then he wandered outside, down the track a bit, in the direction of the toilet. Without having a clue as to what he was in for, he walked into the toilet and took out a match.

‘Goodbye, snake,’ he said, and struck the match over the long-drop.

There are those from the outlying districts who go so far as to say that they felt the reverberations of the ensuing explosion. I don’t know about that, but one thing’s for sure, it certainly put the wind up the blokes who were hanging around the bar of the Noocundra pub. Such was the instantaneous impact of the blast that they didn’t even have the time to down their drinks before they hit the floor. Mind you, that’s only a rumour because, knowing some of the chaps out that way, no matter what the emergency they always finish their drinks before taking any action, even if it’s a reflex action.

Still, you’ve got to feel sorry for the chap who went up in the sheet of flames. Critically burnt he was. Left standing over what had once been the pub’s long-drop toilet with his clothes smouldering away. Stank to high heaven he did. It affected the chap’s hearing too. Deaf as a post he was for a good while. And the shock, poor bloke. Even by the time we got there he was still as dazed as a stunned mullet.

As for his hat, it’s never been found.