The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories (28 page)

I’m afraid I don’t talk about it too much because I still get a bit emotional about the whole thing. But it was 1966, about this time actually, February, bad dust storms. Terrible dust storms. You see, there was a big drought throughout central Australia at that time. I don’t know how long it actually went on for but I was told that there were seven-year-old kids living out there that had never seen rain. Then when it broke, later in ’66, I happened to be in Alice Springs and when the rains came, almost everyone in the whole town went down to the Todd River, just to look at the water going past.

I was only new to the Northern Territory. I was only a young feller out there with my best mate, Ken McEwen. We’d done everything together ever since we were little school kids. Anyhow, I’d never seen a dust storm in my life and I don’t think Ken had either, and when we first arrived in the Territory it’d been so dry that there was hardly a scrap of vegetation anywhere and the little that there was looked like it just wanted to blow away. So on a regular basis we’d get these huge dust storms. I remember when I was in Alice — and I filmed it happening — it was as clear as anything, then, in the distance, you could see this mountain of dust and it rolled in like a massive cloud from the west and engulfed everybody and everything.

And when the dust started coming through town it got so dark that the street lights automatically came
on and you could see all the street lights and the car lights turn blue. And that’s true because, apparently, the silica in the sand turns the lights blue. Then sometimes the wind stops and it’s deathly still but the dust is so fine that it just hangs up there in the air, like it’s suspended. Oh, it’s real eerie, I can tell you.

So anyway, we had quite a few terrible dust storms the particular year it happened. At the time I was working for a Canadian company called ODE (Oil Drilling Exploration). ODE was doing a lot of contract well-drilling, out in central Australia, for oil and gas. They contracted for companies like X Oil and French Petroleum. I think they were also involved with Shell because Shell was also drilling madly all over the place in search of oil, even over in western Queensland.

How it all worked was that there was another company, Austral Geophysics, and they’d go ahead of us and do some preliminary drilling then get all the relevant information up on maps. Then Austral would go to X Oil or French Petroleum or whoever owned the leases, show them the maps, and the oil companies would decide where they wanted to drill and they’d come to ODE and say, ‘Righto. Put down five holes for us over in this particular area.’

Then we’d charge them whatever-it-was per foot and we’d bring the rig in, put it up, drill the hole, have a look, finish the hole, knock it down, pull the drill rig down, put in what we called a ‘Christmas tree’ and then we’d move off to the next place to drill another hole. A Christmas tree was a structure that sealed off the drill hole for safety because of the gas. Oh, there were all these painted valves on it and illuminated safety signs bolted to the chain wire fence that
surrounded it. They stood out like dog’s balls in the desert, that’s why they were called Christmas trees.

That was forty years ago and I was out there for most of that year, working all around the place. We drilled all around what they called the Mereenie Fields. The tourists now call it the Mereenie Loop Road. I remember one Easter, for a bit of a break, we went out to what was then known as Ayers Rock. And at Ayers Rock, back then, there was only the caretaker’s hut, a bit of a rough caravan park and an old motel that was built from fibrolite. And over that particular Easter there was only the four of us and three other tourists. That’s all there was. Now, today, I believe there’s well over a thousand people who actually live there, and that’s just the people who are looking after the place. So there wasn’t much there, back in 1966, believe me.

Anyhow, when we were drilling we worked seven days a week and as far as the structure of the team went, we had three shifts going and on each shift we’d have two Roughnecks, a Motorman, a Derrickman and a Driller. So in all, I’d say we’d probably have anywhere up to twenty blokes living out on the actual rig site, and you’d work your way up through the game. You’d go from a Roughneck to a Motorman — that’s the feller who looks after all the engines you drill with — to a Derrickman, to the Driller and then you’d become Tool Pusher.

The actual accident happened to the bloke who was the Tool Pusher. He was like the boss of the oil rig, the head man while we were out there in the desert. I don’t know why they called him a Tool Pusher because he certainly didn’t push any tools. We were the ones that done all the big tool work. And this particular Tool
Pusher, he was a nice bloke who, I must say, was very good to work for, yet he was also very strict.

Anyhow, as you might gather, living and working out in such remote places there wasn’t much to do with any spare time we had. So, yeah, for a bit of play, when we had a bit of time off we’d just grab the old Land Rover and we’d go out shooting donkeys or camels, and sometimes the Tool Pusher would come along as well. The donkeys and camels weren’t for eating, just for sport. Oh, they were everywhere. When we’d fly in and fly out you’d see herds of up to four hundred of them, all over the place.

But anyhow, on this particular day I was working a shift and some of the other blokes went out shooting and the Tool Pusher went with them. And while they were out there, driving about, they hit a sand dune and over they went. But when the Land Rover rolled over the Tool Pusher’s head got jerked out the window and it got squashed in between the top part of the door and the sand. Really, he was lucky that it was sand or otherwise he’d have been killed instantly. Still, he was very badly injured. He was unconscious. He couldn’t move or anything.

Anyway, one of the blokes walked back to camp and grabbed the old Bedford truck — an old pole truck. So they took that out and brought the Tool Pusher back and put him into one of the air-conditioned dongas, which is a portable room, a bit like a little transportable. And they got him into a bed and, naturally, he was covered in blood and sand and everything.

In the meanwhile, a dust storm had been hanging around for a bit and it was starting to build.

We had another bloke out there who was second-in-charge of the rig, a Canadian bloke. He was a driller. From memory, I think he had a bit of first-aid experience. So the driller, he got one of the blokes to call in to the Flying Doctor base at Alice Springs and the doctor there sort of instructed us how to dress the Tool Pusher’s injuries and clean him up a bit by using what we had in our first-aid kit.

The Tool Pusher was still unconscious, at this stage. In fact, he really wasn’t very good at all and he was getting worse, as was the dust storm. So things weren’t looking real flash.

Then, with the Flying Doctor Service, I believe what happens in an emergency situation like that is that the doctor makes all the immediate medical decisions and the pilot has to decide if it’s safe enough to fly. They work as a team. We had an airstrip there, of course, so the driller spoke to them and he said, ‘Look, this feller’s not real good. We can’t move him at all and, to be honest, he’s not going to last a 300- or 400-kilometre drive, over a dirt road, all the way into Alice Springs. He’s just not going to make it.’

And while all this’s going on, outside the dust storm’s getting worse and worse. So the pilot asked what the conditions were like out our way — which, by then, were pretty horrible — and then he had a discussion with the doctor along the lines of, ‘Well, do we fly through a dust storm like this and risk all our lives — the lives of the doctor, the pilot and a nurse — for the sake of, perhaps, saving just the one life?’

It was a tough call but, in the end, they decided that it was best to hold out until the next day when they’d check on the condition of both the Tool Pusher and the
dust storm before making any final decision. But by the following day the condition of both the Tool Pusher and the dust storm had gotten worse. In fact, the Tool Pusher was fading.

In the meantime there was an Aboriginal settlement about 150 kilometres away from where we were, called Areyonga. It’s one of the furtherest settlements on the western side of Alice Springs, right out towards Kings Canyon. And someone from over there, at Areyonga, made an emergency call into the Alice Springs RFDS to say that they had a lady out there who was going through a tough time having a baby and she was in need of urgent help. So the people from the RFDS got together and sort of said, ‘Well, we’ve got an emergency at Areyonga and we’ve got another one over at the drilling site. But the dust storm’s still very bad so, what do we do, do we head off or not?’

Anyway they made their decision to go, and they flew off and, first, they went over to Areyonga to pick up the lady who was having trouble with the baby, then they set off over our way. By this stage the Tool Pusher was slipping away.

It was day time, but because of this big dust storm it was terribly dark. You could hardly see your hand, right in front of your face. Of course, they didn’t even have radar or anything like that in their aeroplanes back then so it was obvious that the pilot was going to have great difficulty just trying to find us, let alone attempting to land the thing. Also, our strip had no lighting. All it had was a bloody wind sock and there was no way he’d be able to see the wind sock through all this dust. The only way we could be of any help was to get all our vehicles and put them down on the end
of the strip, with their lights on, so that when, and if, the pilot found us he’d be able to use the vehicle lights as some sort of guide when attempting to put the plane down.

We knew he was coming in from the west, from Areyonga, and I think our strip ran north and south. So we did that, we lined up all our vehicles, with their lights on and, like I mentioned about when the dust came through Alice Springs that time, the dust here was so heavy that all the lights on the vehicles turned blue because of the silica.

With the pilot not being able to see anything, the best he could do was to try and keep in two-way radio contact with our people on the ground. And so we were in our vehicles and some of us would flicker the lights on and off and we’d also grabbed a couple of spotlights that we used for roo shooting, and we shone those up into this blanket of dust, in the vague hope that the pilot might see them and get some direction.

So we waited, with the Tool Pusher hanging on by a thread, as we flickered our vehicle lights and shone the roo spotlights up into the dust. And then we heard him. At first, you could hear this very dull sort of droning and, as the aeroplane got closer, the louder the droning got. And we were just sitting there saying, ‘How the hell is he ever going to get down through this dust?’

But then, he appeared. Somehow he come out of the browny-black sky. And I tell you, if ever there was a mob of grown men — and tough ones at that — go to water, that was it. At the first sight of that Flying Doctor’s aeroplane breaking through the dust storm the emotion got to us all and we were jumping up and
down like little kids and we were cheering. Oh, there were tears — the lot — because, see, we knew straight away that our work mate was going to be saved, you know. Anyhow, down, down, down he come and he landed on that strip and he taxied up to us and there was a frantic rush to put the Tool Pusher in the plane, and away they went.

Now I’m not exactly too sure what happened with the Tool Pusher after that, but he did live, and that’s the main thing. I never saw him again but I believe he eventually came good. And I also don’t know what happened to the lady who was having a difficult time with the baby. But, I mean, they might well have saved two or even three lives on that one day, and through that terrible dust storm.

So yes, the old Flying Doctor, aye. As I said, it still gets to me. But anyway, perhaps that might give you a real insight into what the RFDS do and how they go about their work. And taking into consideration, of course, that forty years ago they didn’t have the sophisticated planes and equipment that they have now. In fact, I think it was one of those old three-engine Drover aeroplanes he was flying that day. So the expertise of those pilots was unbelievable because, how the hell he came through that huge dust storm, I just would not have a clue.

I suppose I could almost talk under water, but have you heard about ‘In the Footsteps of Flynn’, with Fred McKay? I think that’s a beautiful story because it really depicts, you know, the greatness of Fred McKay and, in particular, the modesty of the man.

To start with, I’ll just have to go back a bit in time. Fred McKay told me this yarn himself. Well, it’s not really a yarn, it’s a true story, and I remember the day that he told it to me, up in Queensland, Fred was born in Mackay, in northern Queensland, and when he was a youngster he became very, very ill. I think he was probably around the age of nine or ten. Anyhow, when he told me this story he couldn’t remember just what the exact illness was but apparently he was in and out of consciousness so, naturally, his family was desperately worried about him. But Fred clearly remembered, at one particular stage, opening his eyes and seeing his mother sitting on the end of his bed, looking desperately worried. Of course, she was unaware that her young son was observing her. And Fred said that he watched his mother as she looked to the heavens and in simple prayer she said, ‘Lord, if you make my little boy well, I’ll make him a minister.’

And, you know, Fred went on to become one of the most celebrated ministers in the land, I suppose. And that’s right, it’s true, because when Fred told me that story he chuckled and he said, ‘Stephen, my destiny was already carved out for me from such a very young age.’

Anyway, throughout Fred’s ministerial training, John Flynn recognised the incredible qualities that Fred possessed and every time they’d meet, Flynn would always try and talk Fred into becoming one of his Outback Padres. Actually, it’s my own thought now that, even at that early stage, John Flynn was looking down the track for a successor and he had Fred in mind. Back then, John Flynn’s title would’ve been the Very Reverend John Flynn because he was the Superintendent of the Australian Inland Mission, an organisation that was inextricably linked to the beginnings of the Flying Doctor Service by Flynn’s unerring drive to create both a medical and spiritual Mantle of Safety for all remote and outback peoples, regardless of colour or creed.

But still, Fred didn’t want anything to do with it. He wasn’t going to be talked into anything by anyone. He was quite tunnel-visioned about the matter and he’d already planned that, after he became ordained here, in Australia, he was going to head off to Edinburgh, in Scotland, where he’d continue his theological studies. Still, John Flynn was determined never to give up, so he persisted, and every time they met he’d come up and try and convince Fred that his true calling was right here in Australia as an Outback Padre with the Australian Inland Mission.

Then Fred’s first church was a Presbyterian church at Southport, on the Gold Coast, in south-eastern Queensland. By then he’d met the love of his life, a nurse, named Meg. Because Fred was just ordained, I suppose his correct title would’ve been Reverend Fred McKay. But Fred loved the water and, on this particular day, after he’d finished his sermon he went
home and put his togs on and went down for a swim, and it was while he was there that he looked to the far end of the beach and he saw quite an unusual figure coming towards him. I say unusual because it would’ve been quite a sight for Southport beach to see a tall, thin man wearing a three piece, pin-striped suit, with a hat on, walking along the sand. And as the figure got closer, Fred realised that it was John Flynn.

Naturally, Fred’s first thoughts were, ‘Here we go again. He’s come to try and talk me into becoming an Outback Padre.’ And that’s exactly what John Flynn was about to do because he’d come back this one more time to try to convince Fred that he should join ‘Flynn’s Mob’, as they were called. So they greeted one another and they sat down on the beach and John Flynn started his convincing.

Then, you know how, when you sit on a beach, you unconsciously play with the sand. You just pick it up in your hand and you let it run through your fingers. Well, there they were, sitting there on the beach and John Flynn realised that they were both running sand through their fingers. So Flynn stopped the conversation and he said to Fred, ‘Fred,’ he said, ‘the sands of Birdsville are much finer than the sands of Southport.’

And that’s what changed the life and the destiny of Fred McKay. That’s what started his great career. Fred told me later, he said, ‘Look, Stephen, I don’t know whether it was divine intervention or what but, at that precise moment, I knew exactly where my destiny lay.’

So that’s when Fred McKay agreed to join John Flynn’s Australian Inland Mission. But then immediately after agreeing to become an Outback
Padre, Fred had a sudden pang of anxiety and in his anxious state he said to Flynn, ‘Look, what am I going to say to these people in the bush when I go out there?’

And John Flynn simply said, ‘Nothing. Just go and listen to them and you’ll get your calling from there.’

That satisfied Fred and so they stood and they shook hands on it and then they started walking off the beach. And when they walked off the beach, John Flynn was slightly ahead of Fred and Fred clearly remembered trying to step into the indentations left on the beach by John Flynn’s footsteps — and what giant footsteps they were. So right up until just prior to Fred’s death, which was a couple of weeks shy of his ninety-third birthday, Fred remained a very prolific public speaker who spoke about the tremendous work of both the Australian Inland Mission and the Flying Doctor Service. And that’s the reason why Fred’s talks were always titled ‘In the Footsteps of Flynn’.