The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories (30 page)

This happened in 1965 or ’66. My maiden name back then was Astbury. I was nineteen at the time and I was at Rottnest Island, holidaying with my friend, Jan, and I fell off a push bike. How the actual accident occurred was that we were out bike riding and, do you know Rottnest Island? Well, there’s one hill on it and we were up the top of the hill and I said to Jan, ‘Let’s just freewheel down to the bottom.’

Famous last words because I came off my bike, didn’t I, and oh, I was in a terrible mess. Amongst other things I smashed down on my face and cut right across my lip. Then I put my head down into my lap and when they got me to the Nursing Post on the island I was bleeding like mad and the Nursing Sister thought that maybe I was haemorrhaging and there were all sort of things the matter with me. But actually, it was mainly just my face and my shoulder and my knees. But it was scary. And being nineteen, that’s the stage of your life when you think you’re just so gorgeous.

This all happened towards the evening. So the nursing sister decided to call the Flying Doctor. Then there was a bit more drama because, with it becoming dark, they didn’t have electric lights on the runway so they had to light flares along the side. From memory they were just like lighted sticks in 44-gallon drums or something like that, placed along the runway. I’m afraid my memory of all that isn’t too clear because I was in shock and I was bleeding from my face and
I was all mushed up. I just remembered these flares. Anyway, the Flying Doctor arrived in the dark and, when I eventually got on board, I said to the pilot, ‘Look, do you mind if I take a friend?’

‘Okay,’ he said.

Well, Jan was my age. She was blonde, vivacious and quite gorgeous looking. So I’m lying in the back of the plane — there I am ‘dying’ — and in the front of the plane all I can hear is this chat, chat, chat, chat. Like, I didn’t know just who Jan was talking with but it was certainly a male. I can’t actually remember anyone else being up there other than a pilot and Jan. I can’t even remember if there was anyone else in the back of the plane with me. All I could remember was that Jan was chatting to this chap all the way to Perth.

So it would’ve only taken about ten or fifteen minutes to fly from Rottnest Island to Perth. It’s not very far. You can actually see Rottnest from Fremantle. So I arrived in Perth and they took me to Royal Perth Hospital in an ambulance and I was there for a week to ten days having operations on my face and all that. Oh, I had skin grafts and all sorts of things. I really mushed up my face, badly. I remember my auntie coming in to visit me and she took one look and she burst into tears. ‘Oh Laurel,’ she said, ‘why couldn’t you have broken your legs or something, instead of smashing up your face?’

But anyway, I healed and they sent me home to recuperate at my parents’ farm at Harrismith, which is south-east of Perth, near Wickepin, in the wheat-belt. So there I was, recuperating at my parents’ farm and, the next thing, well, Mum got this telephone call from a male person who said he was from the Royal Flying
Doctor Service and he was ringing just to enquire how I was getting on. Mum said that he sounded very caring. You know, ‘How’s your daughter? She was in a bad way and we got her across to Perth and we got her to hospital…’ Blah, blah, blah.

‘Oh,’ I thought, ‘that’s pretty amazing. He’s being so very nice, you know, ringing to see how I was after my accident.’

So Mum explained to him that I had to have skin grafts and I had to have stitches here, there and everywhere.

‘Oh, that’s good,’ he said. ‘I’m glad she’s recovering. And by the way,’ he said, ‘the lass that accompanied her over, she was very nice, too.’

Then he asked Mum if he could possibly have the name, address and/or phone number of ‘the beautiful-looking girl who accompanied me over from the Rottnest Island’. So there was an another reason for him ringing. There was a bit of hocky-docky romance going on in the plane that he probably wanted to follow up on.

But Mum being the old fashioned lady she was said, ‘Oh no, I don’t think I could give you that. It just wouldn’t be right.’

And as far as I know, nothing else happened. So that was forty years ago. I’ve still got scars, but I healed fine. You know, it was just one of life’s little accidents.

Yes, well, back years and years ago I used to live with my then husband, John, and my two baby boys, in the south-west of Queensland at a place called Yaraka, which is unheard of. Yaraka’s at the end of the railway line that goes out from Rockhampton then down past Blackall. And once a month the Flying Doctor people used to fly out from Charleville to run medical clinics in each little area around the place and, when they came down our way, sometimes they’d stay overnight with us.

So I think this was probably in the late ’60s, when I was in my mid-twenties, and we were all reading the
Peanuts
comic books. Do you remember those? Well, we kind of thought that the Snoopy character from the
Peanuts
comics would look good on the nose-cone of the Flying Doctor aeroplane. You know, the drawing where Snoopy’s doing his ‘Red Baron’ act and he’s sitting in a plane with his flying goggles on and a scarf blowing out behind him.

Anyhow, we teed it up with the RFDS pilot and doctor that the next time they were going to come out to Yaraka on a clinic run we’d have the paint and brushes all ready. Of course, we didn’t know if it’d be
approved by Tim O’Leary, who was the Head of the Flying Doctor network back then, but we decided to do it anyway. And if Tim asked any questions when they got back to Charleville, then the pilot and the doctor would tell him that they didn’t have a clue how the painting got there, nor who did it.

So on the day, as soon as we heard the plane buzzing overhead we whooped out to the airstrip and, while my two little boys were looking on, we painted Snoopy on the nose-cone. The actual plane was named the ‘Allan Vickers’ — Allan being one of the original doctors who worked with John Flynn. After he retired, I think he actually died while he was coming back from England on a boat and they buried him at the Cape of Good Hope.

Anyhow, so we did this paint job on the nose-cone of the aeroplane and when Tim O’Leary saw it he thought it looked great and so it stayed on, and everybody loved it. After that, each time the ‘Allan Vickers’ was serviced, the engineers painted an extra whisker on Snoopy. So I reckon he might’ve got a bit hairy before that particular RFDS plane was replaced. Then, when they finally did replace it with a new plane, they even got a sign writer to paint a new Snoopy on the nose-cone of that one as well. And they’ve had new planes since and I gather that Snoopy’s still on there. He’s become, more or less, the mascot for the Charleville Flying Doctor Service.

Then, of course, the Flying Doctor Service had an awful lot to do with my ex-husband and I getting engaged. Both Tim O’Leary and Allan Vickers were incorrigible romantics who seemed to want everybody in the same miserable state of marriage because both of them were always trying to match-make people.

No, they did all sorts of things. They’d find you a partner whether you wanted one or not. I remember with John, my husband-to-be, though I didn’t know it at the time…

Well, this was long before the Snoopy episode because I was working out at Dalby, which is west of Brisbane, and John had a property with his brother out at Yaraka. We’d met a couple of times, that’s all, and we used to write to each other occasionally, but just as friends. I mean, it was a bit far to pop down to Yaraka from Dalby just for a dinner. Anyhow, one time, John wanted to survey a boundary track because he was thinking of taking a tank-sinking plant out to the edge of his property. Mind you, these were pretty big properties. So he set off and, as you do in the country, you always have a gun in the vehicle with you.

Anyway, John was on his way out when he met up with Jimmy Davies, 100 miles from nowhere. Jimmy was an old ‘dogger’, meaning that he made a living
out of the bounty money he earned from shooting wild dogs, dingos in particular. So they started having a chat, out in the middle of this nowhere, and Jimmy asked John, ‘What’re doing out here?’

So John explained how he was thinking of taking a tank-sinking plant out and he just wanted to survey the area.

‘I may as well come along with yer, then,’ said Jimmy.

So they both jumped into John’s vehicle and while they were driving out they saw a dingo and John grabbed his rifle and took a pot shot at it. The only trouble was that he had some faulty ammo in his rifle and the gun blew up in his face, damaging his right eye. So then Jimmy had to drive John home and when they got there they called the RFDS. Anyhow, both Tim O’Leary and Allan Vickers came out in the plane and by the time they finished patching John up and got him settled, it was too dark to take off, so they decided to stay the night then fly John to hospital the next morning.

As I said, John and I had only met a couple of times before and while we did write the occasional letter, there was really nothing in it. Now the accident must’ve occurred on a Melbourne Cup day or close thereafter because I’d won some money in a sweep so, feeling a little flush with money, I decided to ring John on impulse, that particular night. Then when I rang up to have this chat with John, the phone was answered by someone who had an Irish accent. It was Tim O’Leary and so he told me about the shooting accident and he mentioned that they were going to take John to Brisbane the next day. So a couple of days later I rang
around and found the hospital where John was and I went down to visit him.

Then, when Allan Vickers found out that I’d been to visit John, he suggested to the doctor — the eye specialist — that the best thing for John to do, in his current situation, was to spend a weekend in the country to recuperate; perhaps even a short trip to some place like Dalby, even. It was all a set-up, of course, so John then caught a bus out to Dalby and he arrived on my doorstep. I didn’t know he was coming or anything. In actual fact, I was doing the ironing and I heard this knock…knock on the door and when I opened it, there was John.

‘I’m here,’ he said.

And ten days later we were engaged.

Thanks HG, I’ve got one that I thought was a bit interesting. I’ve flown over Australia quite a number of times and, I mean, it’s brilliant, absolutely brilliant. I’ve taken shots of Lake McKenzie. I’ve taken shots from across the centre. Actually, one time I was coming back home and I spotted the Birdsville Track. I knew what it was straight away because I’d been out through there quite a few times, you know, and it’s just fascinating to see the beauty of this land. You know, the colour, it’s just brilliant.

But back in ’98 I was flying over to Europe with Singapore Airlines and we were about 10000 metres high. Anyway, I’d had a couple of scotches and, as we were passing over Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, I thought I’d take a photograph out of the plane window. Anyway, we weren’t on the right angle for me to get a shot of the Alice and, naturally, I couldn’t get the bloke — the pilot — to turn around so I took a shot out of the left-hand side of the plane.

Anyway, I didn’t think much of it and when I got back home a few months later, I got the film developed and there was something there, on the ground, and I just couldn’t work out what it was. It sort of resembled an airstrip, but I knew that there wasn’t one there —
well, there wasn’t supposed to be one there. Anyhow, I was stumped so I had a bit of a think about it and my reckoning was that the Royal Flying Doctor Service were always in the air around the Territory and, if anyone knew what this thing was, they would. So just on the off-chance, I sent the photo to the Flying Doctor base in Alice Springs and in the letter I asked them if they could help me identify it. And anyway, an RFDS pilot, I think it was, he wrote back and said, ‘Yeah, as soon as I seen it, I knew what it was.’ And it turned out to be the Jindalee BEA ‘over the horizon radar transmitter’, which is just north of Alice Springs.

So, yes, they’re a great service, and that was an aspect of their work that I was completely unaware of. Well, I didn’t know, I just thought, well, who else could help me identify this shot — this photograph — and then straight away I thought of the Flying Doctor Service. I mean, they’re in the air all the time up that way, so I reckoned that if anyone knew, they might.