The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories (38 page)

When you go out to live in a place like Wittenoom, up in the north of Western Australia, you soon realise that you’re a long way from anywhere. Like, it’s not the sort of place where you can just get up and wander down the street to go and visit the doctor; though I think at one time, they used to have a doctor come over from Tom Price once every so often and — in the hope that he’d keep up the service — everyone in town would front up and pretend that they had something wrong with them. But when that ended, then the Royal Flying Doctor Service virtually took over the medical side of things.

The first dealings that I had with the RFDS was through my brother. He was running tours of the gorges, out from Wittenoom, and every day the Flying Doctor base at Port Hedland would call, just to check that everything was okay. My brother had two vehicles so, if he was out on tour, at a certain given time the Flying Doctor base would call me and I’d just answer, ‘Whisky…go…go’ or whatever. I just can’t remember what my call signal was now. But that was my first experience.

Then I became a member of the Wittenoom St John’s Ambulance. We had a pretty old ambulance and there were just a few locals and we’d get called out if there was an accident or whatever. Like, at one time, a man was riding a motor bike up the gorge, with his girlfriend as a pillion. They were from the
caravan park. He was sixty-six and she was sixty-four, I think. Anyway, a kangaroo jumped out and hit him. Bang, over they went and he broke his tibia and fibula.

Luckily, both the girlfriend and the motor bike weren’t too badly damaged so the girlfriend rode into town, in the moonlight. She wasn’t a small lady either, and she went to the power house, where the generators were, and the guy there called us. So out we went in the old ambulance to find this bikie. Anyhow, we patched him up the best we could and got him back to town then we called the Flying Doctor to fly out and pick him up. So that was one occasion.

But even I had to use the Flying Doctor. See, we’d had a lot of rain and the creeks were flooded right near the town so I drove out for a swim with the dog. Anyway, when I got out of the car, I felt this sting on my leg. At first I didn’t take much notice, but went I hopped in the water, all my hands and feet started burning. I knew something was wrong then, so I hopped back in the car and drove straight back to town. By the time I got back home I was in a real mess. As it turned out, I’d been bitten by a marsh fly. I think that’s what they’re called…or maybe it’s a march fly. They’re like big blow flies that come around after the rain and, as I found out, I’m extremely allergic to their bite.

So I raced inside and called the Flying Doctor. We had a RFDS medical chest in town; you know, one of those huge boxes that contain all the various medications and so forth, which, mind you, you were supposed to check regularly, just to make sure nothing was out of date. Anyhow, the doctor said to get some
Phenergan: that’s an antihistamine. So the girl that had the medical chest, I called her and she brought some Phenergan over and gave it to me.

‘There you go, that should fix it,’ she said.

But it didn’t because the itch — the irritation — didn’t go away, at all. Then she took a look at the Phenergan and said, ‘Oh, this’s only a child’s dosage and, what’s more, it’s out of date.’

So then I had to call the doctor back again and he was very upset. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘is there anyone there that can give you an adrenaline injection?’

Now, I had a small amount of medical knowledge, enough to give myself an injection, but my partner at the time, he said that he’d give it a go, which is typical of males…trying to be the hero. So I sorted out the injection for him and handed it over.

‘What do I do now?’ he asked.

Typical. And so I just held my leg up and said, ‘Put it in there.’

So he gave me an adrenaline injection and that settled everything down. Then the next day — and you won’t believe this — I’m sitting in my lounge room and another marsh fly landed on my arm and it bit me. And, oh, the side of my mouth, my tongue, everything was swelling up and I had to call the Flying Doctor straight away, again. So I had another adrenaline injection then and I had to have another one the next day because the reaction to that bite was far worse the second time around.

And that’s what I mean: you know, if I was in, virtually, any other town I’d just go down to the local pharmacy and tell them that I needed adrenaline and ask them to keep it in stock at all times — and there’d
be no problems. So it’s in situations like that when you realise that you’re a long way from anywhere.

Then, another time, we had a man. I won’t mention his name, but he was a local, in his sixties, and he’d previously had an operation for throat cancer. He’d had his voice box removed so that when he spoke he had to hold a cloth over this hole in his throat. Anyway, we didn’t know it then but they’d apparently given him all the treatment they could and they’d said, ‘Well, sorry, but that’s the best we can do for you.’

So it was January and, you know, up there in the north, you get stinking hot temperatures. We had visitors from Austria, as well as my daughter from Sydney, all staying at my place at that time. We’d all had a few drinks when I got a call from the partner of the bloke who had throat cancer, to say that he’d collapsed and there was blood everywhere.

It was in the middle of the night by that stage and when we went down to their place we found out that the woman had been sleeping at one end of the house and her partner was sleeping up the other. Apparently, he’d woken up when he knew that something terrible had gone wrong and he was stumbling about, trying to find his way out to the woman, and he’d collapsed in the kitchen, near the fridge. What’d happened was that the veins had burst in his throat where the cancer was, so there was blood all over the walls where he was trying to find the light switches. It was dreadful. So we called the Flying Doctor straight away.

In those days the RFDS was still flying into Wittenoom and we had lights and everything at the airstrip. So some people went out there in the old ambulance and turned the lights on and waited for the
plane to arrive and bring the doctor back in. The bloke had stopped bleeding by then so we got him back into bed.

Anyhow, when they brought the doctor back from the airstrip, the first thing he said was, ‘Why didn’t you clean him up?’

‘Well,’ I replied, ‘we weren’t game to touch him because there’s just blood everywhere.’

And so we loaded him into the ambulance and we all went back out to the airstrip and we helped to get him on the plane. I can tell you, I breathed a real sigh of relief when I saw that Flying Doctor’s aircraft begin to taxi down the airstrip to get ready for take-off. I had the man’s partner beside me. I was trying to comfort her. But then, all of a sudden, the plane stopped and it turned around and it came back to where we were.

Apparently, as they were getting ready to take off, the woman’s partner had started bleeding again. The doctor said that that’s the way people with throat cancer go in the end. The blood vessels in their throat burst and you can’t do anything about it, so the doctor had said, ‘No, this isn’t going to work. We’re too late.’

So they came back and they got her this time and they took her off with them to the hospital at Port Hedland. Then I thought that, with all the heat, you can’t just leave it so I went back to their house and I tried to clean up all the blood. That was about two or three o’clock in the morning, and he died in Port Hedland. So the doctor knew that he wouldn’t last the night. Then someone drove up there, to Hedland, the next day and they brought the woman home. But at least she was with him when he died.

Talking from the viewpoint of an ex-RFDS pilot, I guess you always remember the times that touched your heart or touched you emotionally or whatever. One very poignant story in that vein was a call we got in at our Port Hedland base to go to Geraldton, which is on the coast, about 300 or 400 kilometres north of Perth. And understand that in Western Australia we’ve got RFDS bases in Jandakot, which is in Perth, then there’s Kalgoorlie, Port Hedland, Meekatharra and Derby. And I think there might’ve even still been a base at Carnarvon back when this happened because then they closed Carnarvon down in the early to mid ’90s.

But yes, we were called in to pick up this young sixteen-year-old girl who’d been riding her push-bike in a storm and she turned in front of a car and got hit. She was declared brain dead but they had her on life support just to keep her body alive, and our job was to pick her up in Geraldton then take her down to Perth where they were going to harvest her organs.

But the thing was that the girl’s parents came down in the aeroplane with us. And I could only imagine just how difficult it must’ve been for those parents, to have this happen to their gorgeous daughter and, you know, she didn’t look marked at all. She was just beautiful and, of course, being only sixteen it had been the parents’ call to allow her body to be made available for the harvesting of organs.

The thing is, I’ve got daughters as well and I just couldn’t help thinking if I would’ve been able to make that same decision. You know, whether or not to donate their organs, especially at a time like that. Because how on earth, as a parent, could you work your way through a logical process to reach such a clear decision when it’s all compounded with the trauma of the accident and everything else?

Then, what’s more, once that decision had been made, they chose to come along with us and sit in the aeroplane beside their daughter, who, as I said, was on life support. Oh, they were just so brave, strong and wonderful. I just so admired them. My heart went out to them, having to sit in that aeroplane for the hour or so’s flight time, looking at their beautiful, unmarked, young daughter and knowing that it’ll be the last time they’ll ever see her.

So, that’s one that really touched my heart and, I guess, another one I’ll remember forever is when I was with the check and training captain. That’s when you go out on a normal call and the check and training captain comes along to have a look at what you’re doing and how well you’re doing it. Then after the flight’s over, you sit down together and you’re given a précis of your performance. You know, if there’s anything that could’ve been done better or worse or whether it was all fantastic.

Anyway, I was working at Port Hedland at that time and we actually got called out to Geraldton to pick someone up. Along with the check and training captain, we had a doctor and a nurse with us. You understand that not all flights normally have a doctor on board, but we happened to have one on that particular day.

Now, I can’t remember what that particular Geraldton retrieval was for, but, while we were there, we got an emergency call to say that there was a lady at Carnarvon who was bleeding internally. Apparently she’d been in hospital there for a while and they hadn’t had any success stemming the bleeding. And so they’d used up their supply of blood and it was imperative that someone get her down to Perth quickly, where there were more blood supplies.

So we shot up to Carnarvon straight away. When we landed at Carnarvon, the doctor and the nurse went into the hospital to try and stabilise the patient enough to bring her out to the airstrip. Anyway, they did that and they brought her out to the Carnarvon Airport. The story was that she’d given birth to a baby two weeks beforehand and she had post-partum bleeding. See, when the afterbirth comes away, the patient normally stops bleeding. But this woman didn’t stop bleeding. She was thirty-four years old and this was her ninth child.

We’d already been in contact with the medical authorities in Perth to make them fully aware of the urgency of the situation. To that end, they were going to meet us, with the blood supplies and a full medical team, as soon as we landed at Jandakot Airport.

Now, when they put the woman in the aeroplane and I sat in the pilot’s seat, the stretcher was sort of close behind me, to my right. And as we were about to take off, this poor woman reached her arm back and grabbed my hand and she said to me, ‘I’m scared.’

And like you’d naturally do, I replied, ‘It’ll be okay. Everything’ll be alright. We’re on our way. We’ll have help for you in less than an hour.’

Anyway, we wasted no time in getting going and on our way down to Jandakot we got all sorts of special flight clearances through military controlled airspace and so on. So we went the most direct and quickest route possible and, what’s more, I had the throttle to the wall, so to speak. Also, as we got nearer, they even cleared the air traffic in the Jandakot zone.

Then, just one or two minutes from Jandakot, the doctor said, ‘She’s died.’

Still, we went straight in and landed and I taxied very quickly to where the medical team was waiting. I pulled up and before the engines had even stopped, people were in the aeroplane trying to revive her. And they tried to get her going again for about forty minutes. But they just weren’t successful. She was dead. They just weren’t successful.

And I’ll remember that for as long as I live. That was a real toughie. It was just so sad. But, you know, I’m sure that every pilot and every doctor and every nurse has got a similar story or two to tell. So, I guess, the thing you’ve got to keep reminding yourself is that our success rate is a hell of a lot higher than our failure rate.

It must be stressed that tragedies do happen, and over my twenty or so years of flying for the RFDS there are two that immediately come to mind. Perhaps the saddest event in which I ever had to be involved was an accident that occurred at King Junction Station, which is west of Cairns, on the Mitchell River. It was January, in the middle of the wet season. And for some strange reason, even though the wet season’s the time when people aren’t as busy on their property as they normally might be, it always seems that, if anything wrong is going to happen, it always happens in the ‘wet’.

Anyway, Ray Piggott had a high-winged, single-engine Cessna 182 in which he’d been out inspecting the property. Two of his children, a boy and a girl, heard his plane returning home and so they decided to go down on their little motor bike to greet him. The boy was on the front of the bike, the girl on the back.

It was just on sunset and Ray was landing into the east, which meant that the sun was directly behind him. He was on final approach when the children arrived at the airstrip. But because they were looking into the sun’s rays, of course, they were blinded to the approaching aeroplane. Then, just as Ray was about to touch down, the children rode across the airstrip about 100 metres in front of him. By the time Ray saw his children, it was too late.

There was nothing he could do. It was a one in a million chance and he collided with the bike. Though
they missed the prop and the wing, the tail of the plane knocked the children from their motor bike. As it turned out, the young son, who was on the front, was only slightly injured but the daughter was badly knocked about.

The RFDS was called and I flew out at once in the Queen Air with a doctor and a flight nurse. It was dark when we arrived at King Junction. I’m not sure if it was raining, but I remember it was still very wet. Anyhow, they’d organised for some cars to light the airstrip and all went well with the night landing. The doctor attended the patients and reported that the daughter was in a dangerous condition; critical, in fact.

So we loaded both of the children onto the plane, ready for the trip back to Cairns. All looked well for a quick evacuation but then, on taxiing for take-off, we struck a spring, which had caused a soft patch to form on the airstrip. Of course, in the dark it’s impossible to see such a thing. Anyway, we got bogged.

Fortunately the Flying Padre, Reverend Tony Hall-Matthews, had flown in that afternoon after he’d heard about the accident. And so, when they saw we were bogged, Tony drove up to our aircraft. We told him that we were well and truly stuck. One main wheel and part of the nose wheel were bogged so it was going to be some time before we dug ourselves out.

With the young girl being in such a critical condition, it was imperative that she reach specialist medical help as soon as humanly possible, so I asked Tony, ‘Would you be able to fly the girl back into Cairns?’

Tony had never done anything like this before but his immediate reply was, ‘Yes’ and he was only too
happy to declare it a mercy flight in the hopes of saving the daughter’s life. So then we were able to transfer Ray’s daughter and her mother on to Tony’s aircraft, and I think the Nursing Sister as well, and they flew off to Cairns.

It then took us a couple of hours to dig the much heavier Queen Air out of the bog. Well, we ended up virtually lifting and pulling it out with a tractor, then Ray drove the tractor down the strip so that I could follow him and not get bogged again. Remember, of course, all this was going on in the dark. But then once all that was done we flew the young boy to Cairns.

Unfortunately, the next day we were advised that the daughter had died of her injuries in Cairns Base Hospital. But during an emergency situation like that, of course, you’re always so busy that there’s little time to stop and think. However, afterwards, I spent quite some time contemplating the terrible impact the accident had on that family, especially for Ray, being the father and pilot of the aircraft that hit the children, and also, of course, the poor mother who had lost a child in such tragic circumstances.

Another event that had a profound effect on me was the death of the Cape York grazier Fred Shepherd. I knew both Fred and his wife, Ruth, very well. They were good people and had been great mates all their lives. They worked hard together and they worked well together. Then late one afternoon we had a call to go to Marina Plains Station, north of Cairns, near Princess Charlotte Bay.

Again, it was the wet season. Fred and Ruth had been out contract mustering for the manager of the property, Louis Komsich. Fred was thrown from the
horse and the horse had rolled on him. Things didn’t look too good at all and we got there as quickly as we could. From memory, I think it was about an hour and a half flying time from Cairns to Marina Plains, maybe not even quite that.

Anyway, it was after sunset when we arrived for the evacuation. There were no hills and I knew the area very well. I also knew the airstrip well so I felt that, with it being such a delicate emotional situation for those on the ground, I could land safely enough without giving them the extra burden of having to put out flares to light the airstrip.

We landed safely and the only people present were Fred’s wife, Ruth, and Louis Komsich was also there. Louis was very upset at what had happened and Ruth, though she exhibited a practical side, was extremely distraught. With darkness closing in, the doctor immediately attended to Fred and suggested that, even though there was little hope of Fred surviving, we should get him away from there as soon as possible.

At that point I felt it hardly appropriate of me to ask a woman — especially someone’s wife, who’d just witnessed such a terrible accident — to go and put out flares so that I could take off. It’d only be more upsetting for both Ruth and Louis, plus it’d waste precious time. So knowing the area as well as I did, I decided I’d take off by using just my landing lights.

Having made that decision, we next had to solve the issue of a mob of cattle and some horses roaming on the airstrip, and I did ask Louis to drive a car down to clear the area. When that was done my landing lights proved sufficient light to guide me down the strip and I took off without any problems, leaving Ruth and Louis
behind. Unfortunately, on our way to Cairns the doctor confirmed that Fred had died of his horrific injuries. This was extremely upsetting to me because, as I said, I knew the Shepherds very well. But at least I knew I’d done everything in my power to give them the best possible help.

Then about a week or so later the DCA (Department of Civil Aviation) called me in. Apparently, the doctor who was on board with me — and I won’t mention names — had written a report to them saying that he was frightened about my taking off without the extra guidance of flares. This was deemed to be a dangerous manoeuvre by the DCA and I hadn’t met department requirements.

I strongly disagreed because I never did anything that I didn’t know I was capable of doing. I didn’t take any risks. It might’ve seemed that way in a written report to someone like the DCA, but because of my extensive experience in charter work and many years of flying in the bush, what I’d done was a perfectly safe manoeuvre for someone like me. In the worst case, if I’d had an engine failure or anything like that after take-off, it wouldn’t have been any problem in turning around on one engine and get on to final approach again and land with the landing lights. So basically, it didn’t worry me one scrap.

Anyhow, I was called to Brisbane. I walked into the room. There were two people there from the DCA and they started to question my ‘irresponsible behaviour’. So I explained that the reason I hadn’t asked for flares to be put out was that for me to have had those people to go running around and organising flares would’ve been even more upsetting in the situation, especially
for Ruth. Plus, of course, it would’ve been wasting more precious time. Then to finish off I simply stated to them, ‘Well,’ I said, ‘taking all that into consideration, what decisions would you have made under those same circumstances? You’ve got an extremely upset man. Plus, you’ve got a distraught wife with a dying husband. So what do you expect me to do; just sit there and do nothing?’

Well, they didn’t have an answer to that. They were silent for some time then they sort of, almost, congratulated me and said, ‘Well, Mr Darby, we won’t be going any further with this so you won’t hear from us again.’

And I think from then on they had a much deeper understanding and a much more tolerant attitude towards that which was reported to them as having been ‘irresponsible behaviour’.