The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories (54 page)

Back in the 1980s I was working in a voluntary capacity, up in the Kimberley region in the far north of Western Australia. If you know that area, I worked for about four years at Lombadina Aboriginal Mission. I also worked for a year in Derby. Following that I spent a year up at the Kalumburu Aboriginal Mission. Then I worked for another year in what was originally known as Port Keats, which is now known as the Wadeye Aboriginal Community. And with the Royal Flying Doctor Service having a base at Derby, most weeks they used to fly out to all those places to run medical clinics plus, at the drop of a hat and normally at night — and usually in the worst of weather conditions — they’d fly in for emergency ‘medi-air-vacs’, as we called them.

So yes, you could say I’ve had some ‘interesting’ times at some of those Aboriginal communities that have been linked in with the RFDS. Take Lombadina for example; I think there were about two hundred people there in the mid-1980s. Back then, they had a pressed gravel airstrip, made up to a certain standard, which was similar to most of those other places I worked at in the Kimberleys. Lombadina had a generator as well, though from memory, I don’t think it had the capacity to be able to light up the airstrip. Anyway, the generator was too far away from the airstrip to run the necessary electrical lines or what-have-you.

So of course when there’s a night emergency, first of all there’s the having to go out in the middle
of the night — and, as I said, it was usually in the most atrocious of weather conditions — and sort out the kerosene lamps to light the strip for the plane to come in and out. The kero lamps were built like a large double cone, with a big reservoir of kero and a wick on the top. They had a good, big light but their only problem was that they lacked any decent wind protection. So if it was too windy or, you know, if it was too wet and stormy to light the kero lamps, which happened a lot up there, you had to con all the blokes into getting out there in their four-wheel drives to line up alongside the airstrip.

For the plane to land safely, you lined the cars up at a good distance apart and they’d be pointing alternately across the airstrip so that their lights weren’t aimed at each other. You could say that they were sort of like in a zigzag formation and then you had one or two vehicles right down the very end, on low beam, so that the pilot could gauge where the end of the strip was. And of course there were other things to sort out like always having to clear the cattle off the airstrip. They were a particular danger, especially at Lombadina. We had free range cattle up there and so we had to make sure they didn’t get in the way of the plane. So that was all good fun, though I suppose everyone’s heard all those type of stories.

With Lombadina, I don’t know what the legals were, but away back when the Sacred Heart Nuns and St John of God were the mainstays of the missions, the original people up on the Dampier Peninsula — the Bard Tribe — gave the land to the Church. In those early days the place was just about self-sufficient; you know, for meat, bread, vegetables and so forth. So there wasn’t too much
they had to bring in, other than fuel and things like that. Then over time the particular religious orders gave the Aborigines the leasing rights to the land, plus the cattle, plus all the windmills and the stockyards that were dotted around the place. We ran the vegetable gardens and the bakeries and the mechanical workshops and all those sort of self-functioning things that were needed to keep the place going. Then over time the Aborigines also took over those functions. Take the bakery, for instance; rather than ship bread up from Broome they had someone baking the mission bread in a nice wood-fired oven and when I ran the store I sold that bread in the store on a commission basis. That’s how it worked.

Of course the Aborigines were very itinerant. Sometimes they lived in Broome, sometimes they’d come back out to the mission at Lombadina or they might even go and live more traditionally out on their original beach locations and things like that. And other than the usual weekly clinic duties that the RFDS ran, some of the sort of emergency casualties we’d have were things like childbirths, general accidents and injuries and — you know, I shouldn’t say it — but there were the injuries from fights and things like that which was usually the result of some alcohol-related dispute or the like.

But the traditional mourning ceremonies were something very interesting. Different cultures might do it a different way but, with the Bard people, the way they did it up there was that they had what was called a ‘smoking ceremony’. Now, I’m not an Aboriginal anthropologist or anything so you’ll have to check the facts on this, but it was all to do with smoking the spirits away or as a cleansing process to release
the spirits out of the body. And sometimes there were lots of little fires made from gum leaves that were set around the coffin and at other times they carried the coffin past a big fire and the winds blew the smoke across it. Then, you know, because it was a Christian Mission, after the smoking ceremony 90 percent would then have a Catholic Mass in the church followed by a normal Christian burial, which was held in the cemetery just right behind the church.

I remember one extremely moving ‘smoking’ they held was when they brought back the body of one of the old-time Aborigines to Lombadina. It was one of the old male Elders. They flew in at night for that one and so we had to light up the airstrip. The old man had died and I think the RFDS took the body to Derby for an autopsy, or for some sort of legal thing, then they brought him back for their traditional mourning ceremony, which was this ‘smoking’.

So the RFDS plane landed at night and the Aboriginal people came up and they took the body — the coffin — out of the plane and I think they took it back to the house of one of the Elder’s relatives. The coffin was still closed, and they had a mourning ceremony with those people and that’s when they had the smoking ceremony. Then after that they had the traditional Christian Mass and burial. That was quite a big one, that was. Well, I know I’ve gone off the track a little but really what I’m trying to get across is that the Royal Flying Doctor Service was a very strong link up there, all throughout the Kimberley region, in so many and varied ways. So yes, they are a great organisation and, personally, for me, the time I spent up there was an unreal yet a really great experience.

You could just about title this story ‘The Longest Day’, because to begin with the Royal Flying Doctor Service base in Alice Springs rang me at home at two o’clock in the morning and said, ‘We’ve had an accident case up at Tennant Creek. It’s pretty serious so could you fly up there and bring them back down to the Alice?’

In those days, Tennant Creek only had one doctor and a few nurses and I knew that the surgeon was in Alice Springs. So I said, ‘Yeah, no problem.’

So we jumped in the De Havilland Dove and I took off at about three o’clock in the morning and we headed off to Tennant Creek. I’d say that it would’ve taken us about two hours to fly up there, then we spent about half an hour on the ground, then two hours back — which is four hours’ flying time — so I guess that would’ve had us back in the Alice at around 7.30.

We also had a short routine medical visit scheduled for that day. That was supposed to finish at about midday or one o’clock. Now, you don’t like to change those if you can help it, because at these remote stations and settlements everyone comes into town especially to see us. So after we got back from Tennant Creek I said, ‘Look, let’s still do the routine medical visit.’

Okay, so we did the medical visit, then we’d just got back into Alice Springs when the hospital rang up and said, ‘Do you feel like flying back to Tennant Creek? We’ve got a real serious case of peritonitis.’

From memory the appendix had burst and one thing had led to another and things didn’t look too good, so I said, ‘Yeah. Righto, no problem. I’ll go back to Tennant Creek.’

So I flew to Tennant Creek for the second time that day and I’d just arrived home again when the phone rang. It was the surgeon in Alice Springs — I knew him quite well — and he said, ‘Neil, they tell me you’ve already had a bugger of a day. Well, I’m having a bugger of a day, too. I’ve got this woman here but the longer we keep her on the anaesthetic machine, the more chance she’s got of getting brain damage.’ He said, ‘Look, I’ve done everything I can possibly do up here and I’d really like to get her down to Adelaide straightaway.’

As it happened, I was the only pilot up in Alice Springs at that time who could do the trip because the De Havilland Dove was an IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) aircraft and I was the only instrument rated pilot around the place. So it had to be me. ‘Righto,’ I said. ‘Yeah, we’ll go.’

As soon as that decision had been made, they then had to make enough space in the Dove to fit in the anaesthetic machine. And so, while I was flight planning, the engineer was busy stripping the seats out of the aircraft so that we could fit the anaesthetic machine and everything else in. I’d say that the machine itself must’ve been about 8 or 9 feet long and about 3 feet wide so it only just barely squeezed in the door. Then I also wanted to scrape every ounce of fuel we could get into the tanks, and so they were filled to the absolute. Actually, in the end we were a little bit overloaded, but I don’t think I even bothered with a load sheet.

Anyhow, so then I took off for Adelaide. By that time it was probably about eight or nine o’clock at night. On board with me were the female patient of course, plus a doctor and a nursing sister. But because we didn’t have 240-volt power, the doctor and nurse had to work the anaesthetic machine manually. They had to do all the pumping and everything. And on that trip I was in cloud the whole time. I didn’t even see a star. Not a single one. It was pitch black. I never even saw a single light on the ground or anything. And normally when you’d go on a long trip like that, the nursing sisters had a big flask of coffee or something to help you keep alert. But that wasn’t the case on this occasion. They were so flat out in the back, caring for the patient and doing the pumping and so forth, that they didn’t even get the chance to come up and chat with me. So the only thing that kept my sanity was talking on the radio and watching the DME (Distance Measuring Equipment) tick over.

Anyhow, as you might be able to imagine, I was pretty stuffed by the time we finally began our descent into Adelaide. And when we broke out of the cloud, at about 500 feet, it was as clear as a bell. And with seeing the lights of Adelaide and then there ahead, less than a mile in front of me, was the runway, oh gees, I tell you, Adelaide was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen. And I still reckon it’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen because, as I said, for five hours I hadn’t seen a thing outside the cockpit, not even a star. Nothing.

Then by the time we landed at Adelaide I worked out that I’d spent eighteen hours in the air and that’s not including the time on the ground. But you see back then, there was no one else in Alice Springs who was qualified to fly on instruments apart from me. So that
was my longest day: eighteen stick hours in one day. And except for long-distance flights, I’d say that that record would never be broken because these days, first, there’s always plenty of properly trained pilots available and second, there’s usually plenty of available aircraft around.

Anyway, the woman survived, and I guess that’s the most important thing.

So yes, Alice Springs was an extremely fascinating part of my life. Plus it’s also what you make it, isn’t it? Because, you know, you can go on about the aircraft and one thing and another and, I mean, of course, we didn’t have all this fancy stuff they’ve got today. We even took the auto-pilot out of the aircraft because it weighed too much. The damn thing usually never worked anyway. But, see, originally up in Alice Springs we just had the one doctor, the one sister, the one pilot, the one aircraft and the one engineer. Then over the years the medical side of it built up to such an extent that when I left they replaced me with two pilots and two aircraft. By then I’d flown one thousand, eight hundred and twelve hours in three years. That’s six hundred actual flying hours per year, and for that sort of work you’d normally expect to fly a maximum of about four hundred hours a year. But that’s what used to happen in those early days and that’s why they doubled up the service after I left.

And with us just having the one engineer, the one pilot and the one aircraft, we still kept our aircraft virtually as good as new. I’d write the most minute snags on a piece of paper and stick it on the wall in the engineer’s office and he’d fix them up. We had that aircraft in absolutely ‘Mickey Mouse’ condition.
Actually, the whole time I was there I only ever broke down once, and that had nothing to do with our own engineer. It was because of some sort of a fault in overhaul maintenance while it was in Sydney. What happened was that the aircraft had its usual two-yearly major service in Bankstown and when they put the fuel line on they were supposed to use two spanners on it. But they only used the one spanner and they twisted the fuel line and in doing so they twisted the pipe.

Then after the plane came back from being serviced I went out to a property one day and everything seemed to be going well. But then on our way back home I got up to about 8000 or 9000 feet and the fuel pressure started dropping off and the engine began surging. So I shut the engine down. And that’s what they found out afterwards — that the pipe had twisted causing a drop in pressure and, at the high ambient temperature, the fuel vaporised. It was just something as simple as that.

Anyway, after I shut the engine down I said to the doctor, ‘Well,’ I said. ‘Here we are, we’re on one engine and it’s about 200 miles to Alice Springs. That’s a bit too far to go on just the one engine.’

I mean, I could’ve had a go at it but you don’t push your luck in an aeroplane. Never. So then I had to find the closest suitable airstrip to land on the one engine and so we went back to Ernabella Mission. I’m not sure what it’s like now but back then Ernabella was a dry mission. Even the merest mention of alcohol there was frowned upon. So we were then stuck at Ernabella Mission for two days without a drink.

Anyway, in those days Alice Springs had a population of only about three or four thousand people, and word
gets around. So by the time we got back, everyone knew that we’d been stuck out on a dry settlement at Ernabella. Then the instant we walked into the Memorial Club the barmaid plonked these two huge pots of beer down in front of us. We didn’t have to say a thing. And that’s what the people were like out there in the Alice. Absolutely great. They knew where we’d been and they reckoned we’d be in need of a big beer so they got the barmaid to pour us one as soon as we walked in the club. So yes, we might’ve had some long days but, gee, they were great times.