The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories (34 page)

In 1975 and ’76 I worked for a charter company who contracted to the Royal Flying Doctor Service in Alice Springs. We had a Beechcraft Baron. Anyway, I was wondering if you’ve heard the story about Rabbit Flat? It was in all the newspapers and magazines, as well as being on television and radio.

Of course, you know where Rabbit Flat is, don’t you? Well, it’s in the Northern Territory, out on the Tanami Track, on the way to Halls Creek, roughly 600 kilometres north-west from Alice Springs and about 150 kilometres from the Western Australian border. If you can imagine, it’s typical Tanami desert, flattish country, just spinifex. So there’s not a lot out there apart from this roadhouse on the Tanami Track at a place called Rabbit Flat. It’s actually privately owned by a couple called Bruce and Jackie Farrands and, at the time this occurred, Jackie was pregnant and was about six weeks away from giving birth. Actually, I can give you the precise date: it was 6 August 1975.

Anyhow, the night before — on the fifth — I got a phone call from my boss asking me to take off in the Beechcraft Baron early the following morning to arrive over Rabbit Flat just on first light. Apparently, the Flying Doctor Service base had received a radio message via either Perth or Darwin or somewhere and it looked like Jackie had gone into labour. Bruce couldn’t get in direct contact with the RFDS at Alice Springs, himself, because of the poor atmospheric
conditions. Then just after the message had arrived the conditions turned so bad that radio contact was cut completely and they couldn’t get any more information about Jackie.

So we took off before sunrise and we flew out to Rabbit Flat. There was just myself and a nursing sister, Maureen Eason. I can’t remember exactly but it took us something like an hour and a half, flying out to the north-west, and we arrived just after first light at Rabbit Flat. We circled over the roadhouse to let Bruce know we’d arrived then, when we landed, he came out in his vehicle to pick us up.

The first thing Maureen said to Bruce was something along the lines of, ‘Has anything happened yet? Is Jackie okay?’

‘Oh sure,’ said Bruce. ‘She’s already given birth.’

Maureen was quite surprised at that news so she said, ‘Oh, so how’s Jackie and how’s the baby?’

‘Well,’ Bruce replied, ‘the first baby’s fine.’ Then he said, ‘And so is the second one.’

So there were two of the little buggers. Twins; both boys.

And no one knew. Not even Jackie’s doctor knew that she was expecting twins. Anyway, the babies were fine. Bruce had them wrapped up in cotton wool, in a washing basket. So Bruce and I, we sat down and had a cuppa tea while Maureen attended to Jackie and got her ready to be transported back into Alice Springs. We’d taken a humidicrib with us so Maureen put the baby boys in the humidicrib and we put Jackie on the stretcher, in the Beechcraft. Then just before we hopped into the aircraft, Bruce said to me, ‘Oh, this’ll be good publicity for Rabbit Flat, eh.’

‘Oh yeah, okay,’ I said, and I took off.

Well, it was a bit strange for Bruce to say something like that, you know, about wanting publicity for Rabbit Flat, because he was such a quiet sort of bloke; a bit of a loner, really. Well, you’d have to be to even contemplate going out there to live in a place like Rabbit Flat, in the first place, would you?

But anyway, on the way back into Alice Springs I began thinking that he really must be keen on seeking some sort of publicity. So after I landed and my services were no longer required, I raced over and there was a phone in the corner of our hangar, and I rang the local ABC Radio in Alice Springs. A male voice answered the phone — I don’t know who it was — and I said, ‘Do you want a good story?’

He said, ‘Yeah.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘the population of Rabbit Flat doubled last night.’

Now, the last thing I expected was to be quoted verbatim. But the next thing I know, it actually started hitting the headlines as a human interest story. I’m pretty sure it was on the front page of
The Australian
. If you go back and look at 7 August 1975 you’d probably find it in the paper, there somewhere. It even made the
Women’s Weekly
, and I think it probably went into
Pix
or
Post
and most of those popular magazines at the time.

So it was a big story and it even went international because people in England even started ringing up Bruce. It was also actually written up in some publication or other over in England. Oh, Bruce had phone calls from everywhere, all over the world. So then it became a bit of a stampede out to Rabbit Flat,
there for a while. But it got a bit too much for Bruce because he was left out there to deal with it all by himself until Jackie and the babies, Daniel and Glen, were ready to go back home.

Then, I think it was ‘A Big Country’, well, they went out there and did a television program on Bruce and Jackie and their lives in Rabbit Flat. In fact, just recently, ‘A Big Country’ approached Bruce again because they were re-running some of their old stories and I think they wanted to do something along the lines of ‘A Big Country: Twenty Years On’. So they rang Bruce about doing a follow-up program. But Bruce’s a bit shy of publicity these days. In fact, he’s not real keen on it at all. He reckons he had enough back in ’75 to last him a lifetime.

I reckon I might’ve been about one of the first recipients of the Flying Doctor Service. This was in 1929, back in the depression era when no one had two pennies to rub together. Things were pretty tough and Dad was out in the bush with the railways, so my mum took work anywhere she could to get some money. Anyhow, she got this job, working as a domestic on a cattle station called Davenport Downs. Davenport Downs is on the Diamantina River, in the channel country, in southwestern Queensland.

I was only about two or something so I can’t remember exactly what happened but, apparently, there was a black gin — an Aboriginal woman — who was working in the kitchen as one of my mother’s helpers. Anyhow, this gin was doing some mincing; mincing up leftovers to make rissoles. And so, yeah, she sat me up on the table where she was doing this mincing and she must’ve turned away or something because I stuck my hand in the top of the mincing machine and it took me finger off, right down to the first joint. It was the first finger — the index finger — of the right hand. Yep, right down to the knuckle. So she must’ve still been turning the mincer and she didn’t see me stick my hand in the thing. I mean, I was only two or something so I lost the top of my finger in the mincer.

Now, there would’ve only been the old peddle-type radio back then and I presume that’s how they got in contact with the Flying Doctor. So they came out
to pick me up in what would’ve been, back in those days, an old canvas plane; an old biplane, an Avian or something like that. I think the Avians were about the first ones the Flying Doctor Service used. There’s one up at the Museum in Longreach. I’m going to Longreach sometime this year because I want to find out for sure what exactly happened, you know, whether my name or my mother’s name is on their records out there.

Anyhow, the Flying Doctor came out and they flew me and my mother from Davenport Downs back into Boulia Hospital. And, as they did in those days, they just took what was left of the minced up joint-bone out, pulled the skin back over it and then they sewed the fingernail back on. So I’ve got a nail on my knuckle, yeah, but I don’t know where they got that from. Perhaps they fished it out of the rissole mince.

Then when we got back, the black gin had taken off somewhere. I don’t think she’d ever seen an aeroplane before so when she saw the Flying Doctor plane come and take me away she probably thought she’d killed me and I was being taken off into the spirit world by this strange thing that flew in the sky.

Anyway, that’s my story. As I said, I was only about two at the time and I’ve still got the fingernail growing out of the knuckle of the index finger on my right hand and, no, I don’t know what happened with the rissoles.

I suppose you’ve heard of Slim Dusty the singer? He’s dead now but back in 1985 I published a book called
Slim Dusty Around Australia
. Basically, it was a collection of photographs, with only about two pages of writing, and it was about his concert days and all that sort of thing.

I’m not really into music, but I was just a fan, that’s all. And how it all come about was that I was working in the Public Service and in my spare time I’d travel around with Slim and take lots of photographs. Like, I’d go behind the scenes. And I’d go into towns where he’d been and go to the local newspapers and, you know, I’d go to some of his record store appearances on the day he was to sign autographs and I’d attend some of the awards that he got, even the ones he received outside the music industry.

Anyhow, over time the collection gradually built up. So, in the end, I sorted them all out and put it together and I included about two hundred and fifty photos in the book, which was about one hundred pages long, and then I had a thousand copies printed and, really, the rest is history. They’ve all gone now, but that was my little mark on history.

Then in the 1980s, after I left the Public Service, I did some volunteer mission work up in the Kimberley region, up in the far north of Western Australia. I did a year in Derby, about four years at Lombadina Aboriginal Mission, another year up in the Kalumburu
Aboriginal Mission, then another year in what was originally known as Port Keats, which is now the Wadeye Aboriginal Community.

When I was in Derby I ran the School Hostel, on the outskirts of town, there. See, the church had a boarding hostel for the little Aboriginal school kids who lived up that Gibb River Road. And they’d come into Derby for the school terms and they’d board at the School Hostel and go down to either Derby Primary School or to the Catholic Primary School. Our job was to look after them and feed them and clothe them and provide recreational activities for them and things like that and then, on their school holidays, they’d take off and go back to their communities.

Then one Sunday night, when I was in Derby, I was listening to the local ABC Radio’s ‘Country Music’ program and they were having an appeal to raise money for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. And I knew that Slim was a great supporter of the Flying Doctor Service. I think he even sung a song about it and I’m certain that he did a couple of concerts over in Charleville, where he donated part of the proceeds to the RFDS.

Anyhow, I still had a copy of the book with me so I rang up the radio station and asked if they wanted to auction a book. And when I explained what the book was about, well, the ABC got really rapt in it, you know, because everybody up there loved Slim Dusty and they played him all the time. Anyhow they agreed to auction it over the radio, amongst all the listeners, and, I mean, I was only selling it for about $10 a copy and I think they ended up auctioning it for somewhere between $250 and $300.

So that was my small contribution to the RFDS.

Did you ever run into people by the name of Clarrie and Emily Pankhurst? Clarrie only passed away eighteen months or so ago, but he was the last of the Boss Drovers. I mean, this feller could be on the road for anything from six to eight months with fifteen hundred head of cattle from Wave Hill, which is in the west of the Northern Territory, over to Camooweal, just inside the Queensland–Northern Territory border, then all the way down south of Mount Isa, to be trucked from Dajarra. Camooweal was where they used to keep all their horses and that. So it was an amazing life some of these fellers had, wasn’t it?

Actually, a book’s been written for Clarrie and his wife, Emily. It’s called
The Boss Drover
, and it’s a great read. To tell you the truth, I know a lot about it because we lived across from the Pankhursts at Mount Isa, and me and my brother, we both went out with Clarrie, you know. So we know the guy first-hand. None of it’s fiction so if you give any credit to anybody for this story, I’d rather it be credited to Clarrie and his wife, Emily, formally of Mount Isa, because that’s where they used to live when they weren’t droving.

Now, I want to get this as close as possible; so this was in 1956. Clarrie and his ringers were yarding up some cattle out on a station property, well out into the Northern Territory, near Newcastle Waters, and this young feller come off his horse and broke his leg. It didn’t happen near the homestead because they were
out a way. The young feller, he had a few rib injuries as well, but mainly the leg was badly broken and, well, they had to call the Flying Doctor to come in from Alice Springs. But all around the particular area where they were at the time, where the accident occurred, there was a lot of scrub so there wasn’t much room for a plane to land.

Anyhow, the pilot got the plane down alright, but because the airstrip was so short and because of all this scrub, plus they now had this young injured feller on board, the pilot needed a much longer run-up to get the aeroplane back in the air. So what they did was, they got three ringers to hang on to each of the wings and two ringers to hang on to the tail — that’s eight of them — and these ringers just dug in their heels while the pilot built up the revs on the plane. And they held on for as long as they could and then the pilot gave them a signal out the side of the plane and he just took off like a slingshot. Vroom, off he went and he just made it over the scrub. He wouldn’t have made it without them doing that, and they got the feller to hospital alright.

But, Clarrie and Emily, they were both wonderful people. And, you know, these sorts of things come because people are ingenious in times of trouble. It’s sort of like thinking outside the square. But as tough a life that those people had — and yes, Clarrie was a hard man at times, but he was always fair and honest — you know, once you got to know him well, he was a real friend and so was his wife, Emily.

In the late 1970s I transferred out to Mootwingee Historic Site as a ranger and, basically, we — myself and the senior ranger — looked after the Historic Site and around the National Park district. Mootwingee’s in the far west of New South Wales about a hundred and something kilometres north-east of Broken Hill, as the crow flies.

Mootwingee’s known as a Historic Site because that was one of the classifications the National Parks used at the time. It was only a relatively small area and like the Kurnell area at Botany Bay was called Captain Cook’s Landing Place Historic Site. It was, in fact, part of the Sydney Metropolitan District, which included Sydney Harbour National Park, which was later called Botany Bay National Park or something similar. So, it’s just one of the classifications they had; you know, you had National Park, Nature Reserve, and Historic Site, and each was established under the National Parks and Wildlife Act.

But the Mootwingee Historic Site was very popular with visitors, especially in the cooler months. And during those cooler months one of the local tour operators used to bus visitors — tourists — out from Broken Hill on a day trip to the Historic Site. So, upon their arrival, first, they’d come into the Visitors’ Centre and have a look around at the displays and then they’d get back into the bus again and go down to a picnic area, where they’d have something to eat and they
could go on a couple of designated walks and what-have-you.

Anyhow, on this particular day the bus arrived and the bus driver brought the tourists in and they spent their normal twenty minutes or so looking around the Visitors’ Centre, which basically had displays of Aboriginal relics and fauna and flora of the area. Of course, we also used to sell a book on the Historic Site plus other New South Wales National Parks publications. Then after they’d gone through the Visitors’ Centre their bus took them down to the picnic area. The walk they were doing that day was the walk up and around the dam and past Snake Cave.

Snake Cave was one of the most significant parts of the Historic Site. It was a very large overhang, with a huge painting of a snake on it. I’d say that it’d be a good 20 or 30 feet long. I’m not up with what’s happening now but, at one stage, I recall that they actually stopped people from going to Snake Cave unless it was by prearranged guided tours. So it’s a fairly significant site.

Now, basically, the bus driver used to leave the tourists free to go around the walks and he’d stay at the picnic area and have a rest or sort out lunch or whatever. But then, on this particular day, about half an hour after they’d left the Visitors’ Centre, the bus driver returned to the office and said that one of the elderly ladies had fallen over and she appeared to have broken her leg.

That’s when he added, ‘And she’s a very large lady.’

Anyway, my house was behind the Visitors’ Centre and there was a fairly large garage there also. So I went and got the Stokes Litter from the garage. I’m sure you’re familiar with what a Stokes Litter is: it’s
a light aluminium-framed stretcher, where the patient actually lies into it, as opposed to a conventional stretcher where the patient lies on top of it. Basically, it’s designed for search and rescue. The idea is that, when you’re taking someone over rugged terrain or winching them up a cliff, they don’t fall off the thing.

At that time I had a Volvo station wagon, so I decided to drive that down to the picnic area because the alternative was to take the Toyota four-wheel drive tray top and I didn’t think that’d be really appropriate for transporting an elderly lady around the place in. The Senior Ranger was also there, so he and the bus driver and I headed back down to the picnic area in the Volvo and we set off on foot with the Stokes Litter.

As it turned out, the bus driver had given us a very adequate description because, when we arrived at the scene of the accident, I could see a very large lady lying on the ground. She must’ve been 18 stone. Her arms were probably as big as my legs and she was obviously in a great deal of pain and had a very swollen ankle.

So we enlisted the help of a few of the male tourists to lift this lady into the Stokes Litter and we started the slow trip back to the picnic area. I can’t remember exactly how long it took but, once we got back to the picnic area, I put the rear seat of the Volvo down and we slid her into the back, ambulance style. Then we drove the injured woman straight down to my house where I thought she’d be more comfortable.

There was a Flying Doctor radio in my house, as well as in the office, so we placed her on the lounge-room floor, as I’d intended, and got on to the radio. Now, on the Flying Doctor radio there’s a little emergency button and when you press that, it emits
a high-pitched sound which alerts the nearest RFDS base that somebody needs a doctor urgently.

So literally, within thirty seconds, there’s a doctor on the other end. And what happens is, you press a button and a doctor comes on and says, ‘Broken Hill Flying Doctor Service’ to the caller who’s on the emergency button. Then you identify yourself. So I identified Mootwingee and the doctor then asked what the problem was and I explained that we had an elderly lady with what appeared to be a broken ankle.

Then we went through the consultation process where the doctor asked a series of questions and established that the woman was in quite a great deal of pain. In such circumstances it was usual for them to prescribe a pethidine injection. If you know the system with the Flying Doctor kits, they’re a large metal chest with a whole lot of numbered medicines and bandages in there, plus syringes and whatever. So on instruction from the doctor I removed one of the syringes and an ampoule of pethidine. I then proceeded to prepare the syringe by putting the appropriate amount of pethidine in it, then pressing lightly on it to ensure that there was no air in the syringe.

So there we were, with the lady on the floor and the Senior Ranger and I with this syringe. Now, I’d never given an injection before and, as it turned out, the Senior Ranger hadn’t either. But because he was the more senior officer, well, he got the job, didn’t he? In this case, with the patient being a rather large lady, we were instructed by the Flying Doctor that we were to give the injection into the arm.

Anyway, he went ahead and administered the pethidine which, after a short while, took effect as it
obviously made the patient more comfortable. Because it was best not to move the injured woman, we kept her on the Stokes Litter all the time. Mind you, she filled it pretty well. But she seemed reasonably comfortable in it and we didn’t want to disturb her, especially after the pethidine kicked in.

In the meantime, the doctor had informed us that he was sending out a plane to pick her up. Now, because the airstrip was only about, at most, 800 metres from the house, we waited until we heard the plane buzzing around. Then, when it was circling, ready to land, we picked up the Stokes Litter and we bundled the lady back into the Volvo and I drove her down to the airstrip. The RFDS were using a Nomad aircraft at that stage. They had a doctor, a nurse and the pilot and, basically, they took charge as soon as they arrived. The woman was taken out of the Stokes Litter, put onto the plane’s stretcher, then into the plane where they secured her, and off they went to Broken Hill.

Then a few days later my wife, Robina, and I went to Broken Hill to do our shopping and, while we were there, we decided to call in and see how the patient was faring. We went into the hospital and found her in one of the wards. She had plaster on what, she informed us, was a triple fracture of her ankle.

And that’s when I asked her, ‘So, how’s the ankle?’

‘It’s not the worst bit,’ she joked.

Then she showed me her arm and, oh God, I could not believe that such a small needle could give such a large bruise. This bruise was a good 4 inches by 3 inches. It was huge. I mean, with someone who’s overweight, yes, they do tend to bruise easily, I know,
but this one was the biggest, blackest bruise I’ve ever seen. I just couldn’t believe it.

But she was fine about it. She was in good spirits and was quite happy and she thanked us for all we’d done and we had a chat for a while. And though I didn’t find out until some time later, it turned out that the lady was related to a counterpart of mine, one of the rangers in the Blue Mountains. Small world, isn’t it?