The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories (36 page)

Howdie,

I did my best to get some stories on the Flying Doctor. I have this letter from Etheen Burnett who was round in the Gulf Country but being well into her eighties and has had bad health for the last six months. Even so she has typed out these two stories in the hopes that you may be able to use them in your book if it be at all possible.

I have had no experience re: the Flying Doctor Service but I saw plenty of planes flying over me when I was droving out of the Gulf Country straight after the war, but never had to call them.

With the good roads and most of the places having their own planes now and of course with big four-wheel-drive vehicles, I think all that may relieve the pressure on the Flying Doctor Service. But, I know that the Flying Doctor will always be there, picking up the pieces if called upon.

Regards

Jack

* * *

Etheen’s Letter

I remember one day my niece and I, returning from the stock camp, were told the Flying Doctor was due to land to see a patient from a neighbouring station.
We quickly drove out to the airstrip about three miles away to make sure there were no cattle on it. As we drove along it we noticed the plane landing on one end so we quickly drove off into thick grass on the side. My niece was standing on the running board and I had one arm on the door above the glass window.

No one noticed an ant hill in the long grass which we duly hit. What a jolt! My niece fell off the running board skinning her shin badly. My arm was cut by the glass and both of us were bleeding profusely when the doctor got out of the plane. The patient whom he had come to see with a broken arm was there and on alighting the doctor looked at us and asked which one is the patient? Of course we thought we would be okay but after three days my niece developed blood poisoning and had to be taken away by the Flying Doctor. She and I still have the scars of that accident.

* * *

When Dr Tim O’Leary was Flying Doctor in Mount Isa he was very particular about treating patients with dysentery, especially children. He insisted only fluids and no solids whatsoever. One child he was treating did not seem to be improving so he flew out to see him. While examining him the child vomited and brought up fruit cake. Can you image what our Irish Doctor said!

Yeah, just a little story here, HG. Back in 1984 I was doing a bit of an outback adventure and I ended up in a little whistlestop town called Kajabbi, which is out near Mount Isa, sort of in the Cloncurry area, in north-western Queensland. And I stayed there for a few days in the local pub. Now, when I say a township, basically, there was just a pub. That’s all. There was nothing much else there, at Kajabbi, though I believe that, at one time, it was a rather large place but, over the years, it’d declined to the state of it being, more or less, just the hotel.

But the story is: I was in the bar at about eleven o’clock one mid-week morning. There were about four people in the bar and all the talk was around the doctor coming to town. And I was quite amazed. I thought, ‘Well, what would a doctor be doing out here?’ In my mind, of course, I was conjuring up ideas of a buckboard arriving and a doctor jumping out with an old medical bag — that type of thing.

Anyway, about twenty minutes later I heard the sound of an aircraft. It circled around overhead a few times and, along with everybody else, I went outside and, with drinks in hand, we all watched the aeroplane land on an airstrip, which was just in behind the hotel.
When I say ‘everybody else’ I mean the whole four people that were in the bar.

Then about five or six minutes later a doctor came in and, by that time, a few more people had drifted into the pub. Now I believe that there was just the doctor, on his own, because I didn’t see a pilot. So I assume he was piloting the aircraft himself. But anyway, by now I’d pieced it together that this was the Flying Doctor who’d come to visit and that the pub was a regular stop for him; meaning that he came, like, once a fortnight or whatever, stopped off and all the people who wanted to see him would drop in at the pub for a medical consultation.

Anyway, the doctor disappeared out to a back room, followed by one guy, and when the guy returned I noticed that he had a new dressing on his hand. After him, a couple of other people went out to the back room for a while before returning to the bar. Then about ten minutes later the doctor, himself, came out into the bar and I saw a feller go over and talk to him. And this feller looked like he was of some sort of Indian extraction.

Now, I couldn’t actually hear what the conversation was about but it seemed quite intense because this Indian feller was nodding to the doctor in a very concerned fashion. Then, after a while, the Indian guy turned and he nodded to his wife and she went outside and, when she came back into the bar, she was carrying a cockatoo in a cage. It was a golden-crested, well, a silver- or sulphur-crested cockatoo. To explain, the lady, herself, I think she might’ve been of South Sea Islander extraction, with blonde hair. As I said, the husband looked like he was Indian. I found out later
that he was Fijian Indian and, apparently, he and his wife had lived there, in Kajabbi, for many years.

So I’m sort of taking this all in and by now I’m thinking: ‘Surely the doctor’s not going to look at the cockatoo’, you know?

But anyway, the cockatoo came out of its cage and it got on this Islander lady’s shoulder and I watched as the doctor went over and lifted its wings. Then after he’d taken a good look underneath each of the wings he lifted its comb up and took a check around its head area. Now, I was absolutely amazed that this aircraft had flown into this little country town and here was the Flying Doctor actually diagnosing a cockatoo.

But I was just spellbound, HG. I just couldn’t believe it was happening. The whole scenario was just absolutely crazy. But anyway, after he’d checked over the cockatoo, the doctor spoke to the South Sea Islander woman for about four or five minutes then she thanked him very much for his expert advice. Then she popped the bird back into the cage and placed the cage on the bar.

The next thing I see is the hotel owner talking with the woman who had the cockatoo and out came a plastic bag and they put some crushed ice in the plastic bag and then they flattened it out, sealed the end off, put a few pegs on it, and sat the cockatoo’s cage on top of this bag of ice. So I assume that the Flying Doctor had diagnosed that the cockatoo was suffering from heat stress and, believe me, it was very hot.

Then the doctor, well, he grabbed his gear and he disappeared out the back door. And I was amazed that everyone sort of automatically got up and, with drinks in hand, they wandered outside, to the back of the pub, and they watched as the Flying Doctor gunned the aeroplane up and down the airstrip and away he went out into the wide blue yonder.

But that always stuck in my mind. To think, well, you know, here in the middle of nowhere, which it was because Kajabbi is a long way outback, was the Flying Doctor arriving, not only to look after the local people — you know, to put a dressing on a guy who’d obviously hurt himself plus, probably, talk to a few other people — but also he gave service to this lady’s, obviously, much-loved cockatoo, which, I may add, thanks to the Flying Doctor, is most possibly still alive and well at Kajabbi today.

In total I worked with the Royal Flying Doctor Service for nine years. That was at both their Broken Hill and Dubbo bases. For much of that time I was employed as an emergency flight nurse and well, in the end, I more or less left because I got married and we moved over here to Walgett, in the central north of New South Wales. That’s the only reason why I finished up. But I really loved my time with the RFDS, and I actually kept a diary through the years I was working for them so I’ve looked up a few stories, if you’re interested. I guess they’re both about determination of spirit, but in very different ways. What’s more, both incidents happened up at Tibooburra, in the far north-western corner of New South Wales.

Well first: one time we got a phone call from a very distressed husband up at Tibooburra. He told us that he’d delivered their last nine babies, all by himself, and there’d been no problems. That’s right, nine! And he’d delivered every one of them. But now he said that he was having a bit of trouble delivering their tenth baby. His wife had been in labour for quite a while and, to make matters worse, she didn’t want any medical help. In actual fact, she was adamant that there be no medical intervention. No doctors. Nothing. She wanted all home births — just natural — and that was that. No argument. So there he was, this distraught husband, hiding in the next room,
out of earshot from his wife, whispering to us over the phone, ‘The baby just won’t come. What to do?’

From what he was telling us, we surmised it was probably a breech birth because it wasn’t coming down well at all. Anyhow, we had a clinic plane in the area so we sent that out and, you know, they arrive and they went in to see how the wife was going and she gets very upset, particularly with her husband, because he’d gone against her wishes and he’s asked us to come in to help her. In fact, she’s downright angry with him. She was still in labour at that stage and had been for a good twenty-four hours or so, which was very unusual for a tenth child. They should come, probably, within about an hour.

So they tried to settle her down and talk her into coming back down to Broken Hill with them to have the baby in the hospital there. Anyhow, much against her wishes, they eventually managed to coax her on the aircraft and I was in radio contact, waiting at the other end for them in Broken Hill.

There was little change during the flight but then, just as the clinic plane was coming into Broken Hill, they told me over the radio that they thought the baby was coming. So I was telling them what to do and where to find the delivery packs on the aircraft. Still and all, she hadn’t had the baby by the time they landed so I got straight onto the aircraft and helped the woman out into the waiting ambulance. Even at that stage she was still complaining about our intervention.

Then, just as we were going over the bridge on our way to the Broken Hill Hospital, we delivered a breech baby in the back of the ambulance. So, we ended up
with a hell of a mess and I virtually finished cleaning up the baby and the woman in the ambulance bay of the Broken Hill Hospital.

Now, once the placenta is delivered the mother, more or less, stops bleeding and she can stay fairly comfortable. Anyhow, after I’d cleaned everything up, I turned around to the woman and I said, ‘Look, how about we just take you into the hospital and get you checked out?’

But the attitude of the woman hadn’t changed one little bit. ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘it’s alright.’ And she packed the placenta up and she wrapped the baby up and she wandered off to get a taxi downtown so that she could catch the next bus straight back to Tibooburra.

I tell you, it’s amazing some of the mums you come across. She was a tough one, alright. And this was her tenth child. But I did feel for her poor husband. I imagine he would’ve been in the bad books for quite a while, after she got home.

So that was one incident, and the second one was…well, actually, you do have to laugh at times, don’t you? As I said, it’s another one about the strength of spirit but in a very different and funny sort of way.

This happened around Easter time and we got a call from the bemused nurses up at Tibooburra saying that they’d just been out in the ambulance and picked up a man who’d been wandering down the Barrier Highway in quite a distressed state. Now, it was extremely hot at the time and, as it turned out, this man was schizophrenic and he’d either broken out, or got out, of a Psychiatric Hospital near Morisset, which is just south of Newcastle, on the central coast of New South Wales. How on earth he
found his way out to Tibooburra, I couldn’t tell you. I wouldn’t have a clue.

Anyhow, he’d told the nurses at Tibooburra that the reason why he was in the area was that he was off to pick pears. Now, mind you, we are talking about the far north-western corner of New South Wales and, as you might imagine, the nearest pear orchard could’ve been anywhere up to 1000 or so kilometres away. So I think he was in the wrong place.

But, that’s not all. What really got the nurses going was that this poor man was not only off to pick pears but he’d also somehow got it in his head that he was the Easter Bunny. So when they found him, he was walking down the road stark naked, apart from wearing his underpants on his head and, for added effect, he’d stuck a carrot up where he shouldn’t have — up his rectum. But the nurses said that he wasn’t violent or anything because, apparently, when they went out to get him, they simply stopped and asked him if he’d like to hop in the back of the ambulance and in he hopped, no problem at all.

Anyhow, first of all, we found out where this man’s father was and contacted him because we thought he might be worried about his missing son. But when we got on to his father and explained the circumstances all he said was, ‘Yes, he does that kind of thing, quite a bit. You should’ve seen what he did last Christmas.’

So then, we flew out to get him and we took him back to Sydney and, again, he got in the plane, no problems at all. But, oh, he was totally off the planet. He had no idea where he was or who he was, other than believing he’d come out to Tibooburra to pick pears and that he was the Easter Bunny. And, what’s
more, there was no way he was going to let us take his underpants off his head or take the carrot out of his rectum. In his mind, he was the Easter Bunny and that was it. So he stayed that way the whole trip back to Sydney. But you’d think it’d be uncomfortable, wouldn’t you, particularly with the carrot.

You may well ask, What connection does an American have with the Australian Royal Flying Doctor Service? Well, to begin with my wife, Becky, is one of several Americans who have worked for the RFDS. She’s currently the Tourist Facility Supervisor at the Broken Hill base. The Museum there also identifies Reverend Dr John Flynn’s ethos of a Mantle of Safety to serve the people of the outback. That not only includes pilots, doctors and nurses, but also ministers on patrol. Over the years these Padres have travelled by everything from camel, bicycle, motor bike, and automobile — as Flynn’s successor, Reverend Fred McKay, did in an old International truck. Then there have been a few more fortunate ones, like myself, who fly an aeroplane. I’m known as a Flying Padre. I can reach a destination in hours where, in earlier days, it could’ve taken days or even weeks.

I’m the seventh Flying Padre, with the Uniting Church’s Far-West Ministry — currently in its fortieth year. I am currently flying our third aircraft, a 1974 high-wing, single-engine Cessna 182, which is a great aeroplane for remote airstrips and extreme conditions.

But before I tell my story, just a bit of background. I’m originally from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, USA, which is where you’ll find industries such as Quaker Oatmeal and Collins Radio. My first love was aviation but, at the age of eighteen, when I took my physical for the ‘draft’
I was told, ‘Sorry, you measure 203 centimetres. We can’t take you for the Air Force or any of the services because you’re just too tall.’

Then, when I got on the bus to return back home, I remember very clearly asking myself, ‘So what else do you want to do with your life?’ And an internal voice — and I suppose it had greater dimensions — replied, ‘Well, I’ve always liked church. I’ll go into church work.’ It wasn’t an angry voice but more of an ‘Okay, God, you win, take me’ kind of thing. So that was the way I decided to go.

Then Becky and I met at university, after she’d returned from a Brazilian high school exchange. She saw me singing in a musical group for their orientation week. Then in the second week I met her at a church coffee house. It was love at first sight. That night, I walked her home, and I’ve been walking her home ever since. We married in 1969.

Becky was also aware of my passion for aviation. My first posting, following seminary, was to a small village up near the Canadian border. There was a little airport and flight instructor in Milan, New Hampshire. So when Becky got a job as a State Social Worker, it was just a case of, ‘Hey, we’ve got a little money. Go get your flying lessons.’ Six hours of lessons later I flew my solo and I finished my licence in quick time.

But we soon learnt that hot summers were short, usually only a week or two, and the long, dark nights of winter could last for months. It could reach 40° below zero (Fahrenheit!) and it seemed like shovelling snow was everyone’s hobby. I could tell you about the time I tried to keep the Volkswagen’s engine oil warm overnight. I was advised to plug in a light bulb
by the engine, then put a blanket over it. Not only was the oil warmed but, a couple of hours later, the blanket and the car caught fire. The good news is that, conveniently, there was snow everywhere and we saved the car by throwing snow on the engine compartment. I could also tell you about the nails in that house becoming so cold in the dead of winter that they’d contract and pop like pistols being fired at close range. Ministry can be so exciting!

So, it was a difficult two years for us. The highlight was my learning to fly and organising a successful 1974 air show. Four groups benefited: our own Methodist parish, an orphanage in South Carolina, the Catholic church down the road, and Father Tony Gendusa, a flying priest in Rabaul, PNG (Papua New Guinea).

However, before another New Hampshire winter came Becky and I would move to Melbourne, Australia, where we thawed, retrained and tested ourselves in many ways. I had accepted a hospital chaplaincy internship at the Austin Hospital, Heidelberg. After eighteen months, I happily moved on to teach at St Leonard’s College, in East Brighton. Becky worked at Trans-Australia Airlines.

After two and a half years living in Australia we moved back to the States, to Atlanta, Georgia, where our son, Matt, was born. Then when my residency in Pastoral Counselling was finished, I became the Director of the Atlanta District Counselling Service. It gave me eight years of building skills, which would come in very handy later. We left ‘Hotlanta’ for central New Hampshire for seven more years of good pastoral town and rural country work before I
ended up serving as a Church Pastor near Boston, Massachusetts.

Boston was a tough placement especially when you see churches losing their vision and wearing down their memberships. You could liken it to when someone you love loses their way. So, for a break, we came over to Australia for holidays. We were at Narromine, in central New South Wales, visiting the parents of an Australian friend who was studying in Boston, and I remember as we drove past the local airport, on the way to the Dubbo Zoo, our friend’s father asked, ‘What’s your hobby?’ And I told him that I truly loved flying and church work.

‘Well,’ he replied, ‘you know, we’ve got a Flying Padre position open in Broken Hill.’

And I asked three questions: ‘What’s a Flying Padre?’, ‘Who broke Broken Hill?’ and ‘Where do I apply?’ Then it took eight months or so but everything got resolved and we started work in Broken Hill on 1 May 2002. And though tragedies do happen, the job’s a delight; the people have been absolutely wonderful. Here in the outback, I don’t have to shovel snow, and I haven’t set fire to my automobile…not yet, anyway.

Now, to my story: I was minding my business one cold and blustery Sunday in, gosh, I think it was back in September 2003, when the news first reported that Mrs Luscombe had gone missing. She was a Broken Hill resident who suffered from dementia. She lived alone, on the south side, near the Broken Hill Airport, where a carer, a neighbour and some relatives kept an eye on her.

Every day she’d walk part of the perimeter of the airport with her dog, Dazzie, a blue heeler cross,
and occasionally a neighbour’s dog would join them. But when Mrs Luscombe hadn’t shown up by dark a neighbour became concerned, even more so when the neighbour’s dog returned home alone. Basically, all Mrs Luscombe was wearing for weather protection that day was a light jacket. So the police were called, the relatives were notified and a full-blown ground search was organised that Sunday evening.

Becky’s office, at the RFDS base, was just a stone’s throw from the search headquarters at the airport. So, with still no sign of Mrs Luscombe by Monday morning, after dropping Becky off at work, I stopped in and — as a New South Wales Regional Police Chaplain — I offered to fly my Cessna in an aerial search. I was well aware that people had previously gone missing into the vast surrounding desert, never to be seen again. It was an urgent situation.

Because of Mrs Luscombe’s condition, she wore a signal-emitting necklace that sent out a beep, beep, beep to a tuned receiver. One of the relatives said that they had put fresh batteries in the necklace. We only hoped that she was still wearing it. So I got into my Cessna with a couple of SES (State Emergency Service) people who had a radio and an antenna receiver system to track the necklace. We took off and spiralled south and north from the airport, thinking that Mrs Luscombe and Dazzie, the dog, were more likely to head toward town rather than going out in the bush. But, after two and a half hours without a response from our receiver I thought, ‘Well, surely they’ll find her in their wide-cast ground search.’

But, you know, the ground search continued on Tuesday then on the Wednesday and still without
any sign of her. By Friday morning the weather had warmed up and I got a Police Search Director’s call saying, ‘Look, we’re going to have to shut down the search but, for the sake of the family, would you mind taking just one more aerial run?’

I was happy to do that. They double-checked the radio equipment to make sure everything was working properly. It was another very windy day and I wanted to go slowly to do a visual search as well. I started my increasing spirals and then laps on the southern side at about 700 feet above the ground. Then we were about 10 or 12 miles south of Broken Hill when Josh, the chap who had the signal meter said, ‘Turn left!’ So I did and he called out, ‘Mark it.’

Then, Leslie, the SES volunteer in the back of the Cessna, marked the latitude and longitude from her hand-held GPS (Global Positioning System). We did this four times, from different directions, measuring the numbers each time. Below us were two water-filled dams and a couple of powerlines. Being windy I wanted to avoid getting fried on the wires, but I got down as low as possible and when I saw something of colour in the water, my first thought was, ‘Gee, I hope that’s not her.’

At this stage, because we were just tracking a piece of jewellery that might’ve popped off as she’d walked along, we couldn’t positively confirm if we’d found Mrs Luscombe or not. When we landed back at the search base we marked out the spot on a map and handed copies to the ground searchers. Then I waited on the ground for another ten minutes before I overflew the motor bike searchers and others and I circled the exact spot to give them direction. And that’s where they located Mrs Luscombe, lying near the dam.

By the time I landed back at the airport I still hadn’t heard the actual outcome. But as I was tying the Cessna down, one of the ground staff, who was nicknamed ‘Flies’, came over and his voice broke as he said, ‘They found her…and she’s alive!’

I was then informed that Mrs Luscombe had been found lying in a roughly dug hole, dehydrated, sunburnt and semi-conscious, though still communicative. But because of the rough terrain, the SES people had to get a four-wheel-drive vehicle in there to retrieve her. From there she was driven with as much care as possible to a waiting ambulance, before going on to hospital. So we all felt pretty good and when I returned to the search headquarters, the extremely anxious family was now shedding tears of relief and happiness.

So that’s how Mrs Luscombe was found. I believe she’s now living in Adelaide with family, and has had extra years of life, care and love. And with the Uniting Church Flying Patrol celebrating its fortieth year, what a memory that particular event is for me. And to think that it’s the same satisfaction felt, almost daily, by the Flying Doctors’ staff. I just wish everyone could be a part of such an experience.

But, of course, Dazzie, the dog, was the real hero. Apparently, it was he who’d led Mrs Luscombe to water. Then, when a hole was dug, that faithful dog had laid on top of her to keep her warm enough to avoid freezing.

Now, don’t quote me on this. But I heard a story sometime later that one of the family came to visit Mrs Luscombe and because she was a victim of dementia, naturally, they didn’t want to scold her for what had happened. But quite understandably, the family
member said to her, ‘You know, you really gave us a fright.’

And in a moment of clarity, I understand Mrs Luscombe’s response was, ‘Well, you know, I didn’t have such a good week either.’