The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories (40 page)

Lionel: It was in about 2000 when all this happened. If we did the trip now we’d go later because I remember it was wintertime and it was freezing in the mornings and it was very wet. So I think it must’ve been around April or maybe a little bit earlier when we first set off from Nhill. There was just the three of us: Bill Day, Rex Bunge and myself — Lionel Ferris — and we only took one vehicle. The idea was to get up to Halls Creek, in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, then do the Canning Stock Route, which was something we’d talked about for quite a while.

Now, I’m just trying to think which way we went to get to Halls Creek because we were nearly a fortnight getting onto the stock route and another fortnight coming down. A lot of people go the other way, but we didn’t. We started at the northern end and came back in the opposite direction, if you get what I mean. But Bill Day’s got a fair account of it in his diary so you’d better let him fill in the gaps.

Bill: Well, before we start, you’ve sort of really got to know Lionel to appreciate what he’s all about. He’s a feller that consistently down-plays things. He’s unassuming to the extreme. In other words, what anybody else thinks is an important story, he just brushes it off as if it’s an everyday occurrence, or at least he tries to. Then he’s also got one of those really dry, wry senses of humour. Like he used to be a helper
on some of our outback tours and, on those trips, one of the first things we’d do was to get everyone together and let them introduce themselves by telling something about their life, and Lionel used to always rock them by saying that he left school at the age of thirteen because, by then, he was old enough to realise that it was severely interfering with his education.

So that’s Lionel, and he’s got lots of sayings like that. But he’s a wizard musician — he can just about play anything — and yeah, he’s probably told you he’s a bachelor. And he’s a collector and, believe me, if Noah kept two of everything, I reckon Lionel’s gone one step better because I’d say he’s got just about three of everything, and in all sorts of conditions. You just really need to meet him one day.

But yeah, that trip was quite an experience for him, I’m sure.

Okay, so we headed off from Nhill in western Victoria. There was only the one vehicle and three of us: myself, another chap by the name of Rex Bunge and Lionel. We went up through the Gawler Ranges, across the Stuart Highway, over the Oodnadatta Track to Oodnadatta, right up through Dalhousie Springs, then out to Andado Station. Andado’s Molly Clarke’s station. It’s an extremely remote property out on the north-western edge of the Simpson Desert. Old Molly’s the owner of the place. She’s a bit over eighty now and she still lives out there. Then, from Andado we went back into Alice Springs for supplies and spent a couple of days there, then we crossed the Tanami Desert to Wolfe Creek, up to Halls Creek.

At Halls Creek we refuelled and so forth before we started off down the Canning Stock Route, and we
were probably about four or five wells down when we heard that the stock route had been closed due to the wet weather. And boy-o-boy, was it wet. But we just kept plugging on because we’d heard that some people were still coming the other way. I mean, it wasn’t totally impassable or anything like that and we weren’t chopping the hell out of the place because most of the rain was down the bottom end, which we still had to get to, of course.

Then, not far from the bottom end, Lionel first started to show signs of getting, you know, something wrong with him. Yeah, just a bit of stress. And then, when he finally sort of said that he couldn’t pass any urine I thought, ‘Hello, we’ve got troubles here’ because basically he had urine retention.

Lionel: Of course, had I known I was going to have all the trouble, well, I wouldn’t have gone out into such an isolated area in the first place. But everything seemed to be working fine. Then as we went down the stock route I started having just a bit of trouble with my prostate. At first I didn’t say anything because I thought it might spoil things for everyone. But then, on the last part of the journey down the Canning, we were actually camping on the station property and that’s where it came on.

Still, I wasn’t too bad for a while. You know, I’d go for a walk about every hour or so and that seemed to keep me going. But before too long I had to walk more often and then it got to the stage where I couldn’t really walk at all and I just had to lay there. I couldn’t drink or eat anything either, not that I felt like it, anyway,
mind you. But I had no idea you could get so crook with something as simple as that.

So then, it sort of knocked me for six really, and that’s when Bill and Rex decided they’d better get help. The trouble was, of course, we were still a long way from anywhere and so the first thing we had to think about was whether we’d go back or continue on. Anyway, I wasn’t too keen on retracing our steps so we opted to go on.

Bill: It was in the evening when Lionel sort of realised he had trouble. Then the next morning I got on the RFDS radio to the Flying Doctor base at Meekatharra and they advised us to go to Wiluna where there was a doctor and a hospital.

So that’s where we headed and because of the state of the track we did it with great difficulty. I tell you, I’ve never seen water running up hill, but it very nearly was, and it was still raining. Anyhow, we basically travelled non-stop to Wiluna and we got Lionel to the doctor there and they fitted a catheter to him, which relieved him greatly. And then, after the doctor removed the catheter, we thought, ‘Alright, well, he’ll be okay now.’

Still and all, the doctor suggested that we stay in Wiluna for two or three days just to keep an eye on things, which we did. Well, because of the wet conditions nobody was allowed out of town anyway so we had to stay there. In fact, it was so bad that the town had run out of fuel because no one could get in to supply them, and we were about the only ones that had any.

Lionel: Well, they finally got me to Wiluna and I went to see the doctor and he fitted me with a catheter until
he thought he had me right. And I thought I was right, also. Everything seemed to be working as it should.

Bill: Lionel was quite convinced that he was fine by then, too. And after the doctor had given him the okay, we went to the coppers and they said, ‘Righto, well, you’re the only ones in town who’s got fuel — if you want to go, you can.’

By then the track was okay, so we took off and headed south and we stayed at Leonora overnight. It was still raining but Lionel seemed to be going well so we said, ‘Righto, we’ll start out going home along the Anne Beadell Highway.’

So we told the coppers at Leonora where we were going and they said, ‘Well, okay, but there’s already been somebody stuck out there so, you know, be careful and let us know when you get through.’

‘Okay,’ we said and so we went out east of Leonora to a little mining village — I can’t think of the name of the place now. Then about a day and a half later Lionel’s problem returned, only, this time, it was far more serious. Anyhow, Rex and I had a bit of a talk about the whole thing and we decided that we really had an emergency situation on our hands. So we called up the RFDS again and I’m not exactly sure which base station we got in contact with. Kalgoorlie would’ve been the closest place but it mightn’t have necessarily been the right time of the day for radio communications. Somehow I have an idea we couldn’t get in contact with either Meekatharra or Kalgoorlie on the low frequency so we used either 6890 and we got in contact with Port Augusta or it might’ve been 6950 and we got on to Alice Springs. I can’t remember which.

Anyway, they said, ‘Where’s the nearest airstrip?’

It was probably mid-afternoon by then, so we had to make a decision as to whether we’d go up to Neale Junction and north to Warburton or down south to Rawlinna, which is on the east-west railway line. Well, we had a bit of a think and we decided that if Lionel was really crook, then Rawlinna was at least heading on our way home.

Now, seeing that the radio conditions where we were at that time were not really good because of the bad weather and the lightning and so forth we arranged with the RFDS that we’d phone them when we got to Rawlinna. And so we set out toward Rawlinna and, I tell you, the rain just got heavier and heavier.

Lionel: The weather had come in by then and we had to go through some pretty heavy downpours and, with so much rain, it formed huge waterholes all along the track. But, fortunately, it was solid underneath. I was pretty crook by then and so I was lying down in the back of the vehicle, a Nissan Patrol, and, oh, it was very rocky. In fact, one of the blokes likened it to driving over an everlasting cemetery because it seemed as if we were going over rocks the size of tombstones.

So, yes, it was terribly rough, particularly for me in my condition, and also, of course, you couldn’t see what was ahead of you, on the track, because there was so much water. Not only that, but another problem was that there were other tracks branching off the one we were on which confused the issue. Anyhow, luckily, Rex had brought his GPS — Global Positioning System — along and so we tracked ourselves with that, just in case we got lost. So we’d
be going along and Rex would say, ‘Take the track on the right.’

And sometimes Bill would say, ‘Are you sure?’

And Rex would say, ‘Yes, I think so.’

So it was a good job that Rex had that GPS because even though by now it was at night, we couldn’t have navigated by the stars anyway, you see, because it was so overcast with all the rain.

Bill: Believe me, it was quite an eventful trip, in extremely difficult conditions, driving at night, through water, while trying to follow the track. To keep ourselves alert Rex and I took it in turns, driving two hours each. As for the state of the track, well, in the sandhill country it was alright but once we got out onto the actual Nullarbor Plain it got worse from the point of view that any shallow depression was covered with water. So where there was water racing across the track, before we attempted to drive through it, we had to get out and wade across to see how deep it was. And believe me, in the early hours of the morning it was freezing cold. What’s more, you didn’t know whether you were going to drop into a washaway or what.

Then we came across a huge stretch of water. It must’ve been at least a kilometre wide. So we tackled that and I can remember, at one stage, the headlights and the driving lights of the Nissan were completely under the water and we had just this dull brown glow in front of us. Anyway, when we finally came out the other side, we decided we’d call it quits for a while and have a bit of a spell. All this time, of course, Lionel had been trying to lie down in the back and,
believe me, he was really crook. Anyhow he agreed and he said, ‘Yeah, have a spell and try and get some sleep.’

So we did try to get some sleep, but we were under strict instructions that if Lionel got, you know, really, really bad, he’d better just wake us up and we’d get going again. And that’s exactly what happened because we were in our swags for not less than an hour when he said, ‘Look, I really don’t like to do this, but we’ve gotta get a move on.’

Anyway, we got going again and the track was still difficult to locate because there were sheets of water everywhere. But we pushed on under very, very adverse conditions and the only way we could really navigate was to use a bit of a line with Rex’s GPS.

So I can tell you, it was a pretty welcoming sight when we first saw the lights of Rawlinna, from about 25 kilometres out, because, until then, basically, we didn’t know exactly where we were.

Lionel: I suppose the rain had finished by the time we got near Rawlinna, but there was still a fair amount of surface water about. We arrived in town about an hour before daylight and it was in the middle of winter, so it was a bit chilly. I remember there being a lot of light at Rawlinna. There was quite a large building, like a cafeteria or something, and that was still lit up. Then there was another building near the railway line that looked like people might be in, and another house further down. But there wasn’t a soul in sight. Really, at that time of the morning it looked to be more or less like a ghost town.

Bill: We got into Rawlinna in the wee hours of the morning. It was just sort of that twilight time before sunrise and, at a rough guess, I’d say the temperature was about minus 3° or 4°, at least. It hadn’t rained for about two or three hours and all the puddles were frozen over.

Anyhow, because I’d been to Rawlinna before, I knew where the telephone box was. So I got on the phone and that’s where I made the biggest mistake ever. I didn’t actually have the RFDS phone number so I thought, ‘Well, the logical thing to do is to ring 000.’

Now, I don’t know exactly where 000 rang, but I imagine it was Perth. And to use a very common expression, that’s where the shit hit the fan — absolutely — because I just couldn’t get on to anybody with any sense. The first bloke thought it was a hoax call. Well I took that as an insult and I gave him a serve over that one. Boy-o-boy, did I see red. Next I got on to somebody who told me that he didn’t know where Rawlinna was because he couldn’t find it on his computer screen. So I tried to tell him where it was. I mean, I could’ve easily lost my cool but I realised the urgency of the situation. Then eventually, that person put me onto the ambulance people at Kalgoorlie. God knows why he put me onto the ambulance people, but he did, and the bloke that was on duty there, in Kalgoorlie, was an English feller who’d only been in Australia for a fortnight, so the whole procedure started again.

‘Where the hell’s this Rawlinna?’ he asked.

So I tried to explain to him where Rawlinna was then I said, ‘Look, we’re here, there’s an airstrip here and we really need the Flying Doctor urgently.’

‘Oh, no,’ he said, ‘I’ll send out an ambulance. How far from Kalgoorlie is this place called Rawlinna?’

I said, ‘It’s probably 500 or 600 kilometres.’

‘Oh, we could be there in a couple of hours.’

‘More like half a day, mate,’ I said. ‘It’s at least five hours and possibly more.’