The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories (10 page)

One day we got a call from this chap who was up in the Flinders Ranges, in the north of South Australia. He said that he’d been following a car along a dirt road when it’d overturned, leaving two ladies stuck inside with bad injuries. A third woman, who was also hurt, had been able to free herself from the vehicle. When we asked the bloke his whereabouts, he gave his location as being near a certain airstrip in the national park.

‘We’ll meet you there, then,’ we said.

‘No worries,’ he replied. ‘I’ll stay with the ladies until I see your plane coming in then I’ll drive straight out and pick you up.’

‘Okay,’ we said, ‘we’ll be there ASAP.’

Now, attempting to land a plane in the Flinders Ranges is a difficult task at the best of times, especially in the national park. Firstly, it’s quite mountainous in places and, secondly, the airstrips are extremely short. But the pilot was willing to give it a go just as long as we could get out of there before dark. Getting out before dark was the least of our problems. We had plenty of daylight hours up our sleeve. What’s more, with the accident occurring near the airstrip as the bloke had said, things were set for a speedy evacuation.

So we flew to the airstrip that the chap had mentioned but when we landed no one came out to meet us. We waited for a while. Then we waited for a little while longer, and still he hadn’t turned up. Eventually, we radioed through and found out that the
chap had mistakenly given us the name of the wrong airstrip and the accident had occurred about 30 or 40 kilometres down the road.

‘Here we are,’ said the doctor, ‘stuck in the middle of nowhere with no visible means of road transport and the accident victims are stuck in their car down the track’ — which just about summed the situation up, really.

We were scratching our heads, considering our minimal options, when a cloud of dust came around the corner. And out of that cloud of dust appeared a small tourist bus. At the sight of the bus we ran over and blocked the road to make sure that it’d stop.

Now when the bus driver pulled up you’d swear that a couple of those tourists thought it was a hold-up because video recorders and cameras disappeared from view and their eyes glazed over with fear. I don’t know what they were thinking. Maybe they thought that we were the Kelly gang in disguise or something and I was Ned Kelly in drag, all dressed up in a nurse’s uniform for the occasion. I don’t know. What’s more, we didn’t take the time to check. We were too busy telling our tale of woe to the driver and asking if he could drive us down to pick up the injured people.

‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘Anything to be of help.’

Then he told the tourists that they had to get out of the bus, which was something that a few of them didn’t look too keen on doing, I might add.

‘No, no. No robbery,’ he said, trying to allay their fears. ‘No, no. No hijack. Everything fine-and-dandy.’

When the last of the tourists was evicted, we loaded our medical gear into the small bus and jumped aboard. Then the driver took off, leaving the pilot
behind to attempt to explain to the tourists why they’d been dumped in the middle of the uninhabitable wilds of Australia, as they saw it.

When we arrived at the scene of the accident we finally met up with the bloke who’d given us the name of the wrong airstrip and together with the bus driver we all managed to get the two ladies out of the car. Once we’d stabilised them we placed them in the bus and started to head back to the airstrip.

Now, because of the extent of the injuries and the poor condition of the road we were only able to travel at a snail’s pace and that left us in a very tricky situation. Along with all the other cock-ups during the day, the sun had already set and darkness was falling at a rate of knots. By the time we arrived back at the airstrip it was pitch black. But the pilot hadn’t been hanging around idly discussing the pros and cons of bushranging to the tourists. Not on your life.

When we’d flown in, he’d noticed that the national parks people were doing some roadworks further down the track, and after we’d left he’d rounded up a couple of graders and a few other vehicles. So as we were loading the injured ladies onto the plane, they positioned the vehicles along each side of the airstrip, ready to turn their lights on so we could see where to take off. What’s more, when they’d run out of vehicles they filled up all the tin cans they could find with kerosene or diesel and used them as flares to help light the strip.

Now that in itself was an amazing piece of resourcefulness but the rescue still relied on the pilot’s ability to fly us out of there. As I said, it was quite mountainous, the airstrip was extremely short, and by
this time it was pitch dark, around 9 or 10 pm. Then, as we were taxiing down the runway, another problem popped up. And when I say ‘popped up’, I mean popped up. With it being a national park, a million and one kangaroos appeared out of the bush to see what all the hoo-ha was about.

With the doctor in the back of the plane attending to the accident victims, I was up front alongside the pilot. As we picked up speed down the runway the noise of the engines spooked the kangaroos. In blind panic they started hopping all over the airstrip, left, right and centre.

I sat there, frozen with fright as the pilot threaded the plane through the startled kangaroos then made a sharp ascent up through the mountains and into the sky.

‘Wow,’ I gasped in astonishment at the pilot’s skill. ‘I must say that that was an amazing piece of flying.’ Then I heard his faltering voice ask, ‘Is it safe to open my eyes now?’

He was only a young lad, a jackaroo at Innamincka Station. Pretty new to the game he was. Anyway, he went into Innamincka and got stuck into the grog. Then on his way back out he came across a snake. Being young and stupid and, more to the point, pissed to the eyeballs, he tried to be smart and pick the thing up. The obvious happened — he got bitten. That’s when we got the call.

‘Look,’ said the manager from Innamincka Station, ‘I don’t know how much of this is bullshit or not but we’ve got a kid here who’s as drunk as a skunk and saying that he’s just been bitten by a snake.’

We took the call like it was a life and death situation — which in actual fact it proved to be. An inland taipan it was, one of the most venomous snakes you’re likely to find. Trouble being, time was against us. In cases like that, the sooner the initial treatment is carried out the better chance the patient has of survival. As it stood, it would have taken the Flying Doctor Service too long to fly from Broken Hill down to Innamincka then get a lift out to the station to give that treatment. So, with me being at Moomba, in the gasfields, Santos offered to helicopter me out there straight away to have a look at this kid.

It was a woeful night. The wind was blowing a gale by the time the pilot and I set off. Then just as the lights of Innamincka Station come into view, all hell broke loose. The helicopter suddenly went into free fall. It was like being at the top floor in a lift and the
wires snapping. The air vanished from under us. The rotor blades were still whirling. There was nothing the pilot could do. Down we came from an awful height. Crunch! We hit the ground and bounced a couple of times before the helicopter flipped over on its top with the blades still spinning. There was screeching, groaning, sparks. Then they ground to a stop. Silence.

The pilot and I sat in our seats, upside down. It took a while to register that we were still alive.

‘Are you all right?’ the pilot finally asked.

‘I think so,’ I replied.

‘Guess we’d better get out of here, then,’ he said.

‘Guess so,’ I replied.

So he undid his safety belt and fell to the top of the bubble of the helicopter. I followed and down I came, right on top of him. Poor bloke. Cracked his ribs or something. I can’t remember now. But, miraculously, they were the only injuries either of us received apart from general bruising and things.

As we were sorting ourselves out, the strong smell of fuel started to fill the cab. I had visions of the helicopter exploding in a massive fireball like they do in those American movies. The pilot must have seen the same films. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he called, and we scampered from the wreckage and took to the bush.

Thankfully, the station manager had been waiting outside the homestead for us to arrive in the helicopter. He’d seen the lights come over the hill, then disappear. Thinking the worst he jumped into his ute and came looking for us. The pilot and I must have been running on adrenaline because the manager reckoned he found us about 4 kilometres from the upturned helicopter.

The odd thing was, though, when we arrived back
at the homestead all those years of nurse’s training took over. To this day I can’t remember having one thought pass through my mind about how battered and bruised I was or just how close to death we’d come. My total focus was on the patient.

Things weren’t looking too good for the lad, though. He’d passed out, which only clouded the issue. How much of his comatose state owed itself to drunkenness and how much to the snake bite was difficult to tell. I stabilised him the best I could and made sure that the Flying Doctor Service at Broken Hill were on their way down to pick him up. Then we drove the kid into Innamincka. With it being night, the locals came out to help light flares along the airstrip so that the plane could land. Trouble was, the strong winds kept blowing all the flares out.

Anyway, the RFDS pilot circled a few times, summing up the situation. It was just too risky to attempt to land without flares to light up the strip and they decided to fly on to Moomba, hijack the ambulance, and come out and meet us halfway. So with the lad still out to it from the effects of the alcohol and the snake bite we headed off to meet them. Down the track a way the ambulance came into view. I can tell you, it was one of the most welcoming sights of my life.

‘Thank God you’re here,’ I said.

So we stacked the lad into the ambulance and the doctor took over. The lad was taken back to Moomba then flown to Broken Hill. His life was saved. He recovered okay. The odd thing was, though, and I’m just not on about myself here, a lot of people put their lives at risk or volunteered their time and effort to save that lad, and not even one word of thanks. Never.

It’s not like being a normal doctor, working as we do, away out here. You haven’t got the luxury of being able to sit down face to face with a patient to make a learned diagnosis. What’s more, more often than not the initial contact is carried out through a third party. So you have to be a bit of a mind reader as well as having a good grounding in the bush lingo.

Imagine, for example, a new doctor, fresh to the Flying Doctor Service with hardly any experience of bush people at all. Some bloke’s taken ill, way out on a remote station somewhere. Normally, those types of males feel awkward about talking to a doctor about their problems, let alone anyone else, so the wife’s the initial contact.

‘Hello, Doctor, me hubby’s taken crook,’ she might say.

‘What do you mean, crook? How crook is he?’ the doctor would ask.

‘Darl, the doctor wants to know how crook yer are,’ she says, asking her hubby.

‘Tell him I’m as crook as a dog,’ comes the chap’s voice.

‘Doctor, he reckons he’s real crook.’

‘Can you give me some idea as to where he’s feeling crook?’

‘Darl,’ she asks, ‘the doctor wants to know where yer feeling crook?’

‘Christ, woman, I’m feeling crook all over.’

‘Doctor,’ she says, ‘Hubby reckons he’s feeling crook all over.’

‘Well,’ says the doctor, ‘before I can prescribe treatment, we’ve got to isolate the problem area, okay? So let’s start from the top. Is he crook in the head?’

‘Darl, the doctor wants to know if yer crook in the head.’

‘What sort o’ bloody question’s that?’ echoes the gruff voice. ‘Course I’m not bloody crook in the head, woman. I’m as sane as the next bloke. Sounds to me like he’s the one who’s crook in the head, not me.’

‘No, Doctor, he’s not crook in the head.’

‘Well, is he crook in the abdomen?’

‘In the what?’ she asks.

‘The abdomen. The stomach.’

‘Oh, you mean the guts!’ she says. ‘Darl, are yer crook in the guts?’

‘Too bloody right I’m crook in the guts! That’s the bloody reason I’m calling the idiot.’

‘Yes, Doctor, he’s crook in the guts.’

‘Has he got nausea?’

‘Nausea? What’s nausea?’

‘Has he been vomiting?’ says the doctor.

‘What?’

‘Has he been spewing?’

‘No, I don’t think he’s been spewing. Darl, yer haven’t been spewing again, have yer? No doctor, he hasn’t been spewing.’

‘Well, has he opened his bowels today?’

‘What do yer mean by “opened his bowels”?’

‘Has he had a crap?’

‘Darl, have yer done number twos yet, today?’

A loud call of ‘No!’ is heard in the background.

‘No, Doctor, he hasn’t done one of those.’

‘Well, has he voided?’

‘What’s that?’

‘Has he urinated?’

‘Urinated? What’s that?’ she asks.

‘For God’s sake, has he had a piss?’

‘No need to get angry, Doctor,’ comes the reply. ‘Darl, the doctor wants to know if yer done a number one today.’

‘Tell him to mind his own bloody business!’

‘He’s not sure, Doctor.’

And so the conversation continues until the doctor eventually eliminates the possibilities and homes in on the problem.

But sometimes, of course, it gets more serious than that, a lot more serious. Like the time we were doing a clinic out at Thargomindah and the emergency beacon was activated on the HF radio. A station feller was calling from about three-quarters of an hour’s flying time away, saying that there’d been an accident.

As it turned out, a motor cyclist was on his honeymoon and he’d been riding along with his wife in the side car. They’d come to the end of the bitumen section and hit the gravel. He’d lost control, veered off over the table drain, and his leg got caught between the motor bike and a mulga tree. His wife was okay but he wasn’t. As I heard it over the radio, the station feller said that the motor cyclist had his leg broken.

To piece the situation together, I began with a few questions. Firstly, how did he know the leg was broken, to which I received the sharp reply of ‘Yer’d have to be blind not to see that it’s broken, Doc.’ So that
established that. Then I asked which leg was it, right leg or left leg? Was it broken above the knee or below the knee? ‘Above the knee,’ I was told. Then I asked if it was bleeding.

‘Yes,’ the station feller said, ‘it’s bleeding quite badly.’

So I questioned him about the bleeding. Was it seeping from the breakage point or was the blood spurting out?

‘It’s spurting out,’ came the reply.

‘How far?’ I asked.

‘Oh, only about four or five yards,’ he said.

Well, that told me something. I imagined the situation again. A motor cyclist, still alive, thankfully, but in deep shock. The accident. The bike. The tree. A leg which had been broken. The spurting blood. It must surely have been a severed artery. That was the first problem we had to sort out. So, I told the station feller to apply pressure to the bleeding spot and try to contain the bleeding.

So we activated the plane and off we flew. We were met at the airstrip in a ute and driven to the scene of the accident. It was only as we drove up to the motor cyclist that the whole story was revealed. The mental picture I’d drawn was complete, apart from one major discrepancy. The station feller forgot to inform me of one very important fact about the broken leg. The leg wasn’t just broken, it’d been broken completely…off. And there was the motor cyclist, sitting under the tree, and propped up beside him was his severed leg.