Charles Kingsford Smith and Those Magnificent Men (63 page)

It wasn’t just that there was no sign of Wyndham; it was that there was not the tiniest sign of where
any
bit of civilisation might be. Not a road, or a telegraph line, or a fence, nor the slightest indication that humans had ever even crossed the forbidding landscape below, let alone left their mark on it.

What to do? The one thing they could, which was to keep going and keep looking for some kind of sign.

Finally, they saw what appeared to be a small river and, reasoning that the river must lead to the coast, where they would find Wyndham, they followed it, as scudding dark daylight slowly broke through. When they reached the coast, however, there was no Wyndham, just an angry-looking sea.

Keeping his calm, Smithy reasoned that they must have overshot Wyndham, and were therefore now on the west coast of the Kimberley district, which would mean he had to turn…let’s see…north-west.

With lack of fuel not yet a problem, they flew on, expecting at any moment to spot the familiar shape of Cape Londonderry, which Smithy had seen many times in his days with Western Australian Airways.

Glory be to God. Another day, another round of reciting prayers and doing the Almighty’s work—either shouldering the white man’s burden, or being it. Drysdale River Mission was an isolated spot, situated near the coast, about 140 miles north-west of Wyndham. Settled by Benedictine fathers in the early 1900s, it cared for the local indigenous population and had such little contact with the outside world that it was September 1920 before word came to them that the Great War had ended nearly two years earlier and that the Allies had won. From one month to the next, from year to year, it was a life of work and prayer, work and prayer, while tending to their flocks, both real and spiritual.

But on the late morning of Easter Sunday, 31 March 1929, something happened. They heard engines! From the heavens! Both the fathers and the small group of Aborigines living at the mission rushed outside, and were stunned to see an enormous plane circling above them. A plane! They had heard stories of such a thing, and now, here was one. It really existed, praise the Lord. And yet why was it circling? Was the crew on board in trouble? Did they want something from the men on the ground?

Aboard the
Southern Cross
, it was a great relief to see human habitation in the wilderness. No, they didn’t have a landing strip but it was something. People were now gathered in a courtyard, looking up at them and waving. Most importantly, they would know something of the geography of the land in which they lived.

While Kingsford Smith circled low, Ulm wrote a message in pencil on a piece of paper in big black letters, wrapped it around a torch, tied it with a piece of string and dropped it out of the window, being sure to drop it far enough away so that it wouldn’t hit anyone. On the paper was written: Please point direction of Wyndham.

As the plane continued circling around, Smithy and Ulm waited expectantly for the signal to come, expecting the direction to be to the south-east, where, by their reckoning, Wyndham must lie…

To their great consternation, however, the people immediately started pointing to the south-west! But how could that be? Still, there was nothing for it but to take them at their word and head off in that direction, though feeling more desperate and confused with every passing minute.

At the mission they watched the plane disappear over the south-western horizon, and stayed watching long after the last tiny buzz of its faraway engines could no longer be heard. What was that all about? Why had they been circled in such a fashion, and why, when they had clearly indicated where the only bit of flat ground in cooee lay just a few hundred yards away in the south-westerly direction, had the people on the plane so totally ignored it? It was something that would occasion a lot of discussion among them for many days to come. Ulm’s message, meanwhile, still lay wrapped around its torch, lost in the landscape near the mission, and remained undiscovered…

Flying. Flying. Flying.
Still
flying. And flying on. Beneath them, little in the landscape changed. It remained as inhospitable as ever, and impenetrable for any aircraft that wanted to remain intact after coming to earth. The only thing that did change was the falling amount of precious petrol left in their tanks, and the rising amount of concern they felt. And then they saw another settlement, also a mission to judge by the crosses dotted around at the top of every building.

Now more desperate than ever, Ulm dropped out another message: Please place white sheets pointing direction of Wyndham, and mark in larger figures number of miles.
⁴²

This time the message resulted in an instant burst of activity below with people darting indoors before reappearing bearing sheets. While they sorted themselves out, Ulm and Kingsford Smith checked their petrol gauges and did some calculations. By their best reckoning they had just two hours of flying time left if all went well.

If that was bad, still worse was the arrow and number below them. For a lot of sheets and towels laid out on the ground clearly made an arrow pointing due east—yes,
east
, there could be no doubt about it—and the number that went with it clearly said: 250.

But how could that be? This new information was so confusing because there was no way that the two directions they had been given could both be right. And yet there could be little doubt that these last directions were correct, so clear and precise were they. With little choice but to give it a go, Smithy turned the
Southern Cross
due east and concentrated on throttling down to get as much distance out of the petrol they had remaining as they could possibly manage.

Clive Chateau knew it, he just knew it. Something was terribly, terribly wrong. It had to be. All day long at Wyndham he had been hoping against hope—even as the rain had continued to belt down beneath a low cloud cover—to hear the distant throb of approaching engines. All through that grim morning and into the early afternoon, despite hoping against hope, he was not surprised to hear nothing. For how could Kingsford Smith possibly find the small town of Wyndham in such conditions—an even smaller dot in the western wilderness than Fiji was in the Pacific Ocean? Clive was not the only one who was worried. Through all the trials and tribulations of the
Southern Cross
, McWilliams had been sending out an account of their situation, which meant that radio operators throughout Australia, and through them the press and then the flyers’ families were aware that the men were lost, low on fuel, and running out of possible solutions to potential disaster.

It was clear that the situation was hopeless. The
Southern Cross
was battling a headwind and fuel had fallen so low that it was obvious they were not going to be able to get remotely close to Wyndham. The only sensible thing to do, it seemed, was to head back to the last mission they had seen and bring the
Southern Cross
down as near to it as they could get. That way at least they would have help…and yet it soon became devastatingly clear that even that was a forlorn hope as the engines were clearly running on fumes alone. With just minutes remaining, at best, until the engines cut out on them, Smithy’s eyes roved such landscape as they could see through the storm looking for a spot to land where they would not be killed on impact. Nothing looked remotely promising, with boulders, ravines, termite mounds, gum trees and the distinctive boab trees all conspiring to deny the
Southern Cross
a single flat, open stretch.

And then he saw it. Up ahead about a mile, and a short distance to the right was a small patch of flat ground. It was far too small to land safely on if it was dry, but it was clearly muddy and that meant he would be able to slow down all the more quickly by bogging the wheels, if he could just touch down on the right spot.

The easiest decisions in all the world to make are, of course, those when there is really no other choice, and this was just such an occasion. With the engines threatening to cut at any second there would not even be time to fly around the intended landing spot to reconnoitre, and he would have to nail the landing first time.

For McWilliams in the back, there was just enough time to get out a quick message on the radio to the waiting world:

Have become hopelessly lost in dense bush. Now faced with forced landing at place we believe to be 150 miles from Wyndham in rotten country. Wish us luck. We will communicate again as soon as possible.
⁴³

Staggering along at just above stalling speed, Kingsford Smith dragged the
Southern Cross
in, nose-high, hanging on the screaming propellers, aiming to touch down on the first yard of mud. Suddenly the windscreen was filled with the vision of boulders and trees whipping past on either side. Triple throttles chopped, and the
Southern Cross
dropped like a shot bird. Contact! The wheels dug into the soft ground and instantly all four of the crew were hurled forward as the spent bird went from flying through air to slushing through wet mud. Smithy stayed wrestling the wheel and dancing a hot jig on the rudder pedals, desperately trying to bring the plane to a controlled stop.

Somehow, extraordinarily, after just 100 squelching yards he managed it, switched off the engines and…

And it was always like this.

After a forced landing, or a crash, there was the sudden cessation of that monotonous blare of the motors, replaced by searing silence, save for the tinkling of the exhaust manifolds cooling, and the wonderful realisation that you were still alive! And substantially unhurt!

It felt like a miracle.

Thirteen
COFFEE ROYAL

A nation’s hero may become a nation’s whipping boy overnight
…

C
HARLES
K
INGSFORD
S
MITH
, 1929

S
omehow, somehow,
somehow
, in that godforsaken part of the world, Smithy, against all odds, had got the plane down intact, and his crew with it.

‘Smithy,’ Hal Litchfield said, after he had picked himself up from the bulkhead where he had landed, ‘you’re a marvel.’

‘Pure luck,’ Kingsford Smith smiled in reply.

‘No, not luck, Smithy,’ Charles Ulm said, and he meant it. ‘Nobody else could have put her down in this mud without tipping her on her nose. Look, she didn’t run an inch over a hundred yards!’
¹

McWilliams jumped down from the fuselage and pointed out to the others how close a spindly 12-foot gum tree had come to the propeller on the starboard engine. Just another foot forward and the propeller would have shattered against it. As it was, it looked like if they had petrol and a rough flat strip to work with, they could take off again!

But where exactly were they?

Apart from lost-lost in the never-never, that is? That would be something they would have to work out in the hours to come, though it was at least clear that they had landed on a swamp with many tidal inlets. For now, the most important thing was to take stock of just how they were going to survive until help could get to them.

The stocktake of available food did not take long, as the base of it was seven sad sandwiches. Inconceivably, the emergency rations that were meant to be in the plane had been removed by persons unknown before the flight, and the only thing approaching provisions that they had on board was 8 pounds of Allenbury’s Baby Food intended for the postmaster’s baby at Wyndham. Completing their raggedy roundup was a couple of pounds of coffee, a box of matches, a flask of brandy and a packet of biscuits. The one necessity they didn’t lack was fresh water, as they found a waterhole nearby.

Well, there was no other option but make the best of it. To get as good an understanding as they could about the place they had landed, Smithy and Ulm tramped through the muddy swampland—while dodging crocodiles!—to reach and climb to the top of the only hill in the area. Once there they looked in every direction, hoping against hope to see any sign of the mission, or perhaps a column of smoke that would indicate some human habitation nearby, but all they could see was mile after mile of swampland, just as they had seen from the air. At least from that height the wings and body of the
Southern Cross
stood out as a massive silver and blue cross against the landscape, and they had some hope that it would be easy to spot from above.

By the time they got back to the plane, McWilliams had succeeded in doing what he could never have done while the plane was flying, which was to rig up a long-wave aerial, by wrapping copper wire as high around the tree in front of the propeller as he could get it, and already he had news! Despite the roaring of the engines which he could still hear in his ears if not in actuality, he had picked up signals, and had already heard Perth tell Darwin that the
Southern Cross
was missing. That was promising, as surely it couldn’t be long before planes came looking for them, and they would be saved.

And so, after getting a desultory fire going, and nibbling sparingly on half a sandwich each, followed by a little bit of baby food—the Ritz, it wasn’t—they decided to follow up with a chaser of coffee mixed with brandy.

‘Well, mates, we may be lost, but at least we’ve got coffee royal to drink!’
²
Smithy mocked, as he took his first sip.

A short time later they settled down for the night. Or at least tried to…Only minutes after it became dark, they had visitors. First in ones and twos. Then in their dozens. Then in their hundreds. Then in their
thousands
! Mosquitoes! Swarms of them! On their faces. Their arms. Their legs. Everywhere! Stinging little mongrels. Noisy little bastards that sounded, yes, like three-engined Fokkers. In the ensuing hours each man cursed, slapped and cursed some more, trying to snatch a few minutes’ sleep here and there until the weight of the combined pain of all the stings outweighed their extreme fatigue, after a twenty-eight and a half hour flight which had finished in a semi-controlled crash-landing.
Mongrels.