The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories (16 page)

This is one of Fred McKay’s stories. It isn’t mine so you’ll have to check the details with him.

It happened back in the late 1930s, long before John Flynn died and Fred took over. Fred and Meg had recently been married and they were visiting a cattle station out in the Barkly Tablelands, just over the Queensland border, into the Northern Territory. Anyway, the station’s storekeeper-cum-bookkeeper had an abscessed molar, very painful it was.

‘Meg’ll sort it out,’ Fred offered, brimming with confidence in his new wife.

Now, even though she’d completed a two-week crash course in ‘tooth extraction’ at the Brisbane Dental Hospital before they’d set out, Meg didn’t quite share Fred’s enthusiasm in her ability. She was new to this rugged bush lifestyle. As you might imagine, it was a big change for someone who was virtually a city girl and she was still trying to find her feet among the dust, the flies, the heat, the cold, the camping out, the cattle, the bore water, the stockmen. Still, she tentatively agreed to give it a go.

But whatever minimal confidence she had completely vanished when Meg arrived at the store. The storekeeper looked a formidable customer indeed. He was a huge man, a mountain in comparison to the ‘dental-dummy’ that Meg had trained on back in Brisbane. To make matters worse, when the news had spread that a woman was going to have a go at
extracting the storekeeper’s molar, a crowd of sceptical stockman had gathered, all eager to watch the event unfold.

Until that point in time, Meg had hardly ever pulled a tooth, let alone done it in front of a crowd as rough and as doubting as this mob was. Still, she couldn’t turn back now. She’d volunteered her services and she’d have to see it through to the end, whatever that end may be. So she sat the chap down on an old box outside the station store. She gave him an injection and then set to with the pliers or whatever.

Now you might be able to imagine some of the remarks coming from the stockmen when it became obvious that the harder Meg pulled on the molar, the more it seemed that it wasn’t going to budge. And the more the molar wouldn’t budge, the more anxious the storekeeper became about allowing a woman to attempt to extract his tooth. But if there was one golden rule that Meg had learned in at the Brisbane Dental Hospital, it was ‘Once you’ve got a good grip, never let go.’

So she didn’t.

She latched onto that molar and she pulled with every ounce of strength she could muster. Even when the storekeeper started to gargle a protest, Meg straddled him and still hung on and pulled. And when he struggled to free himself from off the old box, Meg clambered up on the box and still hung on and pulled. Then, as the storekeeper attempted to walk away, Meg gave an almighty twist and yank and…out came the tooth.

Well, this brought the house down, so to speak. As Meg stood there in complete triumph displaying the
molar, the gathering of stockmen exploded into cheers, whistles and applause. But the person that was most stunned was the beefy storekeeper himself. He gazed down upon Meg in complete wonderment and, with the tears pouring down his cheeks and the blood running down his chin, he called out, ‘What a woman!’

My father was a pretty tough sort; a roo shooter, on and off, for most of his life, he was.

But back in the days that this incident happened we were living in very isolated conditions, about 60 miles out of Mingah Springs Station, which is about 150 miles north of Meekatharra, in central Western Australia. It was in either the October or November, I’m not sure which, but it was stinking hot and in the middle of a drought, which wasn’t unusual way out there.

Anyway, Dad had spent a trying day out building stockyards and it was late in the afternoon when he finally came in. Then just before tea he remembered that he still had to organise some meat for the dogs, so he grabbed his .22 rifle and headed off to kill a kangaroo.

He must have been awfully tired because after he’d shot a roo and sorted it out for the animals, he came back in, put the gun away, had his tea and went straight to bed. Then, early the next morning when he grabbed the gun again, it went off and the bullet went into his stomach, right through his kidneys, and came out his back.

When my mother saw the mess that my father was in, she went into a real tizz. To make things worse, Mum couldn’t drive and she was afraid that Dad was going to die before she could organise some help. Anyhow, we did have an old two-way radio. It was one of those ones that
ran with the aid of a 12-volt battery. The only trouble was, when Mum went to call for help she discovered that the battery on the radio had gone flat.

Now, to recharge the battery you had to go through a bit of a rigmarole. See, my father had set up an alternator to an old push-bike. And the idea was, when you hooked the flat battery to the alternator and peddled flat out, it’d recharge the thing.

So Mum hooked the battery up to the alternator, jumped on the bike and went like a bat out of hell. Mind you, this was all happening while my father was still sprawled out inside. Then, when the battery was finally recharged, mother took it back inside, wired it up to the radio and started calling the Flying Doctor for help. As I said, she was in a real tizz and with the shock of having to cope with my father being shot, then having to recharge the battery in the growing morning heat, it was all too much. In the middle of explaining the situation to the doctor, she fainted.

Down she went, leaving Dad to struggle over to the radio and complete the call.

As I said, Mum couldn’t drive and we lived in a very isolated area. But as luck would have it there was a gentleman, Val Sorenson, who owned Mingah Springs Station as well as Briah Station, and he just happened to be visiting Mingah at the time and overheard the call on his radio. Then Mr Sorenson came on the line and offered to come up to our place and pick up my father, then take him back to Mingah which had the closest airstrip to where we lived.

‘Yes, please,’ my father said.

So Mr Sorenson jumped into his old open-top jeep and drove the 60 miles up to our place. That trip took
a fair amount of time because there wasn’t really a proper road between Mingah and our place. In actual fact, it was more like a bush track, and a pretty rough one at that. It wasn’t even graded or anything.

When Mr Sorenson arrived a couple of hours later, he loaded Dad and Mum and my little sister into the jeep and they headed back towards Mingah. As I said, it was a hot October or November day and the journey was over a rugged track so Mr Sorenson had to take it extremely slowly. Yet throughout that whole journey Dad remained conscious and kept reassuring everyone that he’d be okay. Like I said, he was a pretty tough sort, especially keeping in mind that almost ten hours was to pass from the time my father had been shot until the time that Mr Sorenson finally arrived back at Mingah Springs Station.

Anyway, while they were making their way back down the track the pilot from the Flying Doctor Service arrived at Mingah in his Cessna; or it might have been an Auster, I’m not sure which. All I know is that it was a small plane and there wasn’t a doctor on board. But with all the confusion over the radio, with the flat battery and my mother fainting, then my father having to take over in his delirious state, and Mr Sorenson coming in and offering his help, the message hadn’t come across very clear at all. So when the Flying Doctor pilot arrived, he fully expected to find my father there ready to be flown straight off to hospital where a doctor was waiting. But of course he wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

The pilot then tried to radio through to clear up the situation but he couldn’t raise an answer. So he waited for a couple more hours and when it looked like
no one was going to turn up he decided that the best thing to do was to fly back to Meekatharra and take things from there. The only problem was that he didn’t have enough fuel to get back to the base so he hunted around the place until he found an empty 4-gallon drum. He then took the drum and walked the distance over to where the fuel tank was.

But after the pilot filled the drum he discovered there was a hole in the thing and he had to struggle back to the plane with the filled drum while attempting to cover the leak with his finger. It was those extra crucial minutes of delay that saved my father’s life because, when the pilot finally reached the airstrip, he drained the fuel into the plane, jumped in and was about to take off…and that’s when Mr Sorenson’s jeep came into sight.

Back in the early 1970s I went to the Northern Territory as a very young and naive school teacher and took up a position on Brunette Downs Station which was then owned by King Ranch, Australia. I was teaching Aboriginal kids there, which was a steep learning curve because, coming from where I did, I soon realised that I had a lot to learn about the Aboriginal culture. But I really enjoyed it, and I still think that we could all learn a lot from the Aboriginal people, particularly as far as caring for family goes.

Anyway, I was in the schoolroom one day and I felt this thing on my neck. ‘It must be a fly,’ I thought, so I tried to wave it away, like you do. But still the thing didn’t move so I gave it a slap. Then when I squashed it, it felt like someone had placed some burning tongs on my neck. When I took a look at the thing, I realised that I’d been bitten by a redback spider.

It was almost lunchtime so I said to the kids, ‘Oh look, you can go out for lunch a bit early today.’ When they’d gone I went up to the clinic to see the nursing sister. A funny person she was.

‘I’ve just been bitten on the neck by a redback spider,’ I said, and she gave me a vacant sort of look.

‘Are they poisonous?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I said, astounded that she didn’t know anything about spider bites.

‘Oh,’ she replied, ‘then I’d better get in touch with the Flying Doctor Service to see what we can do about it.’

‘Thanks for all your help,’ I said, with a hint of sarcasm.

So I went into my room where I had a first-aid book from teachers’ college, ancient as it was, and I had a look in that. It said that if you’re bitten by a spider the first thing to do is to put a tourniquet on. That seemed a bit ridiculous, especially with me having been bitten on the neck. But by that time I was feeling sick and I was starting to get a fever as well, so I went to bed which, as it turned out, was the best thing to do.

In the meantime, the nurse had been on the radio and explained my situation to the doctor. She was told to treat it like shock and keep a watch for any symptoms. Now what you’ve got to realise here is that, when anyone’s talking over the radio, anyone else can listen in. And they do, quite a lot. So unbeknown to me, my being bitten on the neck by the wretched spider was broadcast throughout the Northern Territory.

Then a couple of months later I went up to this race meeting at Borroloola, which is on the Gulf of Carpentaria, on the McArthur River. That was a hoot. It’s also quite an extraordinary place, mind you. My education continued non-stop while I was up there. Anyway, there was this guy from Mallapunyah Station. A sort of a legend around the area, he was. Well, he came up to me.

‘Oh, gee,’ he said, in his real droll bush voice, ‘so you’re the teacher from Brunette Downs, are yer? The one that got bit on the neck b’ the redback spider?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that was me. Why?’

And he just stood there, ogling at me, eyeing me up and down from tip to toe. Then finally he shook his head from side to side.

‘Jeez,’ he said, ‘I would ’a liked to ’a been that redback spider.’

I was a band master at the time and had been sent down to Esperance to get the local brass band started. Anyway there was this vacant brick residence out on a farm, a lovely place it was, and the owners wanted someone living in it, to keep it tidy and so forth. I needed some accommodation so I moved in.

Then I had a heart attack. So they drove me into Esperance Hospital where they got in touch with the Queen Elizabeth Medical Centre in Perth. And the people in Perth said, ‘Look, we haven’t got any beds just at the moment. You’d better try and keep him alive down there until we can sort something out.’

So I stayed in Esperance Hospital for half a day with the doctors pumping things into me and so forth. Then the message finally came through that there was a bed available in Perth, which was a great relief, I can tell you. But of course, the problem then arose as to how to get me to the Queen Elizabeth Medical Centre post haste. Anyway, to cut a long story short, the hospital got in touch with the Flying Doctor Service out at Kalgoorlie who were at that very moment getting ready to fly to Perth with a couple of chaps who’d almost killed each other in a pub brawl.

Now the idea of travelling in the confines of a small aeroplane along with two blokes who’d tried to murder each other didn’t fill me with too much excitement, I can tell you. So I expressed my concerns.

‘Don’t worry,’ I was told, ‘these blokes are so well sedated that they wouldn’t harm a fly.’

‘Okay then,’ I said. ‘Count me in.’

So the plane came down to Esperance to pick me up and when it arrived there were these two blokes laid out on the floor, on stretchers. And they were sedated all right, sedated to the eyeballs with alcohol. The plane stank like a brewery. It almost made me crook. Just how on earth they could have inflicted the injuries on each other that they did was beyond the realms of comprehension. But there they lay, completely out to it, both of them severely cut about with glass, ‘sedated’ to the eyeballs.

Anyway, with the plane being diverted to Esperance at such short notice, the nurse had only enough time to make some quick preparations to accommodate me after they’d taken off. As I said, these two blokes were as full as boots and there was no way that she could get them to budge off the floor. So the next best thing she could do was to set up a little box at the back of the plane, way down the tail end where the fuselage came down in a slope. And that’s where I sat, hunched over with my chest almost on my lap, my stomach turning cartwheels from the smell of alcohol, while being hooked up to all sorts of drips and things.

If you think that particular situation sounded uncomfortable, worse was to follow.

‘Look,’ said the nurse when we were halfway to Perth. ‘Look at all that lovely lightning out there. Isn’t it exciting!’

‘It might look exciting to you,’ I replied, swallowing deep.

The next thing, there we were in the middle of a violent thunderstorm and, of course, being down at the rear of the plane was the worst position to be. We were being thrown all about the place. The nurse was stumbling around, struggling to keep all my drips and stuff in. By this stage, not only was my stomach turning over ten to the dozen but a pain started to rise in my chest — not a violent pain, mind you. Still it was just enough to start me thinking, ‘You could be in big trouble here, mate.’ And throughout this calamitous event, there were these two blokes stretched out on the floor, completely oblivious to the thunderstorm, if not to life itself.

‘The only way to travel,’ the nurse said at one point, with a nod in the direction of the drunks and, by the way I was feeling, she might have been right, too.

Thanks to both the pilot and the nurse we worked our way through the storms and arrived safely in Perth. When we landed there was an ambulance waiting which whipped me into the Queen Elizabeth Medical Centre, where I was placed straight on some machinery.

They did the open-heart surgery a day or two later. That was a while back now and I’m still here today and, touch wood, I still will be tomorrow and for a good while to come yet.