The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories (59 page)

One of the worst things that ever happened was when I was driving this very ill lady, Dorethea, in our old ambulance down to Newman, in the central north of Western Australia. Dorethea was one of the great characters of Wittenoom. But then, well, the ambulance broke down, didn’t it? Poor old Dorethea, by that stage she’d been projectile vomiting for days and was extremely dehydrated and we only found out later that she had a blocked intestine.

By that stage I’d already called the Flying Doctor Service but they couldn’t come out because the RFDS plane was busy, down in Perth. See, there’d been this big accident out on the Newman road where a man and his daughter and, I think, the daughter’s friend were all killed. But anyway, someone was also very badly injured in that accident and the RFDS had flown the badly injured person down to Perth. That’s why they couldn’t get out to us. So, with Dorethea in such a bad state, and with the RFDS plane in Perth, that left us with no other choice than to drive her over to Newman for medical help.

Anyhow, you wouldn’t believe it, but about 16 kilometres out of Wittenoom the wheel bearing went on the ambulance. It was almost midnight by then and because it was such an old ambulance, the radio wouldn’t work either. So the girl I had along with me, Julie, she decided to walk on the gravel road, in the dark, back to Wittenoom to get help. And that was
one of the scariest things because after Julie left I was stuck out there alone, with Dorethea. And, you know, I’m only a volunteer ambulance officer. I’m not qualified, and here’s Dorethea vomiting and going into shock, you know. I was giving her sips of water, which she was bringing straight up. They later told me I shouldn’t have given her anything but, you know, in a case like that, you don’t know what you’re supposed to do, do you really?

I remember that it was a warm night and there was no moon, nothing, just really low cloud. So it was really dark. So we were just stuck there and then the lights went out in the ambulance. The battery went flat because I’d had the lights on. That’s probably because it was only ever used once in a blue moon and the battery wasn’t strong enough. So there I am; I’m there with only the torch light, trying to read the First Aid Manual to see what to do with someone who’s in shock and is projectile vomiting at the same time. Oh my God, it was terrible. I really thought she was going to die. I tell you, we both needed all the help we could get so we both decided to pray, together.

Anyhow, I stayed with Dorethea, just hoping and praying for somebody to come along. But they didn’t…well, not for four hours, anyway. By then Julie had walked back to town and woken somebody up. Then, when we eventually got rescued, we took Dorethea back to town. Someone had called the Flying Doctor again and by that time the plane was on its way back from Perth. So then they came up and we sent her by plane to Port Hedland. So the RFDS had a busy night as well.

Then after going to Port Hedland, Dorethea ended up in Perth and eventually she died. And, you know,
I was so worried that I’d done something wrong, especially as I knew her so well. I even ended up calling the Perth Hospital and asking them about it, and they said, ‘No, it wasn’t from any of your neglect or anything. It was because she had this blocked intestine.’

Mind you, she was also seventy-two by that stage and she’d smoked unfiltered cigarettes all her life and drank wine every day. But it took me a long time to get over that. A very long time. So that was another corker.

Still, I did the best I could and I guess you can’t do any more than your best, can you?

I came up to the Kimberley area, in the north of Western Australia, back in 1969 as a lay missionary for the Catholic Church and I worked at St Joseph’s Hostel, here in Derby, where we looked after about eighty children. Actually, St Joseph’s Hostel burnt down about five or six years or so ago but it used to be up on the corner there. Then I got married to Colin in ’73 and we worked out on Mount Barnett Station for the first year of our marriage. After that we went to Gibb River Station, and we stayed there for a total of twenty-six years.

Actually, Colin’s family owned Gibb River Station. His father started it in 1922 and we ended up eventually selling it to the Aboriginal people in 1989. Basically, we sold it because, by that time, it had four families to support which naturally made it a bit hard to manage. As you might realise, the pastoral industry’s not that strong these days and out there it’s marginal country, anyway. I mean, it’s quite big because it’s something like 1 million acres but you’ve only got, like, six thousand head of cattle. That’s about all it can take.

Anyway, as I said, in 1989 we sold Gibb River Station to the Aboriginal people and they asked Colin and his older brother, Frederick, if they could stay on to help them manage the place. They also wanted help to set up the community in conjunction with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, or
ATSIC as it’s known. So we did that, and Frederick stayed on for three years, I think it was, and then we stayed on for a further eight years after Frederick left. So that was about eleven years in all that we remained there, after selling the property. And over the years we were out there we went from a little 5 KVA generator to the bigger ones like the 3 x 70 KVA generator. And I think something like sixteen houses were built in that time, plus the medical clinic, which the RFDS used to service.

Along with all that, the Catholic Church also became involved. I think they were there for ten years or so before we left. Well, they came in with two nuns from New Zealand and they built a beautiful school there and two houses for the nuns. The school always had about twenty kids in it and it was run very well.

Then we left in 2000. We’d been out there for twenty-six years by then, and we were ready to come into town. Well, it was just circumstances really, and it felt like it was time to leave. We’d already bought a property in Derby five years prior to that, but we’d rented it out. It’s one of those 5 acre blocks out on the Gibb River Road. They call them the Gibb River blocks. And it was quite funny really because just the year before we left Gibb River Station, to come into town to live, the base administrator’s job here at the Derby RFDS was advertised and the instant I saw it I said to Colin, ‘That’s my job.’

But, see, we didn’t come into town that year. So I was a little bit disappointed about that because I really thought it was a job that I’d like to do and one I was also well suited to do. Of course, by that stage I already had a strong connection with the Flying Doctor
Service because when we were out on Gibb River Station, we used them quite a lot. Well, Gibb River had up to a hundred and twenty people on the property — Aboriginal people, mainly — and I’d helped set up the medical clinic there during our last five or so years. Then we also had the standard RFDS medical chest on the property, which I was responsible for, and we were forever calling them for different things. Oh, well, it was mainly just run-of-the-mill stuff, like accidents, falls off horses, sick kids and all that kind of thing. So, having had to use them so much when we were out on the station, I already had a strong affiliation with the RFDS.

And then, as luck would have it, the next year after we’d moved into town, the same base administrator’s job came up. So I applied for the position and got it. And I was really pleased about that because, as I said, when it had originally come up, I felt that it was definitely ‘my job’. And now I’ve worked here at the RFDS in Derby since October 2000. As far as my responsibilities go, we’ve got fifteen houses for staff, so I look after all the housing. I also combine the three base rosters from the doctors, pilots and nurses and do all the invoicing. I also enter the remote ‘consults’ (consultations) on the computer data for funding purposes and records. And that’s about it really, other than, of course, lots of other little bits and pieces of jobs thrown in. So, basically, what I tell everyone is that, ‘I mainly try to keep ’em all happy. That’s my job.’

I guess that you’ve heard about how it was John Flynn who first set up the Australian Inland Mission (AIM) and then the Royal Flying Doctor Service came out of that. But, anyway, the AIM not only sent out nurses and that to remote parts of Australia, there was also a more spiritual side to it and so John Flynn used to send out Padres to various parts of the land and it was their job to ‘keep an eye on His flock’, so to speak.

So that’s a bit of the background to this story and, as I’ve already told you in my book
Goldie
, I was working up in the Gulf one time, doing a bit of this, that and the other, plus doing a bit of cattle duffing on the side. Right, so I’m back in Normanton, staying out with the Caseys. The Caseys were big cattle duffers up that way. So I was staying with them. They owned a place called Shady Lagoons. Anyhow, I’d come into town from Shady Lagoons and I was drinking with a feller by the name of Jack McNab. Jack was a saddler and he also had a mail run. So me and him, we’re up in the top pub — the National Hotel — and we’d been drinking on and off all the afternoon. You know, we weren’t downing them one after the other like, we were just drinking nice and steady. Anyhow, by about ten o’clock that night, Jack and me, we’re starting to get a bit argumentative with each other and this argument’s getting pretty warmed up. I forget what it was about just now, but it was heating up.

Anyhow, Sam Henry, the local sergeant, comes in. Sam’s the feller who refereed that fight with me and Ronny Paul. Yeah, so Sam Henry comes in and he’s sitting down the other end of the bar and he’s thinking, ‘Gees, it looks like a blue’s on the cards here between Goldie ’n’ McNab.’ So Sam comes up and he goes through all the change we had on the counter and he hands it over to Ted Kershaw, the publican. ‘Ted,’ he says, ‘give us a dozen beers.’ In those days all the beer was in 26 ounce bottles. The big ones. There was no stubbies.

So Ted goes and he gets the beer, see. ‘Here yer go,’ he says, and he hands it over to Sam Henry.

Then Sam says to me and Jack, ‘Righto, youse fellers, come with me’, and he puts the carton on his shoulder and he walks out of the pub. So me and Jack, we follow him out. By now, me and Jack, we’re just talking and going on. There’s no arguing, we’re just talking.

So then Sam gets in his vehicle. It’s a ute sort of thing and Jack and me, we get in the back and Sam drives us out to the edge of town to an old timber church. Now, this old church was built round the turn of the century, back in the early 1900s. It’d weathered a lot of cyclones so it’s leaning over at about a 30° angle. It was one of them old weatherboard ones that’s up on stumps; you know, with the white ant caps on top. They didn’t even hold services there any more because there wasn’t much floorboards left. Like, anybody in town who wanted a bit of timber always went down to the old church to get it. Yeah, that’s where they went for their timber.

So Sam drops me and Jack off out there, at this old church, with this dozen beers. Now, outside the front
of the church, about 30 feet or something, there was still the original old bell and this old bell had a length of rope hanging off it.

Any rate Sam plonks us there and he says, ‘Righto, fellers, go fer yer life. Do what yer like’, then he jumps back in his car and he goes back to town.

So me and Jack, we’re left sitting there. We’d both long forgot what the argument was about, so now we’re bored and we’re looking for something to do. And, see, around Normanton there’s a lot of goats walking around all the time. So I says to Jack, I says, ‘Let’s have some fun. We’ll catch a goat ’n’ tie his back leg ter the rope on the bell, ’n’ as he’s trying ter get away he’ll be ringin’ the bell.’

‘Okay,’ Jack says, and so we tried to catch one of these goats, aye, but we’re too drunk to catch a goat. They kept getting away from us.

‘This’s no good,’ I says to Jack. ‘We’re gettin’ nowhere. So how’s about we ring the bell ourselves?’

‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Good idea.’

So I start ringing this bell, aye. By now it’s about two o’clock in the morning, and we’re ringing away and we can see all these house lights being turned on around town, left, right and centre. Now at that time there was only one minister in Normanton. I forget his name just now, but he was what they called a ‘Padre’ because he belonged to the Australian Inland Mission. Anyhow, he lived a way over on the other side of Normanton. A way over. So I must’ve been making a real racket, aye, because next thing this Padre comes flying down in his car.

I says, ‘Oh, how yer goin’, Padre? Have a drink.’

But he’s in no mood for that, aye, because he gives us this big lecture on the evils of drinking. Then he says, ‘You shouldn’t be ringin’ that bell.’

I says, ‘Why’s that?’

He says, ‘Because when a church bell’s rung, it’s meant to be the call for all sinners to come to church.’

So I says, ‘Well, this must be a pretty righteous town, aye, Padre?’

‘Why’s that?’

I says, ‘Because you’re the only person who’s turned up.’

After that he sort of gave up on us and he got back in his car and he drove back into town. So that’s the story of the Normanton bell and the AIM Padre.

I’ll never forget the first trip I did, from Alice Springs out to Yuendumu Aboriginal Community, as a pilot with the Flying Doctor Service. I remember we pulled up at Yuendumu and the doctor took one look out the plane window and he said, ‘Jesus, there’s something strange going on here.’

And he was right, too. You wouldn’t believe it: all the Aboriginal men were over in one group and all the women and the kids were in another group and they were all wailing. Gees, it was a real eerie, haunting sort of sound, you know, like, ‘Woo…woo…woma, woma…woo.’ And when you’ve got a whole mob of people wailing like that, it makes a fair bit of noise.

Anyway, they had two nursing sisters working there and one of the sisters came over and she explained that the Aborigines were ‘singing’ a young bloke, for pinching the Tjuringa Stones. You know what the Tjuringa Stones are, don’t you? They’re the sacred stones. They’re like how we keep a history book or a diary; well, they actually etch their stories into these stones. If you ever see them, they’ve got circles and all sorts of patterns etched on them. It could be all about some big meeting or a corroboree or some sort of gathering or anything. And they treasure these Tjuringa Stones and they bury them in a special place, somewhere safe like a cave or somewhere like that.

I’ve got one, actually. An old Aboriginal fella gave me one and I never worked out why he gave it to me,
because he wasn’t really a bloke I knew that well. But, with me being a pilot with the Flying Doctor Service, he knew who I was, of course, and one day he just came up and he gave me this string of stones. If I showed it to you I wouldn’t be able to tell you what the story’s about. But they know. And my wife won’t touch them. They scare her. She reckons I should give the thing back to them, and she’s probably right.

But anyhow, so this young Aboriginal fella at Yuendumu, Leo his name was, they used to call him ‘Useless Leo’. Leo was only about seventeen and what he’d done was, he’d pinched these Tjuringa Stones and he was going to sell them on the open market. See, being a one-off, they’d be worth quite a few bob; perhaps a couple of hundred thousand dollars or maybe more if he sold them to someplace like a museum. Of course, he’d have to have contacts to sell them to a place like that. So someone might’ve even put him up to it. I don’t know.

Anyway, they caught Leo pinching these Tjuringa Stones and so they ‘sung’ him, which was like putting a death curse on him. It’s similar to pointing the bone.

So the doctor said, ‘Okay, after we’ve finished our routine medical visit here, we’d better get this Leo on the plane and take him back to Alice Springs.’

Now, the doctor had a plan. See, it’s all psychological, and that plan was to collect some old stones and a bit of wire and things like that, and when he got Leo in the plane he’d put him under anaesthetic to knock him out. Then, while Leo was out to it, the doctor was going to make a superficial cut across his stomach and when Leo woke up he’d simply hand Leo the wire and stones and stuff and say, ‘There you go,
Leo. I’ve just operated on you and I’ve got all the “bad stuff” out, so now you’ll be okay.’

That sort of thing had worked before on a few occasions and when the Aboriginal fellas take a look at the wire and stones, they think, ‘Oh, I’m cured now. The doctor’s got all the bad stuff out that the witch doctor had done to me.’ And then they’re fine.

So that’s what the doctor was going to do this day. And when Leo walked onto the aircraft he was as fit as a fiddle. He was scared, naturally, but he was medically okay. It was only an hour and a half flight back to Alice Springs and he’d died by the time we were landing in Alice Springs. The doctor told me that he’d been trying to get an adrenaline shot into Leo’s veins, but he said it was like trying to put a needle into a piece of string because all Leo’s veins had collapsed from the shock of him being ‘sung’.

Now, I don’t know if you believe in those sorts of things — like pointing the bone and being ‘sung’ — but Leo certainly must’ve believed in it. Amazing, isn’t it? He walked on the aircraft, unaided, and he was dead within an hour and a half.