The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories by Bill Marsh Page A
Authors: Bill Marsh
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told me.
Anyway, they landed safely, and when they taxied back to these seismic blokes they discovered that the whole mob of them were as drunk as skunks.
‘Which one of youse is the one that’s been bitten by the snake?’ Don asked.
I don’t know if these blokes were just playing funny-buggers or not but they were so under the weather that they reckoned they’d forgotten which one of them had been bitten. Now this sort of antic didn’t go down too well with either Jack or Don, no way, not even when these idiots grabbed a chap and stripped him off and started looking for a snake bite.
‘Listen,’ said Don, ‘if you buggers aren’t sick in the head now you certainly will be tomorrow.’
And, boy, didn’t he gave them a fair sort of rev. He told them that while he was out here buggerising around there could be an horrific accident somewhere else, a life and death situation, where he was badly needed. And this is what I impress upon people, station people as well. Don’t go calling the Flying Doctor out for a sore toe or a bloody broken thumb or something like that, especially if you can get the patient out in a light aircraft or motor car yourself. The Flying Doctor Service is there for emergency life-threatening complaints. They’re not a bloody flying hospital factory. So, anyway, as you might imagine, both Jack and Don were pretty riled up about this pack of idiots.
Well, Jack was telling me that when he taxied down the other end of the strip to take off, he saw red. So when he turned around, he opened both taps up on the Navaho. And as she gathered speed, there were allthese blokes still drinking and skylarking about on the airstrip, right in the middle of his take-off path.
‘Bugger it,’ he said to Don. ‘I’ll teach these blokes a lesson.’
So he lined them up with the plane and aimed the headlights straight at them. Blinded them just like they’d done to him. They couldn’t see a damn thing. All they could hear was the drone of the Navaho bearing down upon them at a great rate of knots.
Jack reckons that he’s never seen the like of it. There was this mob of drunken seismic blokes, all pushing each other out of the way, hitting the deck, tripping over themselves and diving for cover, left, right and centre, screaming and yelling.
Then as the Navaho roared over the top of them Don yelled out, ‘Break a leg, you bastards, break a leg.’ Then they flew off into the night.
Cried Duck
I’m not sure if you should publish this but, just in case you do, I’ll change the people’s names in an attempt to protect the guilty.
My pilot, Joe, and I used to fly around the outback for the Royal Flying Doctor Service in a Dragon DH 84 plane. There wasn’t much to the old Dragons really, seeing that they were made out of little more than wood, rag and string. Still, being built that light gave them one great advantage — and this did happen occasionally. If ever you needed to come in for a crash landing, you could put the plane down between a couple of trees that were close together. Now that’d wipe the wings off but, more importantly, you’d come to a fairly soft and safe halt.
But perhaps something of a more realistic concern was that, if you blew an exhaust gasket in one of the engines, the chances were that it’d catch fire. See, the Dragon had two engines, each with its own separate fuel tank. So if you blew a gasket in one of them, to save going up in flames, what you had to do was to throttle the offending engine right back which, in turn, caused you to lose ground speed. Mind you, it also put a big strain on the working engine and used up a lot of fuel in its tank as well.
Anyway, whenever Joe and I flew across the bottom of the Simpson Desert, we’d track along the Cooper Creek. The reason for that being, given the right season and with enough water about, more often than not there’d be large numbers of ducks along the creek.So Joe and I would keep an eager eye out and wherever we
Anyway, they landed safely, and when they taxied back to these seismic blokes they discovered that the whole mob of them were as drunk as skunks.
‘Which one of youse is the one that’s been bitten by the snake?’ Don asked.
I don’t know if these blokes were just playing funny-buggers or not but they were so under the weather that they reckoned they’d forgotten which one of them had been bitten. Now this sort of antic didn’t go down too well with either Jack or Don, no way, not even when these idiots grabbed a chap and stripped him off and started looking for a snake bite.
‘Listen,’ said Don, ‘if you buggers aren’t sick in the head now you certainly will be tomorrow.’
And, boy, didn’t he gave them a fair sort of rev. He told them that while he was out here buggerising around there could be an horrific accident somewhere else, a life and death situation, where he was badly needed. And this is what I impress upon people, station people as well. Don’t go calling the Flying Doctor out for a sore toe or a bloody broken thumb or something like that, especially if you can get the patient out in a light aircraft or motor car yourself. The Flying Doctor Service is there for emergency life-threatening complaints. They’re not a bloody flying hospital factory. So, anyway, as you might imagine, both Jack and Don were pretty riled up about this pack of idiots.
Well, Jack was telling me that when he taxied down the other end of the strip to take off, he saw red. So when he turned around, he opened both taps up on the Navaho. And as she gathered speed, there were allthese blokes still drinking and skylarking about on the airstrip, right in the middle of his take-off path.
‘Bugger it,’ he said to Don. ‘I’ll teach these blokes a lesson.’
So he lined them up with the plane and aimed the headlights straight at them. Blinded them just like they’d done to him. They couldn’t see a damn thing. All they could hear was the drone of the Navaho bearing down upon them at a great rate of knots.
Jack reckons that he’s never seen the like of it. There was this mob of drunken seismic blokes, all pushing each other out of the way, hitting the deck, tripping over themselves and diving for cover, left, right and centre, screaming and yelling.
Then as the Navaho roared over the top of them Don yelled out, ‘Break a leg, you bastards, break a leg.’ Then they flew off into the night.
Cried Duck
I’m not sure if you should publish this but, just in case you do, I’ll change the people’s names in an attempt to protect the guilty.
My pilot, Joe, and I used to fly around the outback for the Royal Flying Doctor Service in a Dragon DH 84 plane. There wasn’t much to the old Dragons really, seeing that they were made out of little more than wood, rag and string. Still, being built that light gave them one great advantage — and this did happen occasionally. If ever you needed to come in for a crash landing, you could put the plane down between a couple of trees that were close together. Now that’d wipe the wings off but, more importantly, you’d come to a fairly soft and safe halt.
But perhaps something of a more realistic concern was that, if you blew an exhaust gasket in one of the engines, the chances were that it’d catch fire. See, the Dragon had two engines, each with its own separate fuel tank. So if you blew a gasket in one of them, to save going up in flames, what you had to do was to throttle the offending engine right back which, in turn, caused you to lose ground speed. Mind you, it also put a big strain on the working engine and used up a lot of fuel in its tank as well.
Anyway, whenever Joe and I flew across the bottom of the Simpson Desert, we’d track along the Cooper Creek. The reason for that being, given the right season and with enough water about, more often than not there’d be large numbers of ducks along the creek.So Joe and I would keep an eager eye out and wherever we
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