The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories by Bill Marsh Read Free Book Online Page A

night. And I was sitting there reflecting about how narrow the margins of error got on the way out, and contemplating the horrors of a return flight to Derby that very same night, when I received this premonition — a spiritual experience, you could even describe it as.
    A nun quietly opened the door behind me. As soft as air, she walked around and looked straight into my eyes. Then, without saying a word, she placed a bottle of Queen Ann whisky and one glass in front of me, walked out and closed the door behind her.

Born to Fly
    Jim, the base director from Derby, phoned one night and said, ‘Listen, Jan, we’ve got a bad one up at Kalumburu Aboriginal Mission.’
    ‘What’s up?’ I asked.
    ‘A guy’s been run through by a bull’s horn and pinned against a fence post.’
    ‘Oh, gee, Jim,’ I replied. ‘Penny and I have got to go to Kalumburu at six tomorrow morning to do a clinic. Can’t the patient wait?’
    ‘No,’ he said. ‘The patient’s dying.’
    ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘We’re on the way.’
    Mind you, as well as being the Royal Flying Doctor Service’s flight nurse, I was also married to Jan and six months pregnant with Dan at the time. Anyway, we rushed out to the airport and jumped into the Beechcraft Queen Air. By that time it was about nine at night.
    The weather itself wasn’t bad, but it was the middle of the dry season. That’s when all the burning off takes place and, to make matters worse, the prevailing easterlies had brought in a mass of smoke and dust across the Northern Territory. So once I was at cruise level, I could hardly see the ground. Still, it was something that I knew I’d encounter. I’d actually mentioned it to Jim during the call — the possible complete lack of horizontal visibility due to the lowlying smoke, especially when I came in to land.
    ‘Don’t worry about that,’ Jim had said. ‘I’ll get them to turn on the lights of the basketball court.’
    As you might imagine, with the whole of the outback being dotted by fires, the lights of one basketball court weren’t going to make a scrap of difference. What’s more, it’s bloody uncanny the way those fires seem to run in lines just like streets lights do. You’d swear black and blue that there was a town or a settlement down below. So all I really had to rely on was my previous flying experience throughout the area.
    I hadn’t mentioned my concerns to Jim, though. ‘Thanks, Jim,’ was all I’d said at the time because my mind was already mulling over another problem that I was afraid we’d run into. And I’d been right. Not long after we took off, we lost HF radio contact because the Asian radio stations were jamming the airways. They’d blown us right out of the air. For all intents and purposes we’d disappeared off the edge of the planet. No base. No bugger-all.
    Still, I kept on track and heading until we eventually found Kalumburu. Now most people who fly in there will tell you that Kalumburu’s a pretty risky place to negotiate because it’s shaped like a dish surrounded by hills. At night some of the pilots get quite edgy about it. So we flew over the top and I caught a sighting of the mission down through the smoke. But, because of the prevailing conditions, there was no bloody way in the world that the horizontal visibility was going to permit us to see it at a low-landing level. It was like an extremely thick fog down there.
    But, as luck would have it, there was some moon this night so I went back, right up over the Bonaparte Gulf, and let down over the water, down to about 500feet. Then I followed the moon path up a creek that led to the threshold of the runway. Right opposite the threshold of the runway I knew there was a bend in the creek. So I flew up there with the moon behind me, turned left at the bend and figured that the runway was dead ahead.
    While Jan was doing that I’m sitting there knowing what’s ahead. And I know that at the other end of the airstrip there’s a great