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chickens and their grand-chickens all about their epic journey from Uluru to the Gold Coast, and the big rain that came and caused them to stop laying. And I also hope that they mentioned me in passing too, just like I do them when I tell the story, because it’s amazing just how attached you can get to chooks, those ones in particular. I still miss them. They had such loving personalities.

And He Survived!
    Gee, it was pretty rudimentary back in those days. Basically, the only aircraft that were available for emergency evacuations in and around Tasmania were those that were owned by the local Aero Clubs. The main one that we used at Launceston was a single-engine Auster J5 Autocar, which was a tiny four-seater, fabric aircraft. And I tell you what, things could get pretty hairy at times, especially if the evacuation was done at night.
    For example, just say a call came through in the middle of the night from one of the islands out in Bass Strait. Take Flinders Island, for instance. When that happened, the Aero Club would respond and the Chief Flying Instructor, a chap called Reg Munro, would come out and hop into the little Auster. Mind you, this aeroplane had no landing lights, no navigation lights, no instrument lights, no radio. All he had for navigational aid was a magnetic compass and a torch. In actual fact, knowing Reg, he probably took two torches along, just in case the battery went flat in the first one.
    So off he’d go. Now if it was a really nice, clear, moonlit night then Reg might go direct from Launceston to Flinders Island. But that would’ve been a very rare occurrence. More often than not it was a bit murky so he’d have to rely on getting his bearings from the various lighthouses and townships along the way.
    First, he tracked down the Tamar River to the lighthouse at Low Head. Then he headed along thenorth-east coast over Bridport and over a few of the other small settlements along that way where he could position himself from their streetlights. From there he tracked to Swan Island which is off the north-east tip of Tasmania.
    When he came across the Swan Island lighthouse Reg turned north and headed to the lighthouse on Goose Island which was just to the west of Cape Barren Island. So he tracked to that, then just kept flying north until he reached Flinders Island. By the time he got to Flinders Island, they’d have arranged some cars along the airstrip and he landed the Auster using their vehicles’ headlights as a guide. Then, once he’d landed, he’d load the patient, then fly back to Launceston taking the same route.
    Now the particular incident that I’d like to tell you about wasn’t a night-time evacuation, thank God, but it was just one of the many that got us thinking along the lines of ‘Gee, we’d better get a bit more coordinated than this.’ And that’s when we first went about getting the Royal Flying Doctor Service set up here in Tasmania, which was around 1960.
    What happened in this case was that a call came through that a chap from Flinders Island had received serious spinal injuries after he’d been involved in either a tractor or a bulldozer accident, I’m not certain which. Now the locals knew about the Auster’s limitations so they made it very clear to us that the patient was a big man. ‘A very big chap, indeed,’ they said. And why they made that point was because they were only too well aware of our awkward stretcher-loading technique.
    Normally, what we did to get the patient into the Auster was to first strap the person tight onto theold stretcher to minimise their movement. Then we’d open the door, tip the stretcher up sideways, and sort of wriggle it inside. When that manoeuvre had been completed we’d then have to slide the stretcher forward as far as it could go until the patient’s head ended up on the floor underneath the instrument panel and their feet were facing aft. That left one seat for the pilot and one seat alongside the patient, in the