The Complete Book of Australian Flying Doctor Stories Read Online Free PDF

back of the aircraft, for an attendant.
    Anyway, with this particular chap being so big, and because of the nature of his injuries, there was no way we could strap him onto the stretcher and load him through the door by tipping him sideways and wriggling him about, and so forth. That was completely out of the question.
    So Reg took an engineer along with him, a chap who worked at the Aero Club at the time. Now the aircraft had a sort of turtledeck back window, if you can imagine that, where the wing is elevated and you can look straight out through the back, through the window. When they landed at Flinders Island the engineer set to and unscrewed the window, which they then removed from the aeroplane. With that done they strapped the patient onto the stretcher and eased him in through the opening and into the plane. Once the chap was settled, the engineer then screwed the window back into position. When that was completed they flew back to Launceston where they had to reverse the procedure to take the patient out.
    And he survived!

And the Winner is…
    I remember back when I was working for Telecom up in the north-west of New South Wales, one time. They held this Charity Ball at a place called White Cliffs, and this ball was the culmination of some pretty vigorous fundraising activities in aid of the Royal Flying Doctor Service.
    Now you know how a Charity Ball works, don’t you? That’s when the participants, usually young beauties, have spent a while raising money for a certain charity and they hold a ball to crown the Queen, the Queen being the person who’d raised the most money. Well, this ball was exactly like that except it was called a Golden Granny Ball. So instead of young beauties, these finalists were the more elderly, or should I say more mature, type of women. And what’s more, they’d come from places like Tibooburra and Wilcannia and even maybe Cobar and Wentworth. Well, these grannies had completed their fundraising activities and arrived with their hubbies and other family members for the big Charity Ball in the White Cliffs Town Hall.
    It was your pretty standard sort of bush show. Everyone was done up to the nines at that early stage of the night. It was a BYO affair, like. You know what that means, don’t you — Bring Your Own food and grog. And I specifically mention the grog at this point because the pub hadn’t set up a bar in the hall, as you might naturally assume it might. No, the publican wasa lot smarter than that. His line of thinking was that when the blokes had run out of grog in the hall, they’d not only wander over to the pub to buy more supplies but they’d have a couple of swifties while they were out of sight of prying eyes — in particular, the prying eyes of their spouses. Now you can’t tell me that that wasn’t a stroke of economic genius, especially knowing some of those blokes, as I did.
    Anyway, other than the naming of the Golden Granny there were also a number of raffles held to raise money for the Flying Doctor Service. The first prize was actually provided by the publican, and consisted of a week’s free grog, food and accommodation at the White Cliffs pub. There was only one stipulation, and that was that the offer had to be taken up within the next three months, before tourist season or whatever began.
    Now this was a pretty sought-after prize, especially among the blokes, if for nothing else than the free food and accommodation that you’d need after spending a day drinking the free grog. The offer of free food was viewed by most as an optional extra in this case. I don’t know how many books of tickets they sold but there was a fair few because I saw them being snapped up left, right and centre.
    Then just before they had the crowning of the Golden Granny they drew the big raffle. You could have heard a pin drop in that hall. I saw blokes with their fingers crossed. I saw blokes with their fingers and legs crossed. I saw blokes with their fingers, legs and