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

everything else crossed. You’d have thought that a million dollar lottery was about to take place by the looks on some of those faces.
    So the judge stepped up, dug his hand in the barrel, pulled out a ticket and said, ‘And the winner is…blue, number twenty-six.’
    And you wouldn’t read about it. The bloke who’d bought the winning ticket had just been banned from the pub for six months. When this matter of technicality was drawn to the attention of the judges they got the publican over from the pub and had a confab with him. God knows why this bloke had been banned. Maybe it was for creating some drunken disturbance or other. I don’t know. But for whatever reason it was, it must’ve been pretty bad because the publican was adamant that the offer had to be taken up within the next three months. The upshot of it all was that the winner was deemed ineligible to take up his prize and a redraw took place.
    And, boy, wasn’t the chap nice and dirty about it.

And Then There Were Seven
    The Code One Emergency came through from Papunya, the second largest Aboriginal community in central Australia. So we hopped on the plane and flew out there. There was a doctor with us that time who’d had a lot of paediatric experience.
    When we landed, the police were waiting at the airstrip. They stuck us in the back of their paddy wagon and we were rushed into the Papunya Community Clinic where we were taken in to see a sixteen-year-old girl. Two community nurses were there along with the girl’s grandmother and mother. Lots of other women were gathered in and around the clinic and also a mob of kids were outside wanting to know what was happening.
    The young girl was going through a difficult labour. She’d been fully dilated for a couple of hours and by the time we arrived she was getting exhausted. The contractions weren’t as strong as they had been and the baby wasn’t being pushed out.
    It’s dicey in a situation like that, going into a place where the community nurses are familiar with everyone and are held in such high standing. You sort of get the feeling that you’re imposing in some way so you don’t want to tread on any toes and stuff up the delicate balance of the community’s social structure. You’re also careful about what you say and how you say it or else you might come across as being overly pushy which could get people’s backs up.
    ‘Oh,’ I said, hinting at helpfulness, ‘maybe she should go to the toilet.’
    ‘We’ve tried that,’ came the reply.
    ‘Then maybe she wants to walk around,’ I suggested.
    ‘No. She’s tried that too.’
    We weren’t getting anywhere and neither was the girl. The baby had to get out some way and, no doubt, it was getting tired as well. Then after a bit of a discussion we decided to take the girl back to Alice Springs where she could have a caesarean section.
    So we got the girl up and walked her over to the clinic car, a Toyota four-wheel drive, ‘troop carriers’ or ‘troopies’ they’re called. They love them out there. They’re ideal vehicles because there’s so much room in them. You can easily fit a stretcher in the back if necessary. But in this case the girl got in the front along with the grandmother who was coming back with us, to keep her company. We hopped in the back and then we were returned to the airstrip. Then just as the young girl was being helped up the stairs into the plane I said to the doctor, ‘Oh, I’ll get the obstetric kit out just in case.’
    There were two pilots in the plane that day, our senior Royal Flying Doctor Service pilot and one who was on a Mission Aviator’s Scholarship. They’re a separate group of pilots who work for the Mission Aviation Fellowship and they do a lot of community runs in the mail plane, picking things up and dropping things off to the remote communities. The MAF were getting a new aircraft, one of the Pilatus planes, so their pilot had come along as part of his training.
    Anyway, because of