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

were, driving down the road, hoping to hell that the Toyota wouldn’t run out of fuel, when we saw the two young teenagers walking towards us through the shimmering mirage. They’d seen our plane fly over and they’d decided to head in the direction of where they thought it’d landed. By that stage these kids had trekked about 8 kilometres in the searing heat, and they were terribly dehydrated. Terribly dehydrated.
    So we picked them up, got some water into them, then we drove them back to their bogged vehicle. By now, a good hour or so had passed since we’d headed out in the old Toyota. When we got there, the elderly woman wasn’t the best. Being as large as she was didn’t help much either. It certainly hadn’t been her day. Along with the head injuries, she was now suffering from severe dehydration to boot.
    Anyway, the doctor got stuck in and started to sort the woman out. So there I was hanging around with nothing better to do than mull over the accumulation of the day’s disasters. And it got me thinking, which was a big mistake, but that’s what happens when I’ve got nothing better to do. Now, it was obvious that siphoning the petrol out of the Holden station wagon and putting it in the Toyota wouldn’t work because the car ran on petrol and the Toyota ran on diesel. So that was out. But what could I do to save the situation? And the more I racked my brain, the more I started to formulate the idea that, if I dug the car out of the bulldust, all our troubles would be over and we wouldn’t have to worry about running out of fuel in the Toyota.
    So I grabbed a shovel and started to dig the car out. Now that was one of the most stupid things thata bloke could attempt to do, especially in 40° plus heat. As I said, even the dogs back in Mount Isa had crawled under the shade so that the sun wouldn’t fry their brains. There I was, digging the wheels out, when I started to go all woozy.
    ‘Oops,’ I mumbled, and down I went like a sack of potatoes.
    Well, that certainly put the doctor into a spin. He now not only had a dehydrated woman with head injuries plus two dehydrated teenagers on his hands, he also had a pilot who’d collapsed from heatstroke. And, what’s more, without a pilot he knew that he couldn’t go anywhere. He was well and truly stuck. So the doctor then had to turn around and rehydrate me.
    Anyway, to cut a long story short, when I was feeling a little better we bundled everyone into the Toyota, got it going again, then headed back to Esmeralda Station. Now that was no real problem. But finding the airstrip from the homestead proved to be a different matter. Not only did we have the worry of not knowing how much fuel was left in the Toyota, we were all suffering from heatstroke to varying degrees. The old woman, in particular, was feeling it something terrible. What’s more, the thermometer was still rising rapidly and we seemed to have lost our way among the myriad of tracks.
    Then I started thinking again, which, as I said, was the worst thing I could possibly do. But it just seemed that, along every step of the way, things had gone from bad to worse to worser, if there’s such a word. And I must admit, it was at that particular point in time that I started to have very grave doubts about any of us getting out of there alive.
    So there we were, driving aimlessly through the rugged terrain, when the Toyota spluttered over a rise. And there she was, the aeroplane, the Queen Air — my Queen Air — sitting on the airstrip, waiting patiently for us.
    God, she was the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen in my life.

Great Break, Aye!
    The life of a Flying Doctor is certainly a pretty demanding affair, I can tell you. And if it isn’t these days, it certainly was when my husband, Tony, was working in the far north of Western Australia.
    After we’d been back in Derby for twelve months, I distinctly remember us sitting down and working out that Tony hadn’t had a single day’s break