In the autumn of 1975, I was stationed at the small, isolated community of Docker River. It’s name was later changed back to its traditional name of Kaltukatjara, a settlement scenically nestled against the Petermann Ranges, 200 kilometres due west of Uluru.
The community had a largely transient population, about 400 people: Pitjantjatjara, Ngaanyatjarra, Yankunytjatjara and Pintubi; all desert peoples who used the fledgling outpost as a convenient staging post as they moved around their traditional estates, at the intersection of the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia.
The government provided a basic service infrastructure, delivered via three teachers, two nurses, a shopkeeper, a general maintenance handyman, me as Community Advisor, and several traditional elders.
We lived and worked out of a mixture of sheds and caravans. The administrative centre was a small corrugated garden shed; the school classrooms and staff accommodation were seven ‘silver bullets’: large vans akin to huge Lego blocks and another shed housed our 6 KVA electrical generator. The shop was the community’s centrepiece, of solid brick construction. Our medical clinic was housed in another iron and bush-timbered shed. It had a desk and two chairs, a rickety old iron-framed bed and the ‘waiting room’ formed with a long bench on the verandah, out the front.
The old Ayers Rock Hotel provided a social outlet. The tortuous four-hour trip, following wheel ruts between and often over the drifting dunes of the Gibson Desert, was considered a small price to pay to access the ‘outside’ world. The road had regular use, often three or four vehicles a day.
Irregular grading had lowered the track’s surface several feet below the surrounding countryside, akin to driving along a deep, extended rut. It was a track that required extreme care and attention and was not for the faint-hearted!
Our head nurse Rae, and her headteacher husband advised me of their intention to spend the weekend at the Boomerang Hotel, at Uluru. As was the custom, they advised me of their expected return on Sunday afternoon. It was duly noted. I reminded Rae to keep a lookout on the return trip, as we were expecting our fortnightly supply truck sometime over the weekend.
Four o’clock Sunday afternoon came and went. The supply truck had arrived and left at midday for the eight or nine-hour trip back to Alice Springs. I had advised the driver of the expected return of our staff. At five, our second nursing sister, Pat, came across to my caravan, noting that Rae hadn’t returned. I begrudgingly suggested that they had stayed on for a few extra bevvies, but Pat would not be put off. She returned a few minutes later with our large portable emergency kit and sent me on my way. I fuelled the Toyota, mumbling about the long trip ahead and thinking about what I would say to the errant couple when I arrived at the hotel and found them breasting the bar.
One hundred kilometres down the track, I came across Rae’s husband stumbling along the sandy track. He was mostly incoherent, dehydrated, but he managed to tell me that they’d hit the supply truck! Another ten kilometres, I came upon the mayhem: a head-on collision. Rae looked up gratefully as we pulled up.
Rae had a ruptured patella but for the next ten minutes, she hobbled around conducting a triage of the various injuries. They had given a lift to several women who needed a lift back to the community. They had been sitting in the back of the utility.
I got Rae eventually seated, and over the next two hours, she closely directed my activities. There was a suspected fractured skull, another probable compound fracture, both drivers were in shock and there were multiple cuts and abrasions. Under Rae’s supervision, I wrapped blankets around the shock victims, gently splinted the break, bandaged a head, applied salves to cuts and finally immobilised Rae, who chose this moment to tell me that she was also four months pregnant!
I was working by car headlights now. It must have been about nine o’clock when I thought I heard a vehicle approaching. Two minutes later, headlights were bouncing and weaving across the countryside, from Uluru’s direction. Another few minutes and the vehicle arrived. Out stepped four young women, nurses on their way to Warburton, our neighbouring community across the Western Australian border, about eight hours further on.
Coals to Newcastle and a thousand similar thoughts went whizzing through my brain as Rae and I quickly did the rounds of our patients. Satisfying myself that we were now all in good hands, I am told that I strolled behind one of the vehicles and fainted!
The extra vehicle solved the dilemma of how we were going to get everybody back to Docker. It was squishy, but we got everybody into the two vehicles for the slow trip back. We arrived at about midnight with Pat, our ever-vigilant second nurse, waiting at the clinic as we pulled up.
Our generator had long been switched off. Paraffin tilly lamps lit the scene, casting eerie, elongated shadows across the room. While the phalanx of nurses worked their wonders, I went across to my office, warmed up my battery-powered, two-way radio, and started to seek medical support.
In 1975, the Royal Flying Doctor Service in Alice had a duty officer monitoring the emergency transceiver every night. Outlying settlements and stations had an emergency, two-toned whistle which, theoretically, when blown into the radio, triggered an alarm at the base, alerting the duty officer of an emergency. That was the theory!
From just after midnight through until 5.30 am I blew that bloody whistle – three seconds on the long pipe, two seconds on the shorter one. God, how I hated that device.
As dawn approached, a deep American drawl came over the radio. ‘Who in hell is making all that squawking racket?’
A brief pause of bewilderment and disbelief as I replied, ‘Ah, hello.’
‘Yep, who are you guys makin’ that god-awful noise?’
Relief started to flood through my system. ‘Ah, g’day, I’m at Docker River and we have a medical emergency.’
‘Goddam, where on this good earth is Docker River?’
‘In Central Australia,’ I replied. ‘Look, I don’t have their number but could you get it and phone the Royal Flying Doctor Service, in Alice Springs and get them to come onto the radio?’
While we’re waiting, our American saviour advised that he was the Radio Officer, flying in a military transport, approaching Guam!
The RFDS plane arrived at nine o’clock next morning, and all of the patients were air-lifted into Alice. Our exhausted, extended nursing crew drew breath, radioed Warburton of a day’s delay on their arrival, unrolled their swags under my caravan and slept, as the community got on with another day.
I have often pondered the wonders of technology, Guam, but not Alice! I never did think to ask the American guy’s name, nor that of the nurses, but belatedly, a grateful thank-you for your collective efforts on that night so long ago!
In due course, all evacuees recovered and returned to Docker. Rae’s baby arrived fit and healthy several months later.