O
n a dark night in the late 1950s, in
the middle of the wet season, two
men set off to fly a De Havilland
Dove from Derby to Wyndham,
in the remote Kimberley region of
Western Australia. The plane was
operated by the Royal Flying Doctor
Service, and at the controls were
pilot Ted Marshall and pioneering
flying doctor, Lawson Holman.
Holman was literally a “flying”
doctor, required by necessity to be
able to take the controls and pilot any
aircraft he flew on. Pilot Marshall
was a phenomenally gifted airman,
but he also took a perverse pleasure in
coaching other pilots to emulate his
perfection by putting them through
terrifying real-life drills in the air.
On this particular night the
two men took off from Derby
for the 520-kilometre flight to
Wyndham in marginal conditions.
Thunderstorms were active.
Marshall wasn’t perturbed however,
saying they could always turn back
if it got too bad. They hit the firstreal turbulence just south of the
Leopold Ranges. Marshall took
the plane up to 12,000 feet, above
the inversion layer. Suddenly, radio
reception cut out. The ADF went
berserk, spinning wildly, and the
DME returned to zero, leaving the
men with only the most basic of IFR
instruments. In front of them the
sky exploded. The storm encircled
the plane before either man could
react, with lightning stabbing
through the sky like a knife-welding
mad man. Marshall immediately
began to execute one of his textbook
turns, and Holman allowed himself
a small sigh of relief: they were
returning to Derby.
They turned 180o but the storm
got worse. They turned a full 360o
and realised there was no escape.
With neither man knowing what to
expect they turned the plane back
towards Wyndham and carried on
their mercy mission, Holman with
a fatalist attitude that maybe they
would at least die heroes.The plane was thrown violently
through the storm, sometimes
caught in up-draughts so severe
that the men couldn’t raise their
heads or lift their tongues from the
bottom of their mouths. Then the
plane stalled. Marshall chose this
as a good time to begin one of his
famous flying lessons.
“You would care to observe the
instruments and offer an opinion as
to what is happening?” he calmly asks
Holman. Holman sees the artificial
horizon on its side, the altimeter
in free-fall and the bank and turn
indicators hard over. He replies that
he believes they are in a spin.
“Very good, Doctor,” Marshall
replies nonchalantly. “What do you
suggest we do about it?”
Holman, in a terrifying panic,
hanging in his straps with the
plane spinning earthwards at 3000
feet per minute in the middle of
a tropical storm, in pitch black, is
made to run through the procedures
of pulling back the throttles,adjusting the mixture, pulling the
pitch levers fine, pushing the stick
forward, correcting the spin with
the rudder, sensing when the skid
and bank were centralised, then
bringing the spin back under control
while slowing feeding power. They
eventually level out.
“Excellent, Doctor,” says
Marshall, pleased with Holman’s
performance. “You will note we
still have 6500 on the clock.”
It’s stories like this that pop
up with pleasing regularity in the
Kimberley, where aviation has a
long and distinguished history. It
was Derby airport that took part in
Australia’s first scheduled aviation
service in 1921. The reasons for the
Kimberley’s long affection for aviation
are predominately geographic. It’s
the most isolated inhabited area of
the continent. Added to that is the
fact the during the wet season, which
can last up to four months, many
roads are closed, cutting off towns,
communities and stations fromThe Kimberley
Experience
Kimberley Special RICKY FRENCH
Ricky French journeyed through the Kimberley
searching for the soul of aviation in a land
transformed by aircraft.
26
AUSTRALIAN FLYING January - February 2015