He flew in his single-engine Gipsy Moth on moonless nights or in torrential rain, often unlicensed, and at least once in his pajamas, with only a magnetic compass for navigation.
His name was Clyde Fenton – the tall, bespectacled doctor who, in the 1930s, clocked up 3000 hours and a quarter of a million miles, tending to the sick and injured across the Northern Territory.
This year marks 40 years since Dr Fenton’s death, and his legacy as one of Australia’s “original” flying doctors continues to live on.
Every flight an adventure for larrikin of the sky
It was 1934 when Dr Fenton arrived in Katherine to establish an aerial medical service and it wasn’t long before his services became relied upon.
Whether it was a drover with an infected tooth, a woman having difficulty in childbirth or a child with a burst appendix, he would be in the air as soon as the call for help came through.
“In that vast, mysterious, and lonely land, every flight was an adventure,” he wrote in his 1947 autobiography.
But the harsh and remote lands of the Northern Territory ask more of people than most places.
Dr Fenton once went to the rescue of a toddler at Dunmarra who had been charged by a wild buffalo.
Not only did he tend to the child, he also went out and shot the buffalo which had been holding the homestead hostage all morning. He was gifted the horns as a thank you gift.
Another time, in 1940, Dr Fenton was at 2000 feet when a four-foot brown snake slithered along the cockpit floor toward the rudder pedals.
“Not daring to keep his feet on the controls, Dr Fenton almost stood on the pilot’s seat and flew the plane by the joystick alone,” the Argus reported.
He made a rudderless landing near Maranboy and leapt from the plane before it fully came to a stop, swiftly dispatching the snake with a hammer.
Dr Fenton was the kind of person who took risks to save lives. And with bush aviation in the 1930s, the risks were substantial.
A crash course in flying
Bad weather, a spluttering engine, a fuel gauge pushing its limits: these things happened a lot to Dr Fenton, who survived an extraordinary number of plane crashes in his time as a flying doctor.
The first was in 1934 near Victoria River Downs – Dr Fenton was trapped upside down in the plane and his passenger described his eventual exit from the wreckage as “like toothpaste coming out of a tube that had been trodden on”.
Walking from the crash site to the station, the pair encountered a hostile buffalo and waded through croc-filled rivers.
Dr Fenton had many close calls during his time out bush, including one in September 1937 that had the whole of the Northern Territory on edge.
While flying to a person in strife in the Gulf, somewhere near Tanumbirini Station, strong winds shook his little Moth and forced him to land in the scrub.
Several days later, Dr Fenton was still sitting beside an almost-dry waterhole feeding on the raw meat of a half-starved cow he had found bogged, hoping the bandages he used to form an SOS sign would catch someone’s attention.
Search parties frantically looked for the beloved doctor, and eight days later he was found, unharmed apart from a little sunburn.
Grounded in Hong Kong and a hero’s welcome home
Dr Fenton had a reputation as being a bit of a maverick.
When he wasn’t on the job, he was known to land his plane outside the pub in Katherine’s main street for a beer, or sometimes for a laugh he would take the plane up over the town and flour bomb people.
On May 14, 1935, newspapers reported the flying doctor was fined £20 for “endangering public safety” by swooping low over Darwin’s Star open-air picture theater several times, including once between “the front of the circle and the screen”.
And then there was the time in 1936 he flew his tiny single-engine plane to China upon receiving news of his sister’s death in childbirth there.
Dr Fenton’s mother was stranded, so he constructed an extra fuel tank and took off in a monsoon, teaching himself to fly with his knees while he executed a daring mid-air refueling over the water.
He had no official permits or papers but managed to talk his way through Koepang and Bangkok, the latter by handing over an aircraft manual in English when asked for an airworthiness certificate.
Eventually, an official in Hong Kong grounded him.
Dr Fenton somehow took off anyway, only to be arrested in Swatow, China, then released because of his “filial piety”.
On the way back he was grounded again by the same Hong Kong official, who not having learned his lesson, gave the doctor permission to test his plane. And Dr Fenton was off again, arriving back in Darwin to a hero’s welcome.
CareFlight ball dedicated to Dr Fenton this year
Upon the outbreak of war, Dr Fenton served as a pilot in the RAAF, responsible for delivering food, mail and personnel from the Batchelor Airstrip to isolated bases and signal units across Arnhem Land and beyond.
He stayed on for a short time as a quarantine officer in the Northern Territory after the war, and in 1949 he married and moved to Melbourne, where he died in 1982.
His legacy lives on across the Top End, with a primary school and an airstrip named after him, and a dedicated wing at the Katherine Museum.
Katherine Museum chief executive, Lauren Reed, said the local community rallied to have one of the flying doctor’s original Gipsy Moth plans returned home and put on display.
“He was quite an iconic person and provided such a vital service, not just to Katherine but to all the regions and communities,” Ms Reed said.
Dr Fenton’s aerial ambulance eventually grew into the Northern Territory Aerial Medical Service.
The service has been succeeded by CareFlight NT, and the organization’s Hangar Ball is being dedicated to Dr Fenton this year.
CareFlight Fundraising Manager Jo Rutherford, who has been researching the territory’s “original” flying doctor for the event, said Dr Fenton paved the way for remote medical care in the north.
“He showed that aeromedical service was essential in the Top End and he was courageous in showing it could be delivered everywhere,” she said.
“He was a pioneer who worked to provide access to medical care wherever people lived.”
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