If you like bill vincent's book, you'll love another called 'flying doctor' by clyde fenton...auto-biography...NT in the 30's and 40's in a fox moth...he got away with some pretty hairy stuff too...on one occaision, he flew, (illegally), to hong kong in the fox thru monsoon storms DR'ing it all the way, (which can't have been easy as he seemed to spend the vast majority of the time in coud, not to mention no AI)...and he talks at length about the hillarious on-going battle he had with the then CAA...some things never change i guess! It's even funnier as it's written in a formal 'queens english' style of the times. Are we all soft these days!? Pprune book club review 10/10....
Hate to be pedantic but it was a DH60 Gipsy Moth. (Clyde wanted VH-IOU on one of them, but had to settle for VH-UOI.
From a recent thread about "Good reads" -
Katherine was home base for Dr Clyde Fenton, ca 1934-1939. He was a one man band medico/pilot in his succession of DH Moths, for Clyde had a great propensity for walking away from crashes, immediately resuming the fund raising for his next one. Clyde's "Flying Doctor" is one of the funniest books of it's kind ever published. One time on a stinking hot day he took off from DN for KT. In the front was the KT hospital matron. After an hour or so bouncing around Clyde was concerned to see her head and shoulders moving round vigorously. No voice tube and no radio needless to say.
Clyde hands her a note "You alright?"
Back comes matron's note. "Yes. I am now thank you. Now that I've got my blessed corsets off."
Hard book to come by. The Central Australian Air Museum in ASP had a few copies recently. Contact Perry Morey. (He, incidentally, is an authority on the life of the late Clyde. Has an unpublished bio.)
Clyde waged a ceaseless war of telegrams and cables to and from the Civil Aviation Branch in Melbourne. When they sent him one saying that his aeroplane was grounded forthwith and his licence suspended, he replied
THEY ARE ROUND AND THEY BOUNCE.
FENTON.