There was coming a time when my career in China was coming to a close because of my age. I was going to retire at the designated point from the company but as they were strapped for pilots with experience in China I continued flying with them as a contract pilot. My official job specification was as a ‘Casual Pilot’.
After all those years I’d been rumbled.
I was there on an ‘as required’ basis and I kept going all through the year but in February I was not required for a few months. However, the Australian arm of the company did, so I flew out to Darwin on the same contract basis. There was only one exploration rig to service some 265 n.m. out. The onshore diversion was in Indonesia; a small airstrip where you flew around in a circle until some minion came out and unlocked the shed where there were some barrels of JP1. This was the reason why you also carried a portable fuel pump. One wasn’t rushed off their feet; I did three trips in ten days, and there wasn’t any standby requirement. The operation had satellite tracking of the aircraft so it’s position was always known and one could leave the rest to the considerable Australian naval forces in that part of the world.
The Northern Territory and Western Australia were heavily involved during the War and there were still plenty of traces lying around which would keep one occupied during the time off. This was suddenly amplified when the aircraft had undemanded floatation equipment inflation on approach to the rig with the other crew. On return it required a new float bottle and these were unavailable in the Southern Hemisphere owing to lack of demand. Owing to the delay the rig operator moved their rig offshore Western Australia and the operation moved States with it. I didn’t take it to its new base, that was going to be a detachment from Darwin as a new aircraft was coming out from Aberdeen. That meant that until it arrived or I went down to the new base at Kununarra I had nothing to do, a car plus fuel at my disposal, and I was getting paid for it!
Darwin suffered, for Australia, heavy bombing by the Japanese. There were still some of the old fortifications and a trip down the tunnel near the docks was a must. The Stuart Highway, the north/south road that spears through the Territory to South Australia had the remains of airstrips beside it and on many there were displays with a short history and sometimes old photographs of the aircraft that operated from there. One day I took a trip down so a place by the Adelaide River where one could go on a boat trip and observe ‘Jumping Crocodiles. This is where the commentator drones on about the untameable crocs dating from the time of the dinosaurs and you look over you shoulder and there is the ruler straight wake of the local performing crocodile coming for lunch.
Fast forward a few years. Back in Zimbabwe after an absence from Rhodesia of a few years. Similar boat, similar drone; this time it's a Zambezi crocodile creating the self same dead straight wake for his lunch.
The dinosaurs must have done it too; jumping out of the water to snatch a pigs head off a piece of string.
Coming back I decided to try the old Stuart Highway. This was the old winding road that had a few surprises, like trees lying so low across the road that the leaves brush the roof. I breasted a hill and there was a police Ute (Utility/pickup) parked across the road with two cops fast asleep in it. They woke up and pulled out a breathalyser; it was a random breath check???? I blew into the machine and asked them if they had had any trade. No, they said, they weren’t even expecting me. The check point was probably where the dart at landed.
Shortly afterwards I came across a fairly large airstrip. There were the remains of a tarmac runway with dispersals in the trees and even an old sandbagged machine gun position. A notice board had pictures that showed it to be a B26 base that flew empty to Darwin, loaded up with ordinance and then unloaded it on the Japanese. I had no idea of the take-off performance of the B26 but I would have thought that with the space available departing virtually empty would have been a good idea. The site spread across the Highway and the remains of a traffic control shed where the chief who supervised the mingling of taxiing aircraft and loaded lorries plied his trade.
A couple of days later I was detailed to proceed to Kununarra.