Previously

Ricky had been told by the two little bosses that he was their Daddy and had to help push their strollers around in the backyard. We had to keep the gates closed because they would be off down the road in no time and wanting to show off the Christmas presents to all the neighbours. Daddy obliged with a sigh and a roll of the eyes and said “women are all the same. We men are mere servants” but he was smiling pretty big when the two little ones said “Come on DaDa.”

I thought, “Ricky is such a jelly bean, soft and sweet and I hope he never has to change.”

Jean was in my mind and said, “Carla that is why we married him isn't it?”

I replied in my mind, “Jean, just as well no-one heard that.” All I heard was a fit of giggles from Jean and than she was quiet. She can be quite a pain sometimes but she is half of me so I have to put up with the things she says.

Everyone sat around talking and the little ones were put down to sleep after I fed them in their own bedroom, and almost went to sleep myself. It had been a long day and I would be glad to get into my bed that night and cuddle up to my ever loving husband. After all that time we still slept in a cuddle and spoon position, I don’t think that will ever change.

The story continues:

It is a week later and the new year has begun. It is Tuesday, New Years Day 1974.

Everything was almost back to normal except that I had very sore breasts from not feeding the twins, but apparently it would all settle down in the next couple of days. The twins were a bit cranky at first but I supplemented their food with a follow-up bottle and that seemed to work. I had to get back to work at the clinic because Ross was getting too old to handle it all on his own. Thank God that Mum enjoyed looking after the little ones or I would have had to only work part time. I was advertising for a vet to come and live and work for me in Quilpie so maybe I could be with the twins more if we could find someone with outback experience. I guessed it would be too much to hope that they might have a pilot's licence as well, but one never knew what replies we would get. Sometimes people from the UK were interested in coming to Australia to gain experience in the bush so to speak.

Flying was still a large part of my life and of course Ricky flew commercially now and was away most days, but liked to be home at night and put the twins to bed with a bedtime story, He wanted to have some more kids and so did I, so I was not on the pill, and if it happened it wouldn't bother me at all. It really wasn't an unpleasant feeling being pregnant and having a Caesarean Section made it easy as well. I knew that Mum and Dad wouldn't mind having more little ankle biters around to keep them young.

We now owned a helicopter as well and both Ricky and I had a licence to fly it, but it was mainly used when there was no air-strip on the properties that I had to go to to tend to some sick animal, or a cow or horse having a hard time giving birth. The chopper was a fun thing to fly because you could land anywhere you wanted and not have to worry about looking for a landing strip. The twins had taken to flying with me and loved the weekends when Ricky and I took off in the chopper and just went for a picnic somewhere out in the bush. A lot of the kids going to school from the outlying areas that came to school by bus were quite used to flying because a majority of their parents owned planes and used them on a regular basis to run their farming business.

I was at the clinic when Jenny rang me and said her waters had broken and she didn't know whether to call Billy or me, so she called me because she reckoned Billy would start to panic and drive too fast and have an accident on the way to the hospital.

I said, “Jenny hold on, I am coming to get you. Get your things together and I will be there in five minutes ok?”

She replied, “Hurry! The labour pains have started.”

I told Christine to hold the fort and got in the Landrover and drove over to Jenny's house. She didn't go back to work because of the swelling of her feet, otherwise she would have already have been at the hospital and there would have been no need to call me for help.

When I arrived she was waiting at the front gate with the neighbour from across the road supporting her, so I opened up the back door of the Rover and told her to lay down on the back seat. I didn't have to tell her twice, she got in and off we went. When we arrived at the hospital two young nurses were there to help her inside. Chrissie had phoned the hospital to warn them we were coming. I went inside as well and phoned Billy to get cleaned up and get down here so he could be with Jenny when she gave birth to their son.

I don't think he even hung up the phone and he was on his way, hopefully getting cleaned up first. He arrived half an hour later and yes, he had gone home to shower before he came to the hospital. Jenny's labour was progressing so they said that Billy would have to put on the hospital garb to go into the delivery room when the time came. In the meantime he could just stay with Jenny in the ward and hold her hand while she suffered the pains of labour. I left them to it and went back to the clinic to neuter a male dog. ''Oh the joy of being a vet.'' There'd be no fatherhood for that little puppy !!!

It was three in the afternoon when the hospital phoned and said Jenny had given birth to a six pound healthy boy and she was asking for me to come down to the hospital. Ross had come back, so Chrissie and I went to the hospital. When we arrived Mum and Dad were already there in the ward. The baby was just brought in by one of the nurses that helped in the delivery. She was also a trained midwife and there was no need to have a doctor present unless there were complications which thankfully there weren’t.

Jenny was given the little bundle of joy and Billy could hardly contain himself. He was a father and had a son.

All he could say was, “Wow, isn't he small?”

They named him Joshua as in the bible, he will be ''Josh'' for short. Mum and Dad had another grandchild. Billy's parents were both dead so Josh would have only one set of grandparents but plenty of aunts, uncles and cousins to love him.

We came back with my twins later to see the little baby. They thought it was another dolly and wanted to take the baby home with us when we were ready to leave. Just as we were leaving Jenny was starting to breast-feed the little one and I had to get my twins out of there or they would want to start being fed again, but they were already weaned, so no way!! We went home and left the new family to get on with it.

Wednesday 2/1/74

I got to work a bit later that morning and there was a message on the answering machine. It was Christine’s day off and Ross never seemed to come in till late those days so nothing got done that morning till I turned up. I turned the machine on to hear the message and it was from a worried station owner that his stud ram had been mauled by a dingo or wild dog overnight. He was a very valuable animal because the stud rams were hired out to service the sheep at a high price, not as much as horses or bulls but still a good money earner to supplement the wool cheque.

I phoned home. We had moved in with Mum and Dad because that is how Mum wanted it and I must admit it was working out better than I thought it would. With built-in baby sitters it was the perfect arrangement and the twins loved running up and down the long verandas that surrounded the house.

Mum answered the phone, “Hello Donna Croft.”

“Mum it's me, is Ricky still there?”

“Yes dear he's outside with the twins. What’s the problem?”

“No problem Mum. If he is not busy I would like him to do the flying today. I’m a bit tired and I have an injured stud ram out at Two Rocks station to look at and they don’t have a strip so we'll have to take the chopper.”

I heard Mum sing out to Ricky, “Ricky, Carla’s on the phone and wants you to fly the chopper for her today, do you want talk to her?”

“Yeah, hang on Mum I’m coming.”

As usual he would have had a twin on each arm. I could hear them squealing and giggling as he put them down to take the phone from Mum.

He said, “What’s up honey, trouble!!!?”

“No Ricky I just need you to fly the chopper today. I'm far too tired to fly safely.”

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Ricky left the twins to entertain Mum and Dad for the day and as he didn't like me flying the chopper when I was tired. It takes a bit more concentration to fly the helicopter. I guess I got so used to normal fixed wing flying, I would have to do more hours in the chopper. Angel had been relegated to train young kids to fly. I now had a new twin Navajo, and the chopper was a small Bell Jet ranger

Twin engine Navajo

I got all my gear together and waited for Ricky to come and pick me up to go to the hanger where the chopper was housed. He turned up ten minutes later and we drove to the hanger. The chopper was always fuelled up and ready to go at a moment's notice as it was also used as an emergency helicopter for the district. Alan was at the hanger doing maintenance on another Croft aircraft and had the chopper out and ready to go when we arrived, so it was just a matter of climbing aboard and get going to the property about half an hour's flight away.

It was the wet season and it looked like I had better get used to doing more with the chopper because most of the landing strips on stations were not all-weather and a fixed wing would not be able to land, whereas the helicopter didn’t have that restriction. This time though the station hadn't even got a strip, and I thought 'I'm going to have a word with the owner. It only takes a bulldozer to push a strip through the bush and put up a wind sock. It is not rocket science. If we didn't have a helicopter his precious ram would die anyway.'

We asked him to light a flare to show us where it was safe to put the chopper down because the ground was really wet and even with a helicopter you still need some hard ground to set it down. I came prepared and brought my Wellingtons (mud boots) with me and so did Ricky. As we were getting close to the property Ricky was flying at twelve hundred feet. It wasn't raining but it was very cloudy and I was glad he was doing the flying, I think I might have said before I don’t much like flying at night or bad weather. There were swollen rivers and creeks and I think Queensland was in for some fairly bad weather in the next couple of weeks.

When we got closer, Ricky came down a bit more to see just how wet it was on the property and said, “Carla if this bloke doesn't use a flare to show us some dry ground I will not put the chopper down, and stuff his ram.”

I replied through the head phones, “Ricky we can't leave an injured animal to suffer.”

“Honey I’m not putting us at risk for a lousy ram.” We were now close and Ricky was circling the homestead and shearing sheds when we saw a flare being held near the sheds. There was a clearing and a higher mound of ground about fifty yards away from the shed so it was quite safe to put the chopper down. Ricky said through the headset, “He's bloody lucky he did that I was just about to up and away.”

The owner greeted us and said “Sorry to get you out here in this bad weather. I’m having a strip built next month so it will be a lot easier to land here.”

Ricky shut the chopper down and helped me with my gear and said “G'day mate, I’m Ricky Smith, Carla’s husband.”

The guy offered Ricky his hand and said. “Terry Whiting, thanks for coming. I hope your wife can save my ram. He's in a bad way.”

I said, “Ok Terry where have you got him?”

“We've had to put him in the back of the ute and haven't been game to shift him in case we'd hurt him more.” The ute was parked under an awning on the side of the shearing shed so the animal would be out of the weather.

Ricky carried my bag and we walked to where the ute and animal were. I was shocked to see what a dingo or wild dog had done to this poor animal. He had bits of wool and hide missing all over him.

If he wasn't such a valuable animal I would just put him to sleep but Terry said, “Carla -- may I call you Carla?”

“Sure Terry of course.”

“Well this guy has been with us for five years and has kept us from going bankrupt, so I would like you to try and save him if at all possible.” The first thing I did was to give the ram some pain relief and then checked all his vitals. For the mess he was in he was doing quite well and I thought he would survive as long as Terry could keep him quiet and dry for a few days. It's surprising just how strong animals are. Their survival instincts are a lot stronger the humans.

I tended to the animal which took me an hour, cleaning up some of the wounds and showed Terry how to keep on cleaning the wounds for a few days so they would dry out and heal. The animal should be ok, but when Terry got my account he might need some help as well. After all I’m not a charity and it cost a lot to fly and maintain aircraft those days.

Terry said, “I'll tell the missus to put the kettle on and we can have a cuppa before you take off in that whirly bird of yours.”

I replied, “That is just what I need at the moment thanks.”

Ricky said. “Yeah me too. Looking at all that blood has made me quite queasy and a cuppa might just do the trick.”

I put all my things in the chopper and we made our way from the shearing shed to the big old homestead where his wife had freshly baked scones and tea ready for us in the large lounge. There were photos of all the prize rams and sheep hanging all around the room. He was a true sheep farmer, but in a way I felt sorry for him because he hadn't diversified into other things and the price of wool had dropped so low that fifty percent of the sheep farms in Australia had had to switch to cattle production to stay afloat.

When we started talking he told me about his daughter who was in England at the moment. She was a vet and wanted to come home and set up a practice in Brisbane.

I thought. “Bloody hell is this a coincidence or what!! Here's my chance to get a vet for my practice.”

I said. “Would she consider working in Quilpie?”

He replied, “Well she looked at that, but your practice has ninety percent of the districts' business so that put a stop to that.”

I replied “Well Ross my partner is wanting to retire and I have put an ad in a UK newspaper for a vet to try out living in the outback. I wonder if she would be interested in a partnership?

Terry's wife Grace said “I think she very well could be. I can ring her tonight and let her know that there is an opening in Quilpie. It would be nice to have Sandy back home after all this time. She lost her husband last year and it has been hard for her raising a child with a problem.

I thought, “Hmmmm where have I heard that before? Oh yes that was me wasn't it!!!”

Ricky looked at me with a silly grin and said, “Well Carla, you might not have to put any ads in more papers after all.”

We got ready to make our way back to Quilpie and started to say goodbye when Grace said “Carla can I have your home phone number so I can give it to Sandy? She might be interested in what you have to offer, so do you mind if she rings you at home? It could be pretty late though.”

I gave Grace all my details and we walked back to the helicopter, but I went to have another look at my patient. He was doing fine, so I gave him another pain- killing injection and we left the property and were on our way home. The weather was closing in, so I was glad that it was only a half hour flight home and my husband was doing the flying. By the time we were back on the ground in front of the hanger it was raining quite heavily and Alan had to bring us a couple of umbrellas which don’t get much use out there, but this year it looked like we were going to cop it.

Ricky drove me back to the clinic and waited in the car because I was only going in to tell Christine what had occurred at the station. When Ricky and I walked into the kitchen, Mum was feeding the the little ones their lunch in the high chairs and they were making one hell of a mess with the mashed potatoes. They insisted on using their own spoons and more went on the floor than in their mouth. When they saw their Daddy was home that was it for food. Mum wiped them clean and Daddy was theirs for the rest of the day. I went into my home office and did some bookwork which I hated but it needed to be done.

It was nine thirty when the phone rang. Mum answered it and said, “Yes she is available, may I ask who is calling?”

Mum said, “Sandy in the UK.” and handed the phone to me. I said, “Hello Sandy, are you ringing about the position?”

She replied, “Am I talking to Carla Smith?”

“Yes this is she.”

To be continued

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