Back in 2000 I nearly killed my wife and I.

In the northern part of South Australia there is a large dry salt lake called Lake Eyre.  Lake Eyre is 15 m (about 50ft) below sea level, and receives what little water it ever gets from the channel country, in southwest Queensland.  Since central Australia has some of the driest country in the world, Lake Eyre generally only ever fills up once a generation.  In the year 2000 there were heavy rains in the channel country and six weeks later, the water trickled its way over the thirsty land to fill Lake Eyre.  The seemingly dead salty sunbaked mud of the lake bed bursts into life as the water awakens billions of tiny brine shrimp as they hatch from their protective shells. The brine shrimp, provide food for freshwater fish that have been washed along with the floodwaters from the north east.  This sudden explosion of life attracts coastal birds from over 1000 km away.

When Lake Eyre fills with water, it is such a rare event that it is reported on national television and when my wife and I heard about it, we thought we’d go and have a look.  Because it was winter at the time, we also thought it would be a good opportunity to travel to the very centre of Australia in the cooler weather to see Uluru (Ayres Rock) and Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) in the Northern Territory as well.

After 3 Days Drive, we finally reached the Oodnadatta Track that passes through the Tirari Desert and past the south end of Lake Eyre.  Unfortunately, it seemed that we had arrived too late, and all the bird life had moved on.  By the time we got to Lake Eyre.  The water was already starting to disappear, and all that was left was miles of salty mud and shallow salty water.

After spending about an hour slopping around in the mud, we headed off north to William Creek.  The track up to William Creek is surfaced to with rounded, marble sized gravel.  It’s not unlike trying to drive over ball bearings, and when our front right tyre blew out we had what could only be called a character building experience.

We were travelling at about 100 km (about 60 mph) in four-wheel-drive, when the flat tyre caused the car to start fish-tailing. As I fought for control of the car, my wife and I collectively screamed SHIIIIITTTTT!!! 

The trashed tire pulled itself off the wheel and the rim of the wheel dug into the road. As the front end of the car dug in and basically stopped, the back end of the car rose up and we flew upside down through the air, end over end, for about 10 m (about 30ft), landing on the roof, and then rolling two more times.  I’ve been in these sort of life-and-death situations a few times before, so as we were tumbling through the air I found myself thinking that the best thing to do would be to relax and try and make sure my head didn’t hit the door posts (my wife’s brother died that way).  It’s amazing how adrenaline slows things right down and gives one time to contemplate what’s going on in such situations and to take action.

When a car landed right side up, my wife and I couldn’t get out of it fast enough.  As soon as we got out of the car my wife (Engogirl) started hysterically screaming.  I felt strangely calm and told her to shut up.

A quick check of the car showed that the chassis was bent. It was a write-off.

Within 15 minutes, people who had I passed on the road, caught up to us and offered assistance.  There was nothing really to be done, other than go to the next town and get somebody to send out a tow truck.  Interestingly, the people who offered us help had to change a flat tyre as they spoke to us.

As we waited for help from the next town to come, we wandered about picking up our belongings that had been strewn all over the track and fended off offers of assistance from other passing motorists.  It’s strange how the first few offers of assistance are really appreciated, but after it happens 20 or 30 times it really starts to get irritating having to explain to people who only mean well, how you managed to roll your car three times on a dead straight road out in the middle of nowhere. 

I was starting to feel really stupid.  I also noticed I couldn’t concentrate very well and I was having trouble organising my thoughts enough to pick up our belongings on the road whereas Engogirl was in complete control of her faculties. In retrospect, I think I was going into shock, and perhaps Engogirl’s screaming had released her tension, enabling her to better deal with the aftermath.  Nowadays, we often laugh about the fact that there isn’t much of an overlap between our skill sets. I can handle drama when it happens better than Engogirl, but my wife is much better at figuring out what the next step should be after the clear and present danger has passed.

Amazingly, we had not sustained any significant injuries. Engogirl had a small cut on the back of her hand (see the photo) and I seemed to be okay.

It took a couple of hours before help from William Creek finally turned up in the form of a German fellow (the ex-owner of the William Creek Hotel), and his girlfriend in a four-wheel-drive towing a trailer with a hand winch.  It took about an hour and a half to get the car onto the trailer during which time I just stumbled around in a daze occasionally getting in the way and Engogirl made herself actually useful.

It would be very easy to call William Creek, the arsehole of the world as it is not even a cross road, it’s a T-intersection of the Oodnadatta track, and the track to Coober Pedy. William Creek has a pub (William Creek Hotel), a few buildings, a solar powered public telephone and the remains of a R3 rocket, launched from the Woomera Rocket Range back in the early 70s. 

Behind the pub is a campground with a very noisy generator that runs all night to make sure no one gets a decent sleep, and next to the campground is an aircraft landing strip.  The William Creek Hotel at the time was run by a family, who seemed to be irritated and resentful by the fact that they had to deal with the public. They sure were a surly bunch.

On arrival at William Creek, we booked into the campground, and I phoned my insurance company from the solar powered phone.  My phone call, bordered on the surreal.

Me. “I’d like to report that I have had an accident with my car”

Insurance Woman (IW)  with the NRMA in Sydney NSW. “Where did the accident happen?”

Me. “25 km south of William Creek in South Australia”

IW. “have you reported the accident to the police”

Me. “No”

IW. “Why not?

Me. ” Because the nearest police station is about 170 km away in Coober Pedy”

IW. ” Where did you say the accident happened again?”

Me. ” William Creek, its out in the middle of nowhere near Lake Eyre in South Australia”

IW. “So why didn’t you call the police?”

Me. “What would be the point when they are so far away, and they’re not going to turn up anyhow because no one was hurt and nobody else’s property was damaged?”

IW. “Oh”

Anyhow, to cut a long story short, I was told to stay put and not travel anywhere, until I received a medical check-up that gave me the all clear to travel.  Trouble was that were no doctors in William Creek, and as a matter of fact, the closest doctor was in Coober Pedy 170kms away over very rough 4WD track.  I later found out at the pub that the flying doctor would be in William Creek in three days time as a part of his regular circuit.

My wife and I thought that would be a good idea to travel through the desert country during winter when it was cooler.  What we both didn’t know is that the desert is a very cold and windy place in winter.

That night as the cold wind buffeted our little hiking tent, I lay in my sleeping bag, mulling over the events of the day, wishing that I could somehow rewind it all and do it again.  The rolling of the car during the accident kept on playing through my head, like some demented loop.  Over and over the accident replayed as I beat up on myself mentally.  I was so angry at myself, and so ashamed at the risk that I put my lovely and long-suffering wife through.  Strangely enough Engogirl wasn’t too happy with me, wrecking the car and all.

As I lay there, and mentally self-flagellated to the steady beat of the howling wind, I noticed it was starting to hurt when I was breathing in my upper chest.  As the night wore on, the pain slowly and steadily increased. I was pretty sure I hadn’t broken any bones and I thought that I’d probably done some kind of damage to the soft connecting tissue between the bones of my chest.  The area of pain coincided to where my seatbelt crossed over my chest.

By the time, morning came around, I was feeling, very sore, very miserable, very sorry and very ashamed.  We presented quite a bleak sight with our shattered car up on a trailer next to our little hiking tent that was popping in and out to the intermittent gusts of cold wind while the low grey clouds rolled over the dry flat land. It was without a doubt, the worst time of my life.  Nothing that has ever happened to me, has left me feeling so low as I did at that time. Full of remorse, embarrassed and in pain.

During our first day at the campground in William Creek we witnessed a steady stream of rally cars racing at high speed along the Oodnadatta track and in my agony, I couldn’t help but keep on thinking to myself, ” guys, guys slowdown!”

As we waited for the flying doctor to arrive, I spent most of the time laying on my back in the tent, dreading having to get up and go to the toilet, because of the pain I was experiencing every time I moved.  The only sense of relief that I experienced in my whole time as I waited for three days for the flying doctor to arrive, was when I went into the William Creek Hotel to buy some food.  A few of the patrons recognized me as the guy with the smashed up car and before long I was regaled with many stories of how most of the guys in the pub had rolled a car at some stage in their lives.  Never were there truer words said than “misery loves company”. Up until the time that the guys in the pub told me about their car accidents I was feeling so alone in my regret and shame at what had happened.  After the guy’s told me about their experiences I almost felt like I belonged to some kind of exclusive club of car rollers and what I had gone through was merely a rite of passage.

On the second morning I would have laughed if it hadn’t been so painful when I saw a long line of city slickers in their big four wheel drives (SUV) getting all agitated as one of the guys from the hotel took his sweet time fixing their flat tires. It was hilarious to watch the self-important guys from the city as they huffed and grumbled about how long things were taking and the way the tyre guy made it clear that they should leave him alone so him could get on with his work. Throwing his tools down he said “why don’t yous all just fuck off!” If yous don’t fuck off, I’m not fixin no-one’s tyres!”

The bleak painful days waiting for the flying doctor eventually passed and I was finally able to be checked out.  In a strange way, I kind of feel honoured to have visited a flying doctor, as they are such a legendary Australian icon. The Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia was set up about 80 years ago to provide medical service to the isolated communities of the Australian outback and they are highly regarded.

The doctor confirmed my suspicions that I had only sustained soft tissue damage which was caused by the seatbelt.  Better sore than dead. After my examination, I contacted the insurance company and they organised our trip home.  The only problem was that the insurance company could only organise things in places that had large enough populations to support some kind of regular infrastructure.  Public transport from William Creek is a bit problematic because the only way we could get to Coober Pedy was on the 4WD mail truck that only came twice a week. The flying doctor only airlifts people in life threatening situations (fair enough!).

Luckily, the mail truck was going to Coober Pedy the same evening of the morning I had seen the flying doctor.  The road to Coober Pedy from William Creek is really just a sandy rutted track that passes through the Anna Creek Station, which is the largest working cattle station (ranch) in the world.  It’s larger than Israel.  Travelling 170kms on a four-wheel-drive track to Coober Pedy in the mail truck was torture. Each bump in the road was like a hot poker in the chest.

Once we got to Coober Pedy everything was much better.  The insurance company had booked us into one of the famous underground hotels that they have in Coober Pedy.

Coober Pedy is famous for its opal mining, and the fact that it is so hot that most people there live underground in the old disused opal mines.

After the first decent night’s sleep in three, we flew out in a small and very narrow Fairchild Metro 23 Airliner twin turboprop

to Adelaide and then onto Sydney by jet.  At Sydney airport we were met by a chauffeur driven limousine and driven home. 

I’ll never begrudge paying car insurance ever again (well done NRMA). 

It took me about two months to recover from the damage that I had done to my rib cage, and it also took about that long for an insurance adjuster to make his way to William Creek to check out our wrecked car and to confirm my opinion that it was a write-off.

My wife (Engogirl) took the shot below as we were coming into Bangkok to land.

As you look at how thick the cloud is, it will come as no surprise that in the whole five weeks we spent in South East Asia last year we only saw a few days with blue skies. Nearly every shot I took on our last trip has white overcast skies.

Ever since I was I child, I have enjoyed seeing airplanes on plinths. So when I was in the US last year I was pleased to come across these two examples.

The Boeing B52D “Stratofortress”, is outside of an Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. It’s quite a stunning thing to see from a distance, whilst driving along the highway. The B52 looks like it’s just skimming over the treetops. Very dramatic! I love seeing things like that. It was so big I couldn’t fit the whole thing in one photo so I had to stitch two photos together.

The McDonnell Douglas F4 “Phantom” was outside of a small air base (I think it was near Pueblo). When I was in my early teens I used to assemble plastic model airplanes and the “Phantom” was my favorite. I never could understand why such a ruggedly beautiful piece of machinery could be nicknamed “Double ugly”. To me the F4 is a prime example of “form follows function” as it just reeks of muscular power and speed.

This is a picture of the attack version of the “North American T-28″.

I tried to get a ride on one but the pilot wasn’t interested in taking me up (strangely enough). I never was successful in getting any flights in Cambodian combat aircraft. I even tried to get flights on “Huey” helicopters as well. The only military aircraft I was able to hitch rides in were transports and they were always “Fairchild C-123K”s.

On a photographic note, the dark vertical streaks (bromide streaking), were caused by the fact that I had the film developed locally and since the ambient temperatures were so high, most of my negs were over developed and that’s why they look so grainy and the skies look so blown out. The higher temperatures also meant that the development times were accelerated, making problems like bromide streaking, caused by insufficient agitation much more likely.

This is part two in a two-part chapter in my “All the dumb things” series

The other types of aircraft I used to air hitchhike in were civilian cargo planes. In 1974 there were still a lot of old WWII aircraft flying in Cambodia and I got to see first hand, aeroplanes that I’d only ever seen in books. The most common were the Curtis C-46, Douglas C-47 (aka as the Dakota or DC-3) and also the Douglas DC-4.

The Curtis C-46 above was operated by the imfamous Air America
(I never asked them for a ride… they were just sooo serious)

The planes were usually loaded with rice or fish as a cargo. Incidentally, the area around Tonlé Sap Lake is one of the most productive food producing areas in the world.

Most of the civilian pilots were Philipinos and generally as such, were a friendly happy-go-lucky bunch. Most of the cargo planes had two crew, the foreign pilot and a Cambodian loadmaster. The relationship between the pilot and loadmaster, looked to me, like that of master and servant. There didn’t appear to be much crossing over the gulf of class, education and culture between them. The pilots didn’t fraternise with the loadmasters in a social way. The pilots sat up the front in the cockpit and the loadmasters sat in the fuselage with the cargo, each by themselves.

I once commented to an American journalist who could speak Khmer, that I thought it must be fascinating to understand what the locals were saying. His response went something like this: “not really, the average Cambodian is an illiterate farmer who has no concerns other than his crops and that is all they talk about”. So I suppose, that attitude goes some way to explaining why the pilots had any interest in having anything to do at all with a young naive fool from Australia like me. At least I spoke English and prattled on about other things besides farming.

The hand loading and unloading of a cargo plane by the loadmaster and a few locals from where ever we landed, took quite a while, so the pilots used to have a fair amount of time to kill. It was during these times I got to have extended conversations with the pilots, as they waited, smoking, in the shade under the wings of their planes. Most of them saw themselves as nothing more than glorified truck drivers. Flying air-cargo in 1974 by yourself (no co-pilots), in old dilapidated, ill maintained crates, during a war, landing quite often on dirt roads, in the heat and humidity of Cambodia was a long way from being glamorous and they knew it. Most of the pilots looked like they were in their fifties and I’m sure the novelty of flying had worn off many years beforehand.

Cambodia at the time didn’t seem to have any law other than that which could be bought. Which in turn meant that any safety codes that were deemed “inconvenient”, were just ignored. Nothing seemed to get “enforced” anywhere in Cambodia at that time. A lot of the aircraft I flew in looked like they didn’t get much maintenance. For example many of them had some broken windows and dents along the side of the fuselage.

 The cockpits in many also had loose cut wires sticking out in the air. One DC-3 I flew in had a metal maintenance plate in the cockpit that said something like: Air India, Bombay, Last maintained 1947. At least that was the last time it probably got a real thorough maintenance.

On a few occasions I was present when people tried to load more weight, in cargo, than the plane was rated for. The pilots would be yelling at the loadmaster not to load any more, while the local, whose cargo it was (these sorts of things usually happened when we landed on dirt roads out in the middle of nowhere), would start to get out large wads of cash to try and smooth out the matter. Not once did I see a pilot knowingly allow too much cargo to be loaded. They always stood their ground. After all, self-preservation is a strong motivator. Large wads of local currency weren’t impressive in Cambodia. In one of the banks I frequented in Phnom Penh, due to the rate of inflation, they used to use bales of 100 riel notes to hold up the customer counters.

The pilots had a fatalist attitude towards the state of their planes. One pilot told me that when he was flying his DC-3, he was always looking downwards at a 45-degree angle looking for landing places, just in case the engines failed. He said, very matter of factly, “these DC-3s don’t glide too well, they just sort of fall, at about a 45-dregee angle”.

Now days you’d have to hold a gun to my head to make me go up into the air in such aircraft. Then again, I don’t go into countries that have wars in them anymore either. Safe experiences don’t tend to lead to entertaining horror stories, which of course, are what tales of (mis) adventure consist of. In short, adventure often stems from bad decision-making.

By cadging flights, I got to travel all over Cambodia, which was illuminating on many levels. For instance, I know for a fact, that Kissinger lied when he denied that the Americans were carpet-bombing the country, and when he was caught out, said that the American air strikes were confined to areas near the Vietnamese border. From the air, in some areas far from the Vietnamese border, vast swathes of land, densely pockmarked by perfectly round pools formed in bomb craters, were visible in every direction, as far as you could see.

Here’s a link to map prepared by Yale University showing how far from the Vietnamese border the Americans bombed: http://www.yale.edu/cgp/us.html

In this particular case, I don’t think that carpet-bombing caused the craters around this defensive position.
On a technical photographic point, the dark streaks are caused by insufficient agitation during development

It was also instructive to see how rag-tag and disorganised the government forces were once you got away from Phnom Penh. They were more of a militia than an army. When I look at the photos I took when I was in Cambodia and I see the photos of the boy soldiers (kids really, just like me at the time), I always feel an uncomfortable twinge, as I wonder what happened to them when the Khmer Rouge finally won the war. Many of the soldiers had anti-Khmer Rouge tattoos. The poor and the ignorant always get dealt harsh blows by changes in history.

Enough of that morbid stuff, here’s “all the dumb things”.

One time when I was flying in one of those old scrap heaps I noticed a window with a large jagged hole in it. I tentatively stuck my hand a short distance out and felt the warm air rushing past at about 380kph (approximately 150knots or 170mph). I made a small wing out of my hand and was playing with the air (like when I was a kid in the family car). As timed passed, I got a little bolder and stuck my arm out further and further with (surprisingly) nothing bad happening. One of the things that I always wanted to do on a plane was look straight down at the ground, I was getting a bit bored with looking across at the horizon all the time.

Sooo…

I stuck my head out of the window and immediately the force of the wind rushing past my, much fatter than a hand, head, almost snapped it off. The loadmaster couldn’t hear me screaming for help, above the sound of the engines. There I was, all by myself, without anyone but myself to save me. My neck was bent at a severe angle while it was being pushed into the jagged plexiglass teeth of the broken window. My head was fully out of the window, being pressed, hard against the outside of the plane.

I couldn’t just pull my head in and I was starting to freak out. The force of the wind was so strong I couldn’t straighten my neck to get my head back through the hole and inside the plane. Every time I tried to pull my head in, the jagged plexiglass digging into my neck, dug in further and held me fast. I felt that I was going slit my throat (don’t want to cut the carotid artery now, do we?). I eventually got out of my predicament by pushing myself, with one hand against one of the fuselage’s ribs (against direction of the air-flow) and then reaching around with my free hand to grab a hold of a large hank of my hair and pull my neck straight enough to get my head back into the plane.

Won’t be doing that again!

For you photographers out there, the film I used was Tri-X. I had the film developed locally and since the ambient temperatures were so high, most of my negs were over developed and that’s why they look so grainy and the skies look so blown out. The higher temperatures also meant that the development times were accelerated, making problems caused by insufficient agitation (bromide streaking), much more likely.

Part 1

This is part one in a two part chapter of my “All the dumb things” series.

Back in 1974 when I was 17, I was travelling around South East Asia. I ended up in Cambodia about six months before the war there came to an end. One of the reasons why I went to Cambodia, is that I met a Belgian guy when I was in Laos who said it was possible to hitchhike in Cambodia by military aircraft or civilian air cargo.

I stayed in Cambodia for about six months and found myself various jobs teaching English (not being qualified, didn’t stop me). Road travel at that time was impossible as the government only controlled the cities (if you could call them that) and several of the larger towns. The Khmer Rouge were in control of the rest of the country.

When I wasn’t working (which was often) I used to hitch a ride down to the Phnom Penh airport,

walk out onto the tarmac (Ahhh the bad old days when safety just didn’t seem to matter) and ask pilots for free rides as their planes were being loaded. I didn’t care where I went and most of the pilots were happy to have someone to shoot the breeze with on their flights. I used to get flights with civilians and the military.

The military flights were always on a Fairchild C123-K (known as the Provider). The C123-K was designed to take off and land on short makeshift runways and it had a big rear ramp for quick loading and parachute drops. The plane had two propeller engines for level flight as well as two auxiliary jet assist engines to enable the aircraft to take off and land in short distances .

 The inside of the C123-K was basically a big square box with webbing benches running along the inside walls. At the front of the plane there was wall about 3 or 4 metres high with a ladder up into the cockpit. The centre usually had a payload of weapons and ammunition held down with a webbing net that clipped to the floor on the way out of Phnom Penh. Refugees and valuable civilians goods (like fancy furniture and motorcycles) were carried on the way back.

My first experience in a C123-K was a real education. The pilots had trained in Sale, Victoria here in Australia and were pleased to host an Aussie. I was given a tour of the cockpit and treated like an old friend. They told me they were going to Kampong Soam on the southern coast and then back to Phnom Penh. The take off was very fast and steep as there was the possibility that the aircraft could come under small arms fire while flying under 10,000ft. The jet assist engines were incredibly powerful and I was surprised how quickly we reached cruising altitude. They just didn’t muck about!

The airport at Kampong Soam was in pretty good shape and the plane landed like a normal plane and it dropped off some soldiers and a few boxes of ammunition. About 30 refugees and a few motorcycles were loaded for the trip back. Unbeknownst to any of us passengers, we went back to Phnom Penh via Takey, which had a short makeshift runway.

The Cambodian refugees were just poor, uneducated farmers, most of who had probably never been in a car, never mind an aeroplane. The refugees were quite pathetic in that they were plainly destitute. Most were women who didn’t have any shoes or anything else except the dirty and threadbare clothes they were wearing and perhaps a half clad child on the hip. These were people who obviously had gone through some very hard and harrowing times.

The military just herded the refugees into the plane, where they sat where they could. Some on the floor around the ammo crates and some on the webbing benches next to me. I tried to explain as best I could, using broken sign language, that they should put their seat belts on. Most just didn’t get it, and the few soldiers who were with us just smirked at my efforts and made no attempt to enlighten the other people.

Landing on short runway at Takey came as quite a shock. The C123 just dove steeply, hit the runway with an alarming thump and with the help of the jet assist engines, came to an abrupt halt. The only troubles were, that the cargo netting broke and there were unfastened refugees. Those of us who were strapped in stayed where we were. Everybody and everything else that wasn’t strapped down went hurtling forward at a terrifying speed, smashing into the wall at the front of the plane with sickening force. Crates of mortars, women and babies went past me in a blur. In the midst of all this, a little woman, with an iron grip, grabbed my leg as she flew forward and horizontally fluttered off me like a flag until the plane stopped. The most amazing thing is that every body walked off the plane unscathed, even the ones who were thrown into the wall with all the very heavy ammo boxes smashing all around them. It’s was a wonder that no one was killed.

Part 2