There's no doubt the Frogs know how
to enjoy life.
Imagine returning
from a hard days flying, working with
demanding geologists, some who
couldn't converse in English, to a
bush camp on the river bank engulfed
in the aroma of French cuisine. A
quick dive to revive into the Walsh
river - the freshwater crocs weren't
really a problem - then checking out the faithful
old bullet proof Hiller so I could
feel confident that first push of
the starter button at 0500 the next
morning would startle and wake up the
neighborhood of nesting birds with the noise of 305
horse power pouring out the
un-muffled exhaust. With all the
personal and machine preventive
maintenance done, it was time pull up
a directors chair to start on the
evening's appetizers - usually oysters
(tinned) and French cheese.
It was certainly a hard life and
we knew that our lives was at risk as
we were too far away from a doctor
if we choked on the snails or other
cordon bleu exquisites or imported vino served up every
evening in the dusky twilight.
It was at this camp that the
famous Australian "Dust on my
bubble, grease on my tail" ditty was
penned and performed by fellow pilot
"Gentleman Julius"
to an appreciative audience (the
forever smiling Froggy cook with the
limp wrist).
G.J loved flying and did a great job
seemingly not missing the bustling
Melbourne city life as he was
continuously singing and humming the
song 28 hrs a day - we couldn't turn
him off. I often wondered if he sang
when employed later by the ponderous
CAA.
It was during the second year of
exploration - 1982 - that a couple of
incidents happened.
I don't think that the first one
was really a big event - teaching
the young Froggy geologist his first
faltering words of English : "give me a
B......y beer you fl........g ugly
big B........" which he then used to
dramatic effect on the barman at the
Chillagoe hotel when we had to go to
town for supplies - and it
definitely wasn't the time that the
field assistants nearly blew
themselves up investigating some
radioactive anomalies we found or
even when the B52 bomber on a low level
training flight flew very close over the
top of me when I was about 20 ft
above the trees, rather, it was the
dark shadow I saw on the ground during
the survey.
We knew that the uranium deposit
was out there somewhere in the rough and
beautiful North Queensland. The
geologists were like excited little
Froggy ferrets, sniffing out all the
clues, and the last effort was to
use the Hiller to fly a very low
level grid pattern survey over a 20
Sq mile block of escarpments and
gullies while letting some special
secret equipment containing
potassium, thorium and (I think)
uranium isotopes pick up any
anomalies in the ground below and
record them on a primitive computer.
We had installed the computer on the
middle seat where I normally flew
the machine from and had installed
the dual controls so I could fly the
machine from the left seat. The
geologist sat on the passenger seat
to operate the computer - to the right of the original
centre seat location.
GPS hadn't been invented then and
I had to fly accurate grid lines 250
meters apart at 100 ft AGL
(sometimes this was in the tree top
zone) at 20 Kts groundspeed
while navigating with an old 100K
scale map flapping in my cyclic hand
due the rotor wash occasionally
wafting through the empty door
frames.
It was exacting work in the hot
climate and I talked
to myself constantly in my mind -
"more power, less power, watch the
engine revs, keep the nose straight,
here comes a tree, where's my aiming
point, stay on track, what's the
engine cylinder temperature, how's
the fuel pressure, how much fuel is
left, where's the wind coming from,
is the Frog going to be sick, if he
does he can clean it up, what's for
dinner tonight, whoops - that tree
was close, hope the map doesn't go
out the door, hope the engine stays
going, the Frogs looking green about
the gills".
The escarpment was part of the
range of hills which stretch down
the 3000+ Kms on the East Coast. A
beautiful rich red colour against
the clear blue sky, it was
romantically ancient, rough and
crumbling.
A couple of the grid lines took
us up one side, over the bare
highest part of the escarpment with
a sharp vertical drop over the 300
ft cliff face down to the valley
floor. It was important to keep the
machine level (horizontal) at all
times so that the three isotopes
worked as a triangle over the
ground. We had one on each side of
the machine at the back and one up
front to get this effect.
About noon we flew the grid line
over the top and, just as we went
over the cliff, I powered the
machine down so that it was
just sitting on autorotation and
remaining level as we quickly
dropped what seemed like vertically
to let the
isotopes scan the base of the cliff.
Looking down just then to check that we were
remaining on track as detailed on
the map, I saw the helicopter shadow
strongly beneath us, highlighted by
the overhead sun. I also saw another
moving shadow behind us.
At first I thought it was a fixed
wing passing over at altitude -
until I saw the wings moving.
Three things worked in my favour.
One: I was flying from the left hand
seat; Two: I immediately looked back
to see what was causing the shadow;
Three I had about 1000 feet of
altitude to play with.
What an un-nerving sight! The
huge Wedge Tail Eagle had its talons
out and was just about to take out
my tail rotor. I had to get out of
there - and in a hurry!
Whacking in some left tail rotor
pedal - while mentioning something
like "Don't look now but we have
company" over the intercom - helped
in the short term as the tail boom
swung to the right. Next I dropped
the collective all the way down and
shut the throttle while pulling
momentarily back on the cyclic to
hold the rotor revs. Then I
immediately put in hard left cyclic
and rolled into a 60 degree nose
dive rotating what seemed vertically
around the left hand skid tip while
then having to pull hard on the
collective to keep the Rotor revs in
the green. The rate of descent went
off the clock and a couple of quick
glances confirmed my suspicions -
the Froggy was going to let go his
breakfast, his grip was about to
break the door frame and we were
leaving the Eagle behind. That
persistent bird followed us all the
way to the deck and finally climbed
up and away as we headed down a dry
gully dodging the occasional stony
outcrop.
We figured that there would be no
Uranium ever found in that area
while that magnificent Eagle
maintained its vigilance on the
escarpment.
Looking for more
Uranium - the Isotope equipment -
1982
Landed - on a Uranium deposit - 1981
True Story
TC (To
Carmody)
