In hindsight, chronic fatigue was
probably the main factor in one of
the strangest episodes I encountered
during the early eighties Kimberly
feral animal culls.
Kiwi Steve P was as tired as I was
and I respected his efforts to work
with me when it would have been only
too easy to lose the plot. 10 flight
hours a day in the yellow Hillers;
all day every day; at the end of a
busy mustering/mining survey season;
ambient temperatures rising above 35
degrees C and tropical rainy season
humidity setting in made the flying
draw upon all our survival skills.
1500 rounds per sortie; SLR rifle
barrels wearing out and splitting
due the high constant rate of fire;
great aboriginal shooters;
enthusiastic white shooters; donkeys
which ran like the hot Kimberly wind; feral
cats as big as dogs; wild brumbies
racing across the hot black pebble
plains; magnificent ancient
sandstone hills slumping nearly
vertically into the earth to form
gorges and cavernous valleys;
sparsely settled; freedom to take
calculated risks; an adventurous
environment; continuous loud noise
and vibration; hunting with intense
concentration and no let up;
dehydration and exhaustion all
contributed to probably the only
place on the planet which could be
considered a helicopter pilot’s wild
west where he could pit his skills
against nature and no one would ever
know. I was in pig heaven.
After 4 weeks non stop the strain
started to show. I wasn’t sleeping
at all due to a bad case of prickly
heat itch for two weeks and no way
to get any medication being so far
from civilisation. We were averaging
about 110 animals per hour and often
more. Every ten animals downed I put
a live round in my shirt pocket to
help maintain an accurate count. The
muzzle shock wave from the SLR made
me flinch in pain every time it
fired. (On a later shoot in a
Bell47, Macca and I ran out of
ammunition for a total of 450 plus
animals in less than 1.75 hours
flight time)
The crackling of burning wood woke
us the morning we were camped near
the El Questro river - up and away
from the water so the crocs would
leave us alone. Steve and I walked
over to the camp fire from different
directions looking for a cup of chow
while the boys cooked up a sizzling
breakfast. It was cold (20oC) and
grey about 0530 am. Any stranger
looking at us would have wondered why we
both looked so disheveled and vacant
in the eyes and kept looking all
around as if trying to see something
in the grey pre-dawn murk. Never had
I been so tired.
“Morning Stevie – did you get any
bloody sleep?”
“No bloody good mate – had a really
bad dream”
“Yeah – so did I - I dreamt the
bloody donkeys got us”
“You’re joking – so bloody did I”
Turns out we both had exactly the
same dream and that’s why we were
both not sure if we were really
awake or still dreaming as we walked
towards the campfire.
In the dream we had woken up vividly
to the rotor beat sound of a fast Hiller coming up
the gorge about two feet above the
river and heading for our camp. And – here’s the good
part – we both saw it being flown by
a donkey which was wearing a pair of
green David Clark aviation headsets,
a set of pilots sunglasses and a big
grin as its donkey shooter mate
leant out the door and took aim at
us with an SLR.
Not being sure if dreams came true,
we cancelled flying for the day and
slept like logs under a tree until
the next day.
Seems that it’s a common occurrence
– after a rather hectic pig shoot
with me in the New South Wales
Macquarie marshes the next year, one
of the shooters, "The Porker
Stalker", came up with the following
cartoon.
True Story
TC
