DROVER'S ORDEAL

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 169, 20 July 1942, Page 5

DROVER'S ORDEAL

CRUSHED BY HORSE AID BY FLYING DOCTOR ■ m (0.c.) SYDNEY. July 13. Crushed by his horse, a drover might have died untended miles from aid but for a bush radio call to the Flying Doctor. Strapped to a stretcher he was bumped in a buckboard over 15 miles of track and bog, and finally flown to Broken Hill Hospital. The drover, Harry Brookes, was thrown and rolled on by his horse, 15 miles from Dulkininna Station, near Lake Eyre, South Australia. Brookes lay where he fell—in sand, which probably saved his life—with horse-hoof marks all around him. Here his mate, Tully, found him, groaning, unable to move without medical aid. Telephone and radio found Flying Doctor Woods at Menindie. From the details he guessed a fractured pelvis, fractured ribs, and internal injuries, and ordered Brookes to be bedded down where he was for the night. It was too dark to fly that night. Next day the Flying Doctor picked up the station-owner at Dulkininna as a guide, but discovered no possible landing ground near the accident. They flew back to the station and set out by buckboard. "Then." said Dr. Woods in his report, "there began the awful job of bumping the patient back along 15 miles of slippery and boggy track, racing through the worst stretches to prevent ourselves being stuck, the patient held down to the tray of the vehicle by the stretcher to which he had been strapped." From the station Brookes was flown to Maree, 50 miles south, where the party had to stay the night, and next day over the Flinders Ranges to Broken Hill General Hospital. Even in hospital, where he is now progressing favourably, the patient's troubles were not quite ended. He startled the ward by falling out of bed to the floor—explaining to the worried doctor that he was not used to beds and had believed he was still lying on the ground.