RACE TO SAVE WOMAN

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 39, 15 February 1941, Page 6

RACE TO SAVE WOMAN

PERILOUS AIR TRIP

OPERATION IN REMOTE HUT

(By Trans-Tasman Air Mail— From "Tha Post's" Representative.)

SYDNEY, February 8,

After a three days'perilous.journey by air; land, and sea, ■ Dr. : lan Macdonald, of Darwin, operated on a halfcaste woman in a tin hut on Groote Eylandt, in the Gulf of Carpentaria; and saved her life. The operation was carried out on a table by kerosene lamplight and the hot -water to sterilise the instruments was boiled in kerosene tins on an open fire.

The Northern Territory Medical Service received a radio message from the island mission station, that the woman was desperately ill after an unattended confinement. Dr. Macdonald left Darwin immediately in an ambulance plane piloted by Roy Edwards on the 500----mile flight to the island.

After leaving Darwin storms, accompanied by terrific head winds, buffeted the plane, and the pilot was forced, to land at Katherine. Another attempt was made next morning, but the plane could not get through, and a landing had to be made at Roper Bar. There it was discovered that the plane had insufficient petrol to complete the trip to the island, and fresh supplies had to be got up the Roper River by launch. By then the weather had eased and the pilot was able to reach the mission landing field.

The doctor found that the womsri was lying in a log hut 40 miles inland. He and Edwards set out on foot across country for the coast, and aborigines were sent hurrying overland, to bring a launch. The doctor and pilot had a nightmare journey to a mangrovelined beach, which they reached at daybreak. There was no sign of the launch. Sinking exhausted in the sand, they pulled blankets over their heads and tried to sleep, but myriads of mosquitoes made rest impossible. After four hours a launch piloted by.a lone native appeared, and the party made a tedious journey by water to the sick woman. Dr. Macdonald operated immediately.

Next morning the party carried the woman to a truck and began the return journey to the aeroplane. Punctures delayed them, and once the.truck was bogged for three hours. Eventually the patient was placed on board a fly? ing-boat which had arrived at the Groote Eylandt base, and taken to the Darwin Hospital.