Arthur Upfield: Wings above the Diamantina

“All right. You take her. I’ll get into the back seat of the car, and you can hand her in to me,” Elizabeth directed. To the girl, she said: “I am going to close your eyes because of the sunlight. Have no fear-Dad and I will look after you and find your friends. And Dr Knowles is really clever.”

Throughout the entire homeward journey, Elizabeth supported the helpless girl against her body, exhibiting stoical endurance. She took the shocks that her careful father was unable to avoid.

Ted Smart and his men, with the cattle, had disappeared from the grey plain, and for mile after mile the car hummed eastward to one of the most extraordinary rivers in Australia. At this time no water was running down the Diamantina’s multitudinous channels. Here the river had no main channel to distinguish it from the veritable maze of streams which intertwine between the countless banks. Westward from the Coolibah homestead, the channels which form the river are fifteen miles across, and when the great floods come sliding down from the far northern hills only the tops of the coolibah trees are left visible.

When crossing the river the track was a seemingly endless switchback, and here the greatest trial was put upon Elizabeth coming after the long journey from Emu Lake. Narrow channels and wide channels; narrow banks and wide banks: the car was constantly being forced up and down like a ship passing over sea waves. Long before they arrived there could be seen the large white-painted homestead, men’s quarters and outhouses, all with red roofs gleaming beneath the sun. The conglomeration of buildings appeared and disappeared endlessly until at last the travellers reached the easternmost flat to speed smoothly for half a mile before reaching the horse-paddock gate. From the gate it was a quick run up a stiff gradient to the house which, with the many other buildings, was built on comparatively high land. Before the car stopped outside the gate of the garden fronting the south veranda, a woman came running to meet them.

She was tall and angular, strong and exceedingly plain. She was dressed in stiff white linen, reminding one of a hospital nurse. Mrs Hetty Brown, the deserted wife of a stockman, was the Coolibah housekeeper.

“Oh, Mr Nettlefold! Miss Elizabeth! Whatever do you think?” she cried. Her light-grey eyes were slightly protuberant, and now they were wide open with excitement. “Just after you left this morning Sergeant Cox rang up to say that last night someone stole an aeroplane at Golden Dawn. He said he would have rung through before but there was something the matter with the line. He wanted to know if we had seen or heard the aeroplane. It belongs to… Why, Miss Elizabeth, who is that?”

“It is a young lady whom we found in peculiar circumstances, Hetty, and we have to get her to bed,” the manager informed her. “Where will you have her, Elizabeth?”

“In my bed for the present-Hetty, come round to the other side and assist Mr Nettleford. My arms are useless with cramp.”

“Dear me! Whatever has happened to her?” Hetty cried.

“We don’t know yet. There now. Hold her while I move aside. Take her weight. Gently, now! Got her, Dad?”

“Yes, I have her.”

Despite his growing years, John Nettlefold was still a powerful man. He lifted the helpless girl and bore her along the garden path, up the several veranda steps and through the open house door as a lesser man might carry a child. At Elizabeth’s command, Hetty assisted her from the car, and then was ordered to run on and prepare her bed for the stranger. Grimacing with agony, Elizabeth followed slowly, moving her limbs to hasten returning circulation, and was just in time to meet her father coming from her room.

“I’ll get in touch with Knowles and Cox right away,” he said. “How’s the cramp?”

“It’s going,” she stated calmly. “It was stupid of us not to have thought of looking in the plane for her belongings.”

“Yes, we should have done that,” he hastened to agree. “Anyway, either Cox or I will have to got out to it to-morrow, so our omission is unimportant.”

She smiled at him, then smiled at something which flashed into her mind.

“Do you know,” she said, “I think I am at last going to justify my life here at Coolibah.”

“What do you mean?”

“Some day I will tell you,” she replied swiftly, and was gone.

A Flying Doctor

WHEN GOING “inside,” people at Coolibah followed the track winding away to the north-east from the homestead. Having travelled that track for twenty-four miles, they arrived at the Golden Dawn-St Alban track. Here there was a roughly made sign-post pointing south-west to Coolibah, north-west to Tintanoo Station and St Albans, east to Golden Dawn. About noon every Wednesday, the Golden Dawn-St Albans mail coach reached the road junction, and the mailman alighted to place the Coolibah mail in the letter-box fashioned from a petrol case and nailed securely to a tree. At noon the following day, on his return journey to Golden Dawn, he collected the Coolibah outward mail from the same box.

In addition to the twenty-four miles from the homestead to the track junction, the person desiring to go “inside” had to travel eighty miles to Golden Dawn, and a farther hundred and ten miles to the railhead at Yaraka. And from there the long rail journey to Brisbane began. It is not precisely a journey which can be undertaken from a country town to the city on a Bank holiday, and consequently people in the far west of Queensland do not often visit Brisbane.

Beside the track to Coolibah ran the telephone line which at the road junction was transferred to the poles carrying the Tintanoo and St Albans lines. When John Nettlefold rang Golden Dawn he was answered by the girl in the small exchange situated within the post office building. She connected him with the police-station. It was exactly six o’clock, and Sergeant Cox was dining with his wife and son. To answer the call, the sergeant had to pass from the kitchen through the house to the office, which occupied one of the front rooms.

“Well?” he growled. “What is it?”

“Nettlefold speaking, Sergeant. I understand that an aeroplane belonging to the visiting ‘flying circus’ was stolen last night.”

“Ah-yes, Mr Nettlefold. Know anything about it?”

“Was the machine a monoplane type varnished a bright red?”

“Yes. Have you seen it? Has it come down on your place?”

“It has,” announced Nettlefold from Coolibah.

“Have you got the fellow who stole it?” grimly demanded Cox.

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t… you don’tthink so! Surely, Mr Nettlefold, you know definitely if you have or have not apprehended the thief?”

The station manager’s prevarication acted like wind on sea. The policeman’s large red face took to itself a deeper colour. The short iron-grey hair appeared to stand more stiffly on end, and the iron-grey eyes to become mere pinpoints. The iron-grey moustache bristled. Place Sergeant Cox inkhaki, and on him put a Sam Browne belt and a pith helmet, and you would see the popular conception of an army general on Indian service.

“No, I cannot say definitely whether I have the thief,” replied Nettlefold easily, quite unabashed by the sergeant’s asperity. “Listen carefully.”

He related the bare details of all that had happened at Emu Lake, and then he asked for particulars of the theft.

“It’s queer, Mr Nettlefold, to say the least,” Cox said, as though he addressed John Nettlefold, Esq., J.P., when sitting on the bench. “This aeroplane circus-that is what Captain Loveacre, who is in charge, calls it-has been here three days. There is a twin-enginedde Havilland passenger machine for taking up trippers, and there’s that red mono-plane which the captain flies himself, the big one being flown by his two assistant pilots. We have got no proper aerodrome here, as you know, but the surrounding plain makes a fair landing ground.