(THEME MUSIC)
I'm heading into one of my favourite places -
the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
It's terrific country,
rugged, vast and lonely.
There aren't too many people up here.
And because of this, I never head off without being fully prepared.
(DIALS PHONE)
Yes, I'm just ringing up to check on that helicopter flight
we got booked next week,
into the 'Kookaburra' site out in the Tanami.
Is that still a goer'? MAN: Yeah, should be right.
OK, that's fine. Alright, I'll see you then.
OK. OK. Hooroo.
See ya, mate.
(HANGS UP)
I reckon communications are vital,
particularly out in the areas that I get to.
You know, a couple of years ago, about 60,
couple of Australian aviators got themselves into real strife,
principally because of poor communications
and also poor planning.
If they'd had the sort of thing we've got these days -
satellite telephones, HF radios, all that sort of thing -
none of the story I'm about to tell you would have ever happened.
In the late 1920s,
Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm were national heroes.
In the famous 'Southern Cross', they'd established flying records
across the Pacific, the Tasman and the Australian continent.
After setting up their own airline, they decided to fly to England
to buy more aircraft.
On 30 March 1929, the 'Southern Cross' took off from Sydney
with Smithy and Ulm as pilots.
Their radio operator was Thomas McWilliams.
And the navigator was Harold Litchfield.
Over 100,000 people waved them off.
It was a pretty big turnout.
But in the first hour of flight,
an incident occurred that dramatically changed their lives.
One of the plane's two aerials fell away.
This meant the radio operator could transmit messages
but not receive them.
Smithy decided to fly on,
so he never received the message that violent storms lay ahead.
Smithy had planned to refuel at Wyndham,
but the thunderstorms caused him to lose his direction.
He was lost over the Kimberley and low on fuel.
After flying over an Aboriginal mission, he turned back to land,
but the weather was so bad, he couldn't find it again.
He was forced down beside the Glenelg River.
Landing on the mudflat with the 'Southern Cross'
was a pretty hairy experience.
Gotta think about it - wasn't firm like this one here.
Been raining and the whole thing was boggy.
And Smithy's bringing it down, bringing it down,
and he knows that as soon as he touches down,
the aircraft's gonna be inclined to flip nose-first,
so he shoved a couple of the crew back in the tail of the aircraft
to weight it down.
Brought it down, and, sure enough,
when it hit the mud, sunk straight in, about that far.
Nearly flipped it a couple of times, but he was a really remarkable pilot
and he kept it steady, steady...
Dragged it right...and pulled it up about that far short of a tree.
But, of course, they're bogged.
They can't take off again, and they've got no fuel.
This country is timeless.
It's as isolated today as when Smithy landed here.
This is where Smithy brought the 'Southern Cross' down,
beside the Glenelg River.
He didn't have much choice, and anyway, it wouldn't have mattered,
because the whole of the Kimberley coastline is just like this.
Now, just imagine how Smithy and his crew felt.
After 28 hours of flying, they were deaf from the roar of the engines.
They were tired.
And, of course, they were hungry.
They had no idea where they were.
In those days, there were no aviation charts.
All the navigator had were some Admiralty charts,
two general maps of Australia, and the 'Times' atlas.
On 1 April, 1929,
Australians awoke to the news that their heroes were missing
somewhere in the Kimberley.
The Sydney 'Sun' newspaper,
which had an exclusive contract with Smithy and Ulm,
commissioned a search for the 'Southern Cross'.
Smithy and his mates had another problem too.
When they searched the aircraft,
all their survival rations were missing.
Smithy reckons someone must've flogged 'em back in Sydney,
but I've also heard another theory
that maybe he left 'em back there himself
so he could fit more fuel on board.
Anyway, it doesn't matter. What did they have to survive off'?
Well, firstly,
they had something like seven packets of soggy sandwiches.
Remember they'd flown through
all those thunderstorms and all that rain?
Well, that's how come they got wet.
They also had four tins - 8 pound - of baby food.
Apparently they were taking that up to Wyndham,
feed a sick baby up there.
They had one flask of coffee.
Last but not least, they had a little flask of brandy.
That was gonna be most important,
because they sat down and they mixed that with that,
and the whole incident became known as the 'Coffee Royal Affair'.
The day after they landed here,
Litchfield, who was the...the navigator,
got out his sextant
and worked out exactly where they were on the ground.
And they sort of figured that the old Port George Mission
was down that way, to the south-west.
It wasn't marked on their maps, 'cause their maps were so old.
One stage there,
they even debated whether they should try and walk down to it.
Decided not to and hung around the aeroplane,
which is just as well,
because, in fact, the mission was up that way, to the north.
The men thought they'd be rescued within a couple of days.
So they lit a signal fire.
They didn't burn green leaves the way I'm doing.
They put wet grass on the fire.
This, in turn, produced a thick white smoke
that Smithy reckoned would be easily spotted by searching aircraft.
Now, some people have said that Smithy should've burnt the oil
from the engines of the 'Southern Cross'.
The trouble is, black smoke is harder to see from the air.
But the best thing of all, I reckon,
is one of these things here - it's a signal mirror.
Catches the sun
and you can flash any aircraft that's flying round searching for you.
They're terrific things. Go for miles.
Smithy didn't have one of these.
But he did have radio equipment, and that was another problem.
Remember when they were flying up from Sydney?
They've got a transmitter and a receiver, right'?
And they lose one of the antennas.
They can transmit OK, but they can't receive, because the antenna's gone.
Once they land,
they fixed up a new antenna for that one there,
and they can receive OK, but the transmitter doesn't work.
It needs power,
and it gets the power when the aircraft flies through the air,
because mounted on the side of the fuselage is a little wind generator.
And that turns, of course, only when the aircraft's going through the air.
Once they're on the ground, it's not turning,
so they can't transmit at all.
And that's gotta be doubly frustrating for them
because they know exactly where they are on the ground.
They can hear that there's a search around for them,
but they can't tell 'em where they are.
The wet season had left Smithy and the crew plenty of fresh water to drink,
but the place was teeming with insects.
Charles Ulm wrote in his journal, "We feel we can last a week
"if the flies and the mosquitoes don't devour us or poison us."
The men headed out across the mudflats, searching for food.
These blokes were new to this country
and probably didn't understand what it was all about.
But to survive, they didn't have much choice.
I'm amazed at how ill-prepared the men were.
All they had were some matches, a couple of screwdrivers,
a penknife and two pistols.
They tried to shoot small doves,
and they had no luck.
A search for oysters found none.
All they could do was gather.
These are the things that Smithy collected and ate.
He called them mud snails, which is a pretty close description.
Their real name is nerite - mangrove snail.
They' re not bad,
but, personally, I reckon there's something better round here.
This is what I'm talking about here.
These things here.
They're a shellfish called Telescopium telescopium,
because they look a bit like a telescope.
But, I don't know,
I reckon they should've called them lce-creamis conadis.
They're a top feed for fish as well as people.
Cook 'em up, boil 'em up.
Got a little mussel inside. Really nice.
And you can get quite a bit out of that shell there. Show you later on.
I reckon they're better than oysters.
They mightn't look great, but they're a top feed.
This is that little mangrove snail that Smithy ate - the nerite.
Apparently, he wasn't real keen on 'em.
Mind you, he was eating something like 200 a day
amongst the whole group of them.
And as you can see there, it's only a little bit of a mussel inside.
Not much of a feed.
But at least you don't have to crack 'em open
the way you do with a telescopium.
I'll just read you what Smithy said in his journal-.
"When people are shipwrecked on a desert island in romances,
"they manage to find all sorts of nice things growing on trees.
"They catch beautiful fish,
"discover that almost every plant and tree bears edible fruits,
"and generally feast like kings.
"Unfortunately for us, we had no such luck."
I think it's pretty pertinent too.
Worst thing about eating these things is the biscuit.
By the end of the first week,
things were really starting to go bad for Smithy and his crew.
They heard over the radio
that they should light three fires in the shape of a large triangle.
This would help the search aircraft find them.
But the timber wouldn't burn. It was too wet.
And the men were using more energy than they had
just trying to feed the fires.
Charles Ulm wrote, "We're really starving.
"We're keeping alive on one and a half cups of baby food a day."
If there's one plant that typifies the Kimberley in my mind,
it's this thing here.
This is one of our native kapoks.
Cochlospermum, it's called.
Grows everywhere. Punches out these beautiful yellow flowers.
Obviously, you can eat the petals.
They've got a sort of a...flowery taste.
Wonder why.
This is an interesting little number.
Looks a bit like a weed.
Grows all over the Kimberleys, all over northern Australia.
It's called grewia, and it produces these brown little berries here.
It's got a texture a bit like apple strudel.
Tastes the same too.
Smithy and the mob could've got stuck into this.
Suppose when you think about it,
apple strudel, coffee royal - all goes together.
Meanwhile, the search for the 'Southern Cross' intensified.
By the tenth day, four aircraft were scouring the Kimberley region.
Aboriginals from the church missions
to the north and the south of the Glenelg River
were out looking for the men.
A friend of Smithy's, Keith Anderson, decided to join the search.
With his navigator, Bob Hitchcock,
Anderson flew his small aircraft, the Kookaburra', from Alice Springs
towards the north-west coast.
But they were unprepared.
Their map was inadequate, their compass was faulty,
and the engine was playing up.
They were forced down in the Tanami Desert.
The next day, the 'Kookaburra' was reported missing.
Now searchers were looking for two aircraft.
While all this was going on,
Smithy and the crew weren't exactly sitting round doing nothing.
They had to make that generator work.
One of the ideas they came up with -
in fact, I think it was Smithy who came up with it -
was to take the generator off the side of the aircraft,
take the propeller off, which is normally driven by the wind,
and replace it with a little round wooden wheel like this.
The concept was to hold it up against the main wheel of the aircraft
and spin that, thereby turning that
and make the generator generate electricity.
First of all, of course,
they had to jack out the wheel from the bog that they were in,
put it up on rocks.
Well, they tried that.
And it did work to some extent.
But they'd absolutely had it.
They didn't have the energy
to keep turning it and turning it and turning it -
not enough to generate the required voltage anyway, that's for sure.
Gives you some idea of what was going on down on those mudflats
when you read Charles Ulm's journal.
He says here, "Heat, flies, mosquitoes,
"light fires, pull down trees,
"pull up grass for smoke, walk for water,
"eat a few snails, drink some water,
"listen to radio, turn generator until every ounce of energy is gone,
"then lie down to be eaten alive by mosquitoes.
"That is our day. When will it end?"
After 12 days, the intensity of the air search was really quite enormous.
In fact, the blokes on the ground could see and hear other aircraft
further up to the north looking for 'em.
I guess it was really only a matter of time
until they moved further to the south and found 'em,
and that's exactly what happened.
One particular aircraft, called the 'Canberra',
flew round and round and spotted them
and actually dropped food to them on the 12th day.
Took this photograph here,
where you can see the 'Southern Cross',
and it's rather interesting, I think, that the 'Canberra' spotted them
not because of the signal fires,
but because of the wings of the 'Southern Cross'.
They were painted with silver paint
and really stood out on the mudflats here.
They dropped some food to them,
some bully beef and jam and stuff like that,
and you can just imagine the excitement of the blokes on the deck.
They're just about at the end of their legs,
and suddenly from out of the sky comes this food.
Terrific stuff, and reading between the lines,
I gather that table manners weren't exactly the order of the day.
The news flashed around the country.
But the increasing fears for Anderson and Hitchcock
put a bit of a dampener on things.
The 'Canberra' and other aircraft were now diverted to the Tanami
to join the search.
The crew of the 'Southern Cross' were keen to look for their mates.
But they had to wait for the mudflat to dry out
before they could take off.
During the next six days,
small aircraft flew in food and medicine, and fuel, of course.
Finally, after being stranded for 19 days,
Smithy started the engines of the 'Southern Cross' and took off.
Within two days, he'd joined the search for the 'Kookaburra'.
I'm leaving the Kimberley and heading to the Northern Territory,
to the area where the 'Kookaburra' went missing.
These days, you can drive to within 50km
of the 'Kookaburra' site.
This is the Tanami Desert, a hot, flat region
with very little permanent water.
It's pretty isolated.
It's not the sort of country I'd like to be forced down in,
especially in a fixed-wing aircraft like the 'Kookaburra', back in 1929.
These scenes from an ABC drama
show the difficulties that faced Anderson and Hitchcock.
After they'd fixed up the engine,
they had to clear more ground so they could try and take off.
Bushes and trees like this, in this environment,
are real tough old biddies.
They've gotta be to survive.
If you're gonna try and clear 'em out by pulling 'em by hand,
it's a real recipe for disaster.
You see, your...your body
is a bit like a leaking radiator in a motor car.
And the harder you work, the more it leaks,
so you gotta keep topping it up with water.
If you don't do that, you run out.
I guess that Hitchcock and Anderson,
they were into a survival spiral decline
once they started attacking these things by hand.
(BOTH GRUNT AND STRAIN)
After a day of clearing, Anderson and Hitchcock tried to take off,
but the runway was still too short.
In fact, they made several attempts and punctured one of their tyres.
The next day, their water ran out and they became too weak to work.
They couldn't find any other water
and in desperation drank their own urine.
The whole tragedy was recorded in a diary
that Anderson wrote on the tail of the 'Kookaburra'.
Both men were dead when searchers found them.
This memorial
marks the spot where Hitchcock and Anderson died.
Hitchcock was buried back over in Perth and Anderson back in Sydney,
but what a desolate place to die in.
I guess the big lesson that comes out of this
is the fact that both of them were ill-prepared.
Same with Smithy up there on the coast.
Hitchcock and Anderson, with the 'Kookaburra',
had something like three litres of water amongst 'em.
That's all.
Three litres, in this country.
Tell you what -
three litres of water wouldn't last me half a day
if I was trying to clear this scrub.
What a horrible, horrible situation.
The deaths of Anderson and Hitchcock made headlines.
Kingsford Smith and Ulm were stunned.
But what was worse, this tragedy was being linked to rumours
that Smithy and Ulm had deliberately gone missing in the Kimberleys,
that the whole thing was a publicity stunt.
When Smithy and Ulm arrived back in Sydney,
they faced a public inquiry.
It became known as the 'Coffee Royal Affair',
and every detail of their ordeal was investigated.
Although they were eventually cleared,
their image as national heroes was tarnished.
One immediate result of the inquiry
was that all pilots had to submit flight plans before they took off.
Also, certain parts of the country were designated remote areas,
and pilots were permitted to fly over them
only when carrying adequate radio equipment.
But the most important outcome of this whole affair
was the government decision to have proper aeronautical charts made.
With these, navigation was no longer a hit-and-miss affair.
Smithy learnt a lot of lessons out of that Coffee Royal Affair.
Next time he went flying, took a whole bunch of survival gear with him.
Well, if you're gonna explore this country of ours,
and it's really worth exploring,
be it by motor car or aeroplane or tin boat or whatever,
you've really gotta think about survival -
what you're getting yourself into, where you're going,
what it all means, etc.
It's more than just food, water and shelter.
Survival is almost a state of mind.
You've gotta have backup systems for backup systems.
You see,
it's quite capable, this country of ours, of jumping up and grabbing you,
particularly if you take it too cheaply.
For more infomation >> Students React To School's Decision To Pull Coffee Shop Contract - Duration: 2:09. 
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