Cock and Bull Stories

by Peter Anderson

  We were in business. Although I had never flown her she was, after all, just another Cub — or was she? We had the classic danger of not knowing your plane. She had a wee problem with her carburettor, which I wasn’t to find out about until the very worst moment.

  The final job was to be at Simon and Lynda Harvey’s place, Glen Orkney, in the Medway Valley, and I had decided to land in a short paddock below the woolshed, right next to the job. Being mid-afternoon, a good breeze had sprung up. Nevertheless I had a couple of goes at landing uphill with a tailwind but both times had to overshoot. Too much lift and speed and a ridge to climb over at the end of the paddock meant there was no room for error. Try downhill and into the wind. Carburettor heat on, close throttle, full flap, a touch of side-slip. Better, but my technique and the slope meant I touched down too fast and too far into the paddock. Now, the wheel brakes on a Piper Cub are not that effective even at the best of times, and having already used up a good deal of the paddock, I was not prepared just to apply the brakes and hope. There was a fence a couple of metres inside a vertical 200 metre drop into the Medway River and I didn’t want to go through the fence and over the edge. No problem — full power on and I’ll land next door instead.

  Open throttle — nothing but a sort of coughing noise comes out of the motor. Silly boy — you’ve left the carb heat on. Check: no, it’s off. The motor is still not responding, we are only two feet off the ground and the fence and cliff are getting awfully close. We hit the fence at about the same time the motor burst into life and somehow took the top four wires out and kept flying. If I had known the plane, I would have also known she had a problem when full power was applied immediately after a period of having power off. I also would have made sure the problem was fixed. Later I was dismayed to hear that others who had flown her had also thought she had a bit of a problem but nothing had been done to correct it. Not ‘knowing’ the plane was almost our undoing. It certainly finished forever any small spark of desire Chick may have had for flying with me.

  Soon after this a plane I had always desired, and which I felt would suit me admirably, came on the market. It was Ray Patchett’s old Piper Pawnee CIQ — one of the classic top-dressing planes. I had to have her and so I bought her. She’s a single seater but, if brave, a passenger can sit in the dickie seat with a pop-up canopy, between the motor and the hopper. For its size, the Pawnee has a huge 250 hp Lycoming motor that guzzles copious quantities of fuel, but it performs. I can fill the hopper with half a tonne of equipment and it doesn’t know it is there. It was designed for working off rough farm strips and therefore suits my work and has stood up to most of my landings. Some pilot very accurately described flying a Pawnee as like flying a cross between a tractor and a Spitfire.

  I had to borrow every cent to buy her and with the repayments, her high fuel consumption and insurance premiums taking their toll, I was forced to lease her out for top-dressing after a year. She came back a little worse for wear with corrosion in the wings, which required a complete rebuild. I was back to the BPG while CIQ (Charlie) was repaired, but not for long.

  Piper Cubs love to fly, whether you are there to drive them or not. If you have not tethered them well, they have a nasty habit of becoming airborne on their own when a breeze comes along. I was on an overnight trip to Mike and Christine Gerard’s property in Elie Bay in the Marlborough Sounds, to check some rams and do a few other odd jobs, and then travel by boat to Poehunui for another job. Overnight, unforecast high winds got up — with all the ridges and bays in the Sounds, winds end up arriving in all directions and willy whorls, which are a nightmare to pilots and sailors alike, appear from the most unexpected quarters. Although I had tied the Cub down well in a sheltered hollow, she had to have been hit by one of these. Arriving back to the strip, I could see from the boat that the wheels were higher in the sky than the wings. It was a sickening sight. The tie-down chains and hooks had broken and she had flipped onto her back. For a while I was a rather unpopular figure around the aero club, whose members used to like flying BPG. My big regret is not going in with others to buy the wreck and rebuild her.

  Some months later Charlie was flying again. I had wings, but not for long. I had arranged a visit to a client in North Canterbury, 250 kilometres to the south. On the way I was to drop in for a small job at Ward, 45 kilometres south of Blenheim, to see a sick beef heifer at Malcolm Taylor’s. There was a mob of sheep on the airstrip, which ran up and along a ridge. These ewes were encouraged to disperse to one side and into the adjacent gully by a low pass over them, and once they had cleared the area I came around again to land. In 1998 Marlborough was in the midst of a drought and to maintain stock condition many had had to be supplemented with grain. Sheep very quickly learn to associate the noise of a vehicle with another good feed. Unfortunately, just as I touched down, three ewes appeared from out of the opposite gully and came straight for me. They obviously thought I was the great grain train from heaven.

  The inevitable happened. One got a bit chopped up and then got stuck in the wheel struts and over we went. Luckily the Pawnee was built to protect the pilot in such circumstances and other than a sore back, I came out of it relatively unscathed. Even if my head took a fair share of the impact, at least this time I was wearing a helmet and as far as I am aware not too much damage was done in that department. However, Charlie was buckled. Another rebuild was required plus a new reconditioned motor — another year with little flying and heaps more driving.

  Some self-analysis naturally takes place after these incidents. Could I have done it differently? If I had done another check along the paddock, I might have noticed the three ewes coming out of the gully. If my immediate reaction was to keep the nose up and tail down instead of trying to break and avoid that big fat ewe, I would probably have just driven over her with a bit of a bump. Learning from experience can be expensive. Hindsight is great.

  After this incident, Malcolm Taylor really had good reason to wonder about my flying. Some years earlier I had landed on the same strip in the Colt to check his rams. He had a well-known Corriedale stud, and while I was testing the rams we got talking about the next couple of jobs, the last to be at Blairich Station in the Awatere Valley. He said he would love to come for the ride and as it wasn’t far out of the way for me to drop him off on the way home, it would be good to have his company. But for some reason — perhaps he had a premonition or a message from a higher power (his wife was an Anglican minister) — he decided as he was taking me back to the airstrip that he wouldn’t come as he had remembered something else that had to be done.

  When I bumped into him some days later, he said he was sorry he couldn’t come for the flight. I had to explain that he was very lucky he didn’t. It so happened that the Colt had just had rings replaced in one of the cylinders. Everything started off well but as the day wore on the engine appeared to be losing power. When it came to the last take-off on the Blairich strip in the Awatere Valley, I barely scraped over the fence at the end of the runway. It is not a pleasant sensation trying to be as light as possible and take weight off the seat. I managed to get over the Taylor Pass and make it to the Omaka Airfield. When I explained to the engineer that evening that he better check the motor because the oil had gone very black and she had lost all power, his face went white. He knew instantly what had happened. His apprentice engineer had put chrome rings in a chrome cylinder — a no-no. I suspect with Malcolm’s weight as well in the plane we might not have made it over that fence.

  A few hours after repairs to the Pawnee were finished, there were more problems. My reconditioned motor started ‘making metal’. Not a good sign. Another engine rebuild and more months off flying. I am reluctant now to borrow any other plane and to fly anything I do not know well — I have wrecked enough of them, including my own.

  There is one rule I have always followed. When flying you make decisions early and you never change your mind, even if you start thinking perhaps it is the wrong decision. Far better to make the decis
ion to continue to land and perhaps make a bit of a hash of it than change your mind and find it is too late to out-climb the ridge at the top of the strip. Even arriving home 12 hours late once, after a boat trip from D’Urville Island and a truck ride, with a bent prop over my shoulder, was still better than being a statistic on the ridge. Although the strip at Waitai Station is fine on a good day, by the time I had got there that morning the nor’wester had got up and what was a 10 knot tailwind had become a 20 knot tailwind with lots of lift at the point of touch-down. I had committed to land but really had to drive the plane onto the strip. We hit hard and fast, bounced and on coming down again, the prop hit the ground. I wasn’t aware it was anything other than a bad landing, until Shayne Amyes, the manager at Waitai, said he didn’t know some propellers had ‘curly bits at the end’. While I messed up the landing and was annoyed with myself, it was the right decision. Trying to go around could have been fatal. A week later Ray Patchett flew me back in his Cessna 180 with my nicely straightened prop. We bolted it back on and flew home.

  THE GALLOPING MAJOR — PJ

  It was the middle of spring, usually the very best time in Marlborough. The province sits in a rain shadow, blocked from the prevailing westerly rain by the mountains which lie to the northwest toward Nelson, while to the south the two great Kaikoura Ranges, Inland and Seaward, deflect the regular southerlies out into Cook Strait, and on to Wellington. When it’s blowing 50 knots in the strait and pelting rain in Wellington, it’s usually a mild, dry southeasterly in Blenheim, or cool and sunny.

  But in the spring, all going well, the rains come. The dry brown landscape undergoes a miraculous transformation into a soft, green, productive place of velvety hills and flowing rivers. Spirits soar, and long-hidden cheque books spring out of dusty drawers. New trucks are bought, babies conceived.

  It’s the key time of the year for Marlborough’s farmers, the time when lambs and calves are born, and when feed can be saved for next winter, as hay, silage and baleage. Everyone is happy.

  I received the call one afternoon to attend a lame bull.

  ‘He can’t move far,’ said the farmer.

  ‘Will he be in the yards?’ I asked.

  ‘No, you’ll need the dart gun,’ said the farmer, a retired British Army major who had come to live with his wife on the family farm some years earlier.

  The farm was 30 minutes drive to the south, over the winding Weld Pass road, across the Awatere Valley, through sleepy Seddon, then further south over the Lions Back to Lake Grassmere.

  This isn’t a lake, it’s a seawater lagoon, and scene of a famous battle where the great Ngati Toa chief Te Rauparaha nearly found himself in the cooking pot of his Ngai Tahu enemies. He only saved himself by throwing women out of the waka, so they could paddle faster. No metrosexual warrior, he.

  The lake is now used for harvesting sea salt, dried by the hot Marlborough sun and processed nearby. Average rainfall is about 350 millimetres per annum, or 14 inches in the old measure.

  Now the dart gun is not something one uses lightly. For a start, the drugs you need to knock a bull over in the paddock are very dangerous to use and handle. Vets have been known to kill themselves with Fentaz. There’s an antidote but you might not be fast enough to use it if you injected yourself.

  It’s also a true firearm, a converted .22 rifle, which uses blank cartridges to fire the heavy drug-loaded darts. The darts are tricky to load and pressurise, and at any distance greater than about 30 metres, the darts become very inaccurate as their weight makes them drop. The drugs are also expensive and wasting a dart, which is easy to do, means the vet is down the tube financially. So sedating with a dart gun in the paddock isn’t the first choice for most vets.

  In the yards it’s quite different. Just the confinement of the yards has a calming effect on most cattle. They know they’re captured. You can use a gentler sedative, usually xylazine, give it to the bull in the race, then wait for him to sit down in the pen.

  I compromised and chose to take the pole syringe, a device you can use from a distance of about two metres. That would do the trick. I thought the farmer was exaggerating. I could cope with a bull in a paddock. I’d done that often, no problems.

  It was a lovely spring evening, and I enjoyed the 40-minute drive through green Marlborough hills, a rare but beautiful sight. My heart sang at the beauty of the folded hills, sharply embossed by the late afternoon sun. The paddocks were full of playful lambs and anxious ewes. A good place to be.

  When I arrived at the farmhouse I was met halfway down the drive. The farmer was looking worried. He’s a good bloke, and doesn’t like to put his vets in danger.

  ‘Come in the Land Rover. We’ll get as close as we can, then walk over.’

  I wasn’t worried. I’ve jabbed dozens of lame bulls in paddocks and then laid them down with the assistance of ropes.

  I could see the bull standing alone in the middle of the paddock, as we parked 200 metres away, and at least 100 metres from a fence. Thirty or 40 cows shared the paddock, but he’d lost interest in the ladies, so his leg really was upsetting him.

  I loaded the pole syringe and with the farmer five metres behind, advanced confidently towards the bull.

  At about 50 metres he snorted and charged straight at us. We were 150 metres from the vehicle, or any other security blanket. We bolted. Now, I’m about 15 years younger than the old soldier, and in those days I still played squash five or six times a week, and cricket every Saturday in the season. I was never very fast but I could get by. As a T-shirt I once saw on an ageing, pot-bellied Queenslander said, ‘The older I get, the quicker I was.’

  For all that, I made an instant decision to follow the leader and seek sanctuary, but despite his clear start I only just caught the major as we reached the stationary, long wheelbase, flat-decked Land Rover.

  The bull was about five metres behind as I turned left and the major turned right to get in the back of the vehicle. The bull obviously had his sights on me as I was closer to him, and he chose my side. As I shot round the rear of the Land Rover, the bull two metres behind, I was astonished to see the major already on the deck. I did another tight full circle of the vehicle before the bull realised he couldn’t turn as fast as me and stood there bellowing as, breathless, I joined the amazingly athletic galloping major on the back.

  Dave, the farm hand, had observed it all from the other side of the fence, 100 metres away. ‘Should’ve brought the dart gun,’ he grinned. ‘Never seen the major move like that neither!’

  After I’d written this story, PA asked me what happened with the bull. I think he got it to the yards a day or two later and was able to get some antibiotics into it.

  DRIVING TO THE JOB — PA

  One of the major limitations to the profitability of rural practice, especially in the more extensive sheep and beef-based ones, is the cost of travel. Not only is it an added cost to the farmer but to us the cost of fuel, vehicle and especially time, is signifiant. Generally vets do not charge travel time but charge on the distance travelled. The returns, however, barely cover the cost of the vehicle and fuel. The cost to the practice of a vet sitting doing nothing but driving is significant. Most rural practices on an average daily basis can only charge out two to three hours, and nowhere near the eight to 10 other professionals might charge.

  As a result we try to reduce the cost of travel to both client and ourselves as much as possible, firstly by including as many visits per trip as we can to spread the mileage charged and secondly by not wasting time on the road. Speeding fines are an added cost and not something you can pass on to the farmer.

  Choice of vehicle for the job is very much an individual thing. However, when PJ and I first set up practice we could not afford to buy anything. We were really penniless and everything was leased or rented including our building, all the equipment, and the cars. So we had to lease the cheapest cars possible — Datsun Sunny station wagons, which doubled as our family cars. They were very basic machines — u
nderpowered and light, no air conditioning and hardly designed for the loads we took. A big day in the field being shaken around on metal roads could be very tiring. They had to last a few years before we progressed to secondhand Holden Kingswoods, which served their purpose well.

  In those early days when they doubled as family cars, we would have to unload much of our equipment to get the family in if we were going on anything more than a short trip. The back seat had to be down for work, so travelling with the family meant some major shuffling of bottles of antibiotics, metabolic solutions, antiseptics, boots, overalls and myriad other tools of the trade. Although we could make room to get the back seat up, we couldn’t get rid of the smell. All vets’ cars seem to smell the same and we got used to it, even quite liked it, but did the children hate that smell!

  Cars for a large animal vet become a mobile office and as he ages it becomes more important that they are relatively comfortable and pleasant enough to drive. We eventually leased new cars which, without fail, created comments from farmers. It was invariably something like ‘I suppose I own half of this’ or ‘You must be charging too much’. I guess it has something to do with the ‘tall poppy’ syndrome prevalent in New Zealand. One farmer once said to his neighbour when PJ was seen driving his brand-new car, a very basic Holden Rodeo, up a valley: ‘You see that man there — he’s a vet. I would never get a vet who drove a car like that. He obviously charges too much.’ That farmer happens to have inherited a large property, owns a large launch, a European car, and a bach in the Sounds. We enjoy his company but we don’t work for him! On rare occasions and now in later years we do get comments such as ‘Nice car — about time you had a decent one’.

  Punctures can be a real nuisance. In station wagons or cars changing tyres could be quite a performance. Once when driving to Mahakipawa in the Marlborough Sounds, I had a blow out. A nasty nor’wester was blowing and I had to unload the boot to get at the jack and spare tyre. After a day doing farm calls, the boot could get a little untidy with buckets of rubbish and used syringes and dirty overalls lying around. All this had to be placed on the edge of the road along with all my gear. On this particular occasion my box of arm-length disposable gloves was sitting on the top of the heap of equipment. It was blowing hard so I did not take too much notice of the rustling sound until I had removed the flat and was reaching for the spare. To my horror most of my gloves had filled with air and one by one were heading down the road. As far as I could see there were inflated orange gloves with fingers pointing at the oncoming traffic and cars trying to dodge these menacing objects. I got some pretty funny looks as they drove past.