Yumba Days by Herb Wharton

Author:Herb Wharton [Wharton, Herb]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Queensland Press

It wasn't long after that incident that I took action against another low-flying aircraft intruding on the Yumba air space. This happened one Sunday while I was playing alone beyond our front yard with my trusty shanghai, knocking over a few tin cans. My attention was distracted by a low droning noise that soon became a roar and I saw a plane approaching from the south and realised it was the old-fashioned, cumbersome mail plane making its weekly flight from Sydney to Charleville, with a stop at Cunnamulla airfield. Watching as the plane came closer and grew larger, until with a deafening noise itwas flying less than a hundred yards above the Yumba, I thought: "This bloke is showing his passengers how us wild pagan Blacks live — better give these fellas something to remember us by."

And then, as the plane flew level overhead, I fitted a stone to my shanghai and fired. Instantly I heard a loud, sharp, cracking noise like a rifle shot. My missile must have hit the propeller blade. "Oh my God, what have I done!"

Breathless, standing stockstill and expecting at any moment to see the plane start smoking and spinning, nose-diving downwards and crashing to the ground, I watched it fly on over the sandhill and township to the dirt airstrip beyond. Hastily, I buried my shanghai, sure that everyone in the Yumba must have heard that loud crack and seen me standing out in the open, but no one shouted or cursed me. Maybe for once they thought I had done the right thing, taking action against aerial intrusion.

For the rest of the day I stayed quietly at home, expecting at any moment to see that old brown police ute come racing around the cemetery fence corner, looking for the kid that had dared to fire at a Royal Mail plane. But sundown came and no policeman had arrived to take me into custody.

I relaxed with my secret, still wondering why no one had questioned me. Years later, I reasoned that the pilot did not report me because he was flying too low over the Yumba and the town. Stranger still, years after that I heard Rolf Harris sing about this old Aborigine sitting in the desert and bringing down the Flying Doctor's plane with his boomerang. Where had the idea for this song come from? Could Rolf Harris have somehow met that mail plane pilot who encountered hostilities when flying low over the Yumba in Cunnamulla?

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