Need to Land a Plane? In Australia, They Break Out the Toilet Paper

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/04/world/what-in-the-world/australia-emergencies-toilet-paper.html

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It’s quite a sight to herald the arrival of a lifesaving doctor: 30 flaming rolls of toilet paper.

In the vast, dusty rangelands of northern Australia, emergency medical help has to travel by airplane. For Geoff Cobden, a pilot for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, that often means a nighttime landing or takeoff from the rough, packed-dirt airstrip of a cattle station. To make the strip visible in the dark, the station can usually set out flares — but what if the flare supply runs out?

“It doesn’t happen often, but when there’s no flares, we set fire to dunny rolls,” said Mr. Cobden, 51, using the bush vernacular for toilet paper.

Melanie Smith, the manager of a roadhouse at the huge Canobie cattle station in Queensland, explained how it’s done: “You soak the toilet rolls in diesel, put them in empty pineapple or coffee tins and line 30 of them up,” she said.

Then you listen for the sound of propellers and watch the sky. When Mr. Cobden’s twin-engine Beechcraft B200C comes into view, she said, it’s time to light the toilet rolls, which will burn for about half an hour.

The roadhouse, the Burke and Wills, is a long way from anywhere. It serves meals, sells fuel and can accommodate 50 guests. There is no cellphone reception. They buy their toilet paper in bulk.

“Some homesteads are so remote, it’s a half-day drive from the front gate to the house,” said Mr. Cobden, who flies about 170,000 miles a year. “There’s no just going down the road to see the doctor.”

His plane, which would normally seat 10 people, is fitted out as a miniature emergency room, with two stretchers for airlifting patients. That leaves enough space to seat a doctor and a nurse, but no co-pilot.

Common emergencies here include broken limbs, snakebites, car and motorcycle crashes, and heart attacks, all treated in the field when necessary. “I’ve seen a doctor do surgery on a kitchen table,” Mr. Cobden said.

Before a recent night landing at the Burke and Wills, Mr. Cobden radioed to Mrs. Smith and her husband to clear termite mounds from the airstrip. A woman had been felled by a heavy section of fencing and had to be flown 420 miles to the nearest hospital, in Townsville.

“She was flat on her back,” Mrs. Smith said. “Lucky we have the flying doctor.” And the 30 rolls of toilet paper.