Stories
Clyde Fenton’s story
The Qantas Hangar and Ross Smith Aerodrome are associated with many colourful incidents and amazing stories of the people who worked there, but none, perhaps as distinctly Territorian as that of Clyde Fenton.
Clyde Fenton graduated as a medical doctor in 1925 from Melbourne University. He had a stint in the Royal Air Force in England in 1928, but they did not teach him to fly and Fenton did not find the RAF suited him. Fenton returned to Australia and headed outback, first to Wyndham and then on to Darwin. Fenton did gain his pilot’s licence with an idea to join the Royal Flying Doctor Service, but the founder, Flynn, had a policy of not using doctors as pilots. Fenton then privately raised the money for an aircraft, and in March 1934 arrived in Katherine as the Government Medical Officer. On his own initiative he started an aerial ambulance rescue service which grew into the Northern Territory Aerial Medical Service.
Requests for medical assistance came via pedal radios through the two Royal Flying Doctor Service stations at Cloncurry and Wyndham, then telegram. With famous daring and an apparent disregard for personal safety, Fenton landed on the primitive bush strips and runways to pick up the sick and return them for medical treatment. With no navigational equipment or radios, landing on strips lit by kerosene flares or car lights, and with only the railway lines and the Katherine River to locate his position he would “buzz” the hospital in Katherine so staff could go out and light the flares for his landing. To the Civil Aviation Department he was a disaster, but to the people of the Top End, he was a dashing hero. Occasionally his theatrical flair got the better of him and after buzzing a crowd at the Darwin open-air picture theatre and landing a government aircraft on Mindil Beach, he received an official reprimand.
During his colourful career he survived plane crashes, made a flight to China in a small open aircraft, and was once stranded for five days after a forced landing. His call up for the RAAF arrived by telegram on 14 May 1940 and eventually based at Manbulloo airstrip near Katherine, he made many emergency medical flights.
In August 1942 No 6 Communications Flight was formed with Dr Fenton in command. This unit delivered mail and food supplies to army and RAAF outposts, as far afield as the Wessell Islands. The unit was based at times at the Ross Smith Aerodrome, and at others at the Batchelor airstrip. Fenton continued to fly with dash and verve, and his style attracted others with the same dare-devil attitude. No 6 Communications Unit never lost a pilot and it was said that his Officers’ Mess was famed for its conviviality.
Fenton left the Territory after the war and spent the rest of his working life in Melbourne, where he eventually died on 28 February 1982. A wartime airstrip was named after him, and he is remembered through the Clyde Fenton Primary School in Katherine. One of the planes he flew is on display at the Fenton Hangar at the Katherine Historical Society Precinct and he enjoys a particular renown as a unique and dashing Territory character.
