The Bird Man

by Peter Miller

Wing-walking is a tricky business even on a good day. But Farnsworth MacIntyre was a natural. Great balance. Not a fear in the world. So you’d have to say that in the end the whole thing just came down to plain old bad luck.

Of course, this was just the latest in a long line of schemes for Farnsy. He’d done everything from sideshow boxing to touring a five legged cow. He even did a bit of a stint as a bearded lady for the Zarkov Brothers until an opal miner in Coober Pedy looked up his dress.

He was a showman alright. It was in his blood.

It was one of those beautiful late autumn days, sky so blue and clear you could hear winter knocking at the door. Perfect flying weather. Farnsy, or The Wingecarribee Bird Man as he called himself then, had been in town for about a week scaring up an audience for the show. I’ve still got one of the posters. ‘Amazing Antipodean Aeronaut’ it says in big red and black letters, with a picture of the Fokker zooming out of the clouds and Farnsy doing a handstand on the top wing. Very impressive.

There was a pretty good crowd considering we were in the back of nowhere. A lot of farmers and their wives and kids. Picnic lunches. Pillows in the back of the ute so you could lie and look up at the sky and not get a cricked neck. Beats drenching the cattle and feeding the chooks.

Farnsy had conned the owners of the local racetrack — well they called it that, it was really just a big circle of dirt — anyway, Farnsy had conned them into letting us charge admission at the gate. Two shillings a head. I thought it was a bit steep but everyone was happy to fork out. It never seemed to occur to them that they’d get just as good a view from outside the fence. But maybe I’m just an old cynic. Maybe they thought a few pennies to help someone else earn a day’s pay was a fair enough thing. I wasn’t complaining.

We took the planes up a couple of times for a warm-up, me in the Tiger Moth and Teddy in the Fokker. Did some loops with coloured smoke, a few vertical stalls, upside down passes, that kind of thing. Wanted the folks to feel like they were getting their money’s worth.

But we all knew that they were here to see the Bird Man.

Around three-thirty Farnsy made his entrance. Low key, just sauntered out from the tin shed that the Saturday race crowd called The Member’s Club. A big cheer went up from the punters. This was it. The Main Event.

There was a bit of marshmallowy cumulus building up on the horizon, but it was still a magnificent sky. A good strong breeze from the west. Nothing out of the ordinary. Farnsy went with Teddy and I followed them up.

It was the usual routine, we did a couple of barrel rolls for good measure and then came in for a low pass over the crowd, me in front and the Fokker hot on my tail. Farnsy climbed out of the cockpit and stood on the wing and threw handfuls of boiled lollies to the kids. Always a big hit.

And then it was up a few hundred feet to get into the serious stuff. In those days there was none of this rubbish about safety belts and wires. We did it all for real. The Fokker flew up front and I trailed along at a safe distance to keep an eye on things. Farnsy made a careful foray out onto the end of the Fokker’s bottom wing, still holding onto the struts. It takes sharp flying to keep a plane level with extra weight on one wing, but Teddy was bloody good. He’d had plenty of practise. I wasn’t too bad either. We were a great team.

Once Farnsy was out at the very end he hoisted himself up to the top wing. It looked pretty hair-raising but it wasn’t as bad as all that. There were brackets on the struts that could easily take his weight and he was holding onto something the whole time. But once he got up on top it was a different story. Nothing to hang on to there. As I say though, he had terrific balance so he always made it seem like a piece of cake.

The next part of the act always had the kids choking on their humbugs. Farnsy would stand upright on the top wing, raise his arms up high, then, suddenly, drop backwards into space. Of course he’d fastened a rope to a harness around his chest so he only fell a few feet but I swear we could hear the punters draw their breath above the noise of the engines. He’d dangle for a few seconds, waving and mugging for the crowd and then climb back up the rope to the top of the wing. For good measure he did a few handstands and clown-walks along the wing top. He was as fit as a fiddle, no doubt about it.

But all good things must come to an end so eventually we brought the planes around for the big finish. Teddy dropped back a bit to let me catch up and we headed toward the racetrack, me bringing the Moth’s wings up tip to tip with the Fokker. You needed a steady hand and a good nerve to do this kind of flying but on a day like this you just couldn’t go wrong. From where I was sitting I couldn’t see Farnsy at all, but as I got as close as I could to the Fokker I knew he would be sizing up the distance between us and timing his run to make the most of the gap. Too big and he’d never make it, too small and it would look all too easy to the folks downstairs. I kept my eye on Teddy and when he gave me the thumbs up I knew he could feel Farnsy making the run. I steadied myself to take the sudden weight on my right wing.

The sun bounced all golden off the big clouds to the west. I could smell the candlebarks down in the valley mixed with the fumes from the engine. It didn’t get any better than this.

And, then, bang. There was an almighty crunch and the ground and the sky swapped places. I was twisting fast, upside down looking back over my shoulder at the Fokker spiralling away groundwards. No wait, it wasn’t going down, it was rocketing up. And so was I. Some God Almighty gust had picked us up like we were scraps of newspaper. I fought the stick to turn the Moth over but I didn’t have a hope in hell. I could see Teddy off in the distance, whipping nose over tail, way out of control. I thought we’d had it. And then, just like that, I was in still air again. The engine spun up into high revs, coughed a few times and went dead. The Moth heeled over and headed straight at the ground. But at least I could steer the bloody thing. I turned us upright and prayed that there was enough air going over the prop to chug the engine back into life. I kept thinking it’s just like the show, it’s just like the show. I’d done hundreds of engine stalls before and this wasn’t any different. And sure enough, a few hundred feet above solid earth, the old bugger spluttered back into life, giving me barely enough time to bring the nose up and shoot across the racetrack.

The people below were standing up up in their utes waving madly and running across the field, yelling and cheering. They thought it was all part of the show.

I searched the sky for Teddy and found the Fokker way up to the north, a tiny red speck. He looked OK, well at least he wasn’t plummetting out of control towards the hillside.

But hell. What had happened to Farnsy?

I brought the Moth down way harder than I should have. Not my best landing by a longshot, but given the circumstances just being on the ground in one piece was an accomplishment. By the time I’d clambered out, Teddy was swinging in low, and I could tell even from here that he had the shakes.

By now, the crowd had figured out there was something wrong and a few blokes were drifting across from the sheds. I headed off toward the Fokker as Teddy eased it down. He was looking pretty grey as he climbed out.

We didn’t have a clue what happened. And Farnsy was gone. Just plain gone. Near as we could make out whatever freak wind from Hell had played autumn leaves with the planes had snatched him up and whirled him off to God knows where.

The local folks organised a search party and we combed a couple of square miles around the racetrack but there was no sign of him. The Bird Man had flown his last. The clouds started to roll in, it got dark and we finally gave up and headed back to town. What can you say?

A few hours later Teddy and I were having a pint or two with the locals when the storm hit. What a monster. I started to get that itchy feeling that you do when your plane’s out in weather. I downed my beer and I could see Teddy was thinking the same thing. Then the hail started. We sprinted for the door.

By the time we got to the racetrack it was fairly pelting down. Hailstones the size of cricket balls. We could barely yell to one another above the racket. When the windscreen of the truck exploded, ice and glass everywhere, we gave it up as a mug’s game. We’d already had our brush with death for the day.

The storm howled all night.

Things quietened down in the early morning and at first light we headed back to the track. What a disaster. Hailstones as big as my fist were piled up in drifts against the sheds and scattered across the countryside. It looked like it had been snowing. The planes had holes as big as dinner plates in the wing fabric. Wood and wire was smashed and tangled all over the place. The Fokker was a write-off, no question about it, and the Moth looked like someone had taken to it with a sledgehammer.

But it was nothing compared to Pete Barker’s milking shed. On the way back to town we saw the hubbub from the road. There was a bunch of blokes standing in the middle of about an acre of of broken wood and bent sheets of corrugated iron. It looked like a bomb had gone off. I swung the truck up the driveway to see if we could lend a hand.

Well you could have knocked me down with a feather. Right in the middle of the whole catastrophe, half embedded in the ground, was the biggest hailstone you could imagine. It was ten feet across if it was an inch. Pete’s shed hadn’t stood a chance. Hell, this monster would’ve crushed a tank.

The force of the impact had split the bugger down one side and we could see that there was something inside. A dark shape about the size of a man. There was a bit of talk about waiting for the ice to melt but when the chainsaw came out it all became academic.

Big Bill McKinney laid into the hailstone like it was made of butter. It only took him ten minutes to carve out a seven foot long block but by the time he’d finished there was no surprise.

“Farnsy”, whispered Teddy.

And he was right. There, looking just like he’d been laid to rest in a coffin made of ice, was Farnsworth MacIntyre.

We stood around, pretty quiet. There wasn’t a lot to say. Emma Barker made us all a cup of tea and then we loaded the block of ice onto a trolley and parked it in Pete’s hay shed.

By then a pretty big crowd had turned up, folks arriving in dribs and drabs from town. Word had spread fast. They all wanted to take a look at the Ice Man.

Well, what do you do?

Me and Teddy sold tickets at the door. Farnsy would’ve wanted it that way.