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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.
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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.
He improvised flares for night landing in half petrol drums fitted with handles and filled with cotton waste soaked in crude oil. The flares would burn for up to two hours and could be seen up to thirty kms away. A rotation
beacon was installed in 1937 and a base wireless was installed two years later.
Dr 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. The WW2
airstrip Fenton near Hayes Creek, NT 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.
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