I joined Bristow Helicopters one week after demob for ten bob an hour, there was unlimited overtime so I could make up my wages by working most weekends, time and half on Saturdays and double time on Sundays, I had left the RAF as a married Sgt earning about £29 a week. I studied the Air Navigation Order, Civil Aviation Inspection Procedures and the British Civil Aircraft Regulations and became a Licensed Engineer (A&C) on the Whirlwind covering all trades except radio, I was then salaried at £1326 pa.

As soon as I was Licensed we were sent to Kuala Trengganu, Malaysia as the Chief Engineer of the operation with two Whirlwinds (W/W) which flew the crews to the oil fields for Esso Malaysia, my pay increased by £1000 a year tax free with overseas and local allowances. We flew out in a VC10 landing at Cairo, Colombo, Bombay and Kuala Lumpur, in those days we were allowed outside the aircraft during stops.

As oil was found in large volumes the W/Ws were superseded by two S61Ns, for the uninitiated, Sea Kings are copies of the Sikorsky 61A, Sikorsky inserted a six feet plug in the S61A fuselage to make the S61N. The W/Ws had to leave so I flew down as crew to Seletar, Singapore in VR-BDL where we removed the floats and fitted the wheels for the ferry flight to Indonesia, floats made the a/c 20 knots slower, my wife Kathleen, was then in the Hotel Malaysia but had to move out as soon as she could after the helicopter left Singapore.

A surveyor of the Indonesian Directorate of Civil Aviation was flown to Singapore and I transferred the a/c to the Indonesian register as PK-HBM with a Certificate of Airworthiness. The pilot and I then left Singapore and flew down the east coast of Sumatra to Palembang for refuelling, we had a wobble pump on board to empty the drums of Jet A-1 left for us by our Indonesian partner Masayu a heavy plant company, the pump was supposed to have been checked by one of our engineers but didn't work when I tried it. Eventually, I stripped the pump down and found that the centre core had been wrongly installed, the engineer obviously hadn't tested the pump. I gave him a hard time when we caught up with him.

Anyway we had to stay for an unscheduled night in Palembang which was organised by Masayu, which was just as well as the pilot was only given $10 US expenses for the whole trip. The next day we flew to Djakarta and met up with my "engineer" again and removed the wheels and installed the floats. We stayed in the Intercontinental Hotel in Djakarta, I must say that we were always treated well when we had to stay anywhere.

Djakarta in January 1970 was in a terrible state, half finished buildings everywhere, beggars in the streets lying on the pavements it was all very run down. We then flew to Surabaya before flying to our operating base on a small island called Masalembo half way to Borneo. The oil camp there was run by a Japanese company the Kyushu Oil Company.

The next morning we turned up for breakfast to have fried eggs and toast, have all pretenders of using chopsticks ever tried eating soft fried eggs with them, no irons around. Soon, we had to check out our route to the oil rig Discovery which was a drilling ship, the tower sat over a hole in the ship through which the drilling took place, it was positioned between east Borneo and Sulavesi, we were looking in particular for emergency landing sites.

We flew to Banjarmasin in south-east Borneo and refuelled, we then flew north-east about 150 miles over the jungle without finding any possible landing site, we saw orang-utans, palm tree flowers but no space to land, arriving at the drilling ship we found that that were "driving pile" they were driving 3 foot casing into the seabed using a piledriver which operated as a diesel engine, the piston of which pushed the casing downwards when fuel was injected, this made a tremendous noise day and night, I tried to sleep in the dormitory but the whole ship was shuddering so after a while I found it too hot and noisy so I went to the helicopter and found the pilot already there so we settled down on the canvas seats and got some sort of rest.

The pilot decided that we couldn't safely use the route we had flown the day before so we flew back around the coast to Banjarmasin to find a possible refuelling stop. At this point I must say that helicopters on this sort of operation make up their own operating procedures. As a Licensed Engineer I was the ultimate decider on the helicopter's condition, telephoning Head office wasn't possible, we relied on telex for communication to order spares, but any engineering problem had to be sorted out on site.

It was decided with our client Union Carbide that a refuelling dump was required and the perfect site was on Palau Laut (Sea Island) off the south-east coast of Borneo, we flew in with some interpreters to be greeted by an English speaking policeman, we couldn't believe it, so isolated as it was we could arrange things very easily. A hut was built, a watchman appointed and we had a refuelling stop albeit fuel drums and a wobble pump.

The operation existed to fly crew changes to the rig and back which meant the a/c leaving Masalembo very early to Surabaya to collect the crew which had flown in from Djakarta on the DC9, fly them to Masalembo and on to Palau Laut then to the rig, on returning we flew the replaced crew back to Surabaya, the whole trip took about seven flying hours, as the main rotor head had to be greased every ten hours we were well in. Having said that, the a/c once flew over the island of Madura which was between Surabaya and Borneo.

Madura is famous for kite flying, I had a call from our pilot that flying at 1200 ft over Madura the main rotor caught the string of one of these kites and the kite came flying down into the rotor, after landing he cut off the string and asked for advice, faced with a journey by boat to Surabaya to inspect the rotor myself which could take days, I asked him to check for damage, he couldn't find any except that the push-rods were well polished, I authorised him to return to base without pax. The head was almost due overhaul so I decided to replace it before time, as a commercial business we didn't normally replace items until they reached overhaul life, and often we could authorise an extension. We had no hangar, see photo, all our maintenance was carried out in the open, see me inspecting the mast during the head change.

Our W/W flew over 100 hrs a month, the max being 120 hours, when I was on 22 Sqdn we were limited to 40 hours a month with a ground crew of different trades, there were four of us with one always away on time off. Our spares turned up after six weeks and it took us that long to get a bar organised, as we were supplied with food etc I only took the equivalent of £10 with me from Singapore to last the time on-site.

We spent most evenings walking along the floodlit pier which was about half mile along a reef to a deep water landing stage as shown on the photo looking at the sea life, sharks and rays amongst others used to come into the lit areas. The diving was good also. We occasionally had to get to Masalembo overnight by boat, a Japanese fishing boat, this was terrible, the first time I tried to sleep on a bunk below deck and woke up with cockroaches running over me, I stayed on deck every time after that.

The deal was that we should work for three weeks and have a week off in Singapore, my wife sent a telex stating that she had found a house in Serangoon Gardens but I didn't get to see her for six weeks, hoping to take two weeks off I was sent down to earth after ten days to get sent back to sort out a stupid complaint from an ex-army pilot which couldn't be answered by my staff of two unlicensed engineers. This was a continual problem, I never had the leave I was entitled to for the whole operation of nine months. Having found no oil, we had to move on.

We then flew to Duri, Sumatra, the Caltex Oil Company had a 10,000 sq miles concession to drill for oil in the virgin jungle in an area roughly on the same latitude as Singapore, Bristow had been operating there since 1968 with 3 Bell 205A-1s, and 2 Bell 206A's.

The 205 is a civil Huey of Vietnam fame and the 206 is better known as the Jet Ranger, shown below. This was quite a complicated operation, to start, the area had to be surveyed, the 206s were used to ferry the surveyor crews around, they walked through the jungle and decided which area should be drilled next. A 205 would then send in the clearing crews to a clear spot and let them down through the bush with chainsaws and bags of rice on a rope ladder. These crews all locals would then set up a camp and clear several acres of trees and make a landing platform at the side. The picture shows a typical oil rig site. The 205 would then bring in the small bulldozer, the 205 could lift 4000 lbs on the cargo hook so the 'dozer was dismantled before being carried and rebuilt on landing. The 'dozer would clear the fallen trees away to make a clearing big enough for the drilling site. When we arrived we had emergency landing pads every kilometer or so. The jungle was treated very poorly, whole valleys were destroyed by oil spillage. When it was time to move to the rig to a new site, the 205's would first undersling the dining room Portacabins, the drilling tower would be lowered and broken into lots of 4000 lbs, these would be flown in a strict sequence to the new site and re-erected. One of the first tasks was to locate water and a small drilling rig only capable of going down 40 feet was used, there was so much oil in the ground that they often found it instead of water.

Before helicopters were used the rig had to be moved by lorry on roads bulldozed through the trees to a river, then barged close to the new site and then trucked to the site, this took about a year, with the helicopters a complete rig move took three weeks. Flying was intense, each 205 did 10 hrs a day with two pilots, we often had to carry out 50 hr inspections during the lunch hour at the drilling site, I well remember checking an engine oil filter when the heavens opened, I merely closed the engine door around me to stay dry, it got rather hot after a while.

We had a strange in and out cycle, two weeks on, a week off, one week on and one week off. Leaving Duri at about 5 am were driven in Land Rovers south to the main oil camp Rumbai just north of Pekanbaru, the roads were mixed sand and oil, which made them very slippery when wet, we often saw heavily loaded buses which had slid off the road. The trip was made easier by taking cans of Tiger beer with us even at that hour, we then had breakfast at Rumbai. We were later bussed to Pekanbaru airport to catch the Garuda Friendship to Singpore, we had a few ex-vietnam American pilots most of whom grew their hair long, they always had trouble entering Singapore as there was a long hair ban at the time to stop hippies, Bristows had to get involved to get them clearance. The W/W ended up in Singapore where I put it in a crate specially made by the Singapore Baggage and Travel Agency and shipped it off to Dubai. SBTA did all of our travel and shipping arrangements and were very good. They packed our belongings when we left Singapore, we had rented our furniture for £5 a month, so there wasn't much to pack but they wrapped every plate and cup individually, the only items that broke during the return to UK was the items we had 'packed' ourselves.

I managed to get to Australia on a Lycoming T-53 engine course (the Chinook helicopters use the T-55, a larger version) at Hawker de Havilland in Sydney for three weeks and took my wife and apart from all the sights, we managed to see Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player at Manly golf course during the Dunlop Masters. During a walk through the factory to look at some engine bits I came across an old pal from 22 Sqdn who had emigrated, he was a member of an ex-servicemen's club so we some entertainment in the evenings. We were due to return home for three months leave in November 1971 but as we didn't relish facing a UK winter, we stayed until May 1972 looking to buy a house on our return, unfortunately, the house prices had doubled in those six months so we had to get a much larger mortgage than we anticipated to buy a house in East Grinstead.