Perth Weather Camera

Shady Lady's worlds collide again on a Kimberley saltpan

Yet 68 years after the extraordinary wartime rescue of stranded US airmen by Aborigines and Benedictine monks, two very different worlds have again collided on a remote Kimberley saltpan.

Alice Craig, 87, is the widow of First Lieutenant Doug Craig, the pilot of the B-24 Liberator bomber Shady Lady, forced to land halfway between Broome and Darwin in August 1943 after what was then WWII's longest bombing mission.

Clement Maraltadj, 55, is the grandson of Paul, one of three Aborigines who found the airmen -- and the seconded RAAF photographer Len Ruston of Perth -- after they survived thunderstorms, heavy anti-aircraft fire and Japanese Zeros during their marathon 16-hour, 35-minute raid into Borneo.

On the same makeshift runway where Shady Lady's discarded parts can still be seen, Mr Maraltadj told The Weekend Australian the airmen thought his grandfather and his two friends, Johnny and Boniface, were "wild bush blackfellas" when the trio -- on walkabout and covered in ceremonial ash and clay -- finally summoned the courage to approach the stricken aircraft.

When the equally nervous Americans dropped their weapon belts on the ground and shouted; "Yaa! Yaa!" believing it was a universal, indigenous greeting that meant "hail and hello", they got back a clipped; "Good morning. Hello, you boys all right?"

The stunned Americans looked at each other before gunner Maurice "Slim" Powers, quipped: "He must be from Harlem!"

"They got the shock of their lives," Mr Maraltadj said. "He and his mates were taught at the (then Drysdale River) mission, so they could speak good English. They would have given them a bit of a scare, I reckon."

A documentary on the Shady Lady to be aired next year is being made in which the Houston grandmother and Mr Maraltadj play pivotal roles. Last Sunday, the pair visited the saltpan for the first time. Shady Lady's story begins in May 1943, when John Curtin sought long-range bombers to strike at strategic Japanese targets to Australia's north. By June, four US squadrons of B-24 bombers were stationed throughout the Northern Territory.

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