We now find ourselves in Uluru or more precisely, Yulara, the resort outside the National Park. We are as far away from Sydney now as we are going to get on this trip.

To date we have travelled about 6,000 kilometers in 6 weeks. We have wended our way from Sydney, across to the centre of Australia via Tarmac roads passing North through New South Wales and Queensland and then across West through the Northern territories.

Here, with a sore shoulder, I made enquiries about an Osteopath and I kid you not, but the resort reception this far from Sydney did not know what that was but was sure there wasn’t one in or near Yulara! I will survive with pain relief but if I was on the coast I would locate a professional to help within minutes!

The point leads me to the topic of the remoteness of places in the inner parts of Australia still and learning of the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

The shortest distance from Sydney to Uluru in the Centre of Australia is approximately 3,000kms. This is the equivalent of driving from London, via Paris to the Eastern most parts of Europe and visiting friends in Istanbul, also a 3,000 kilometer journey. Cross the water there and you are in Asia.

By 1907, the first solitary car had successfully travelled from Adelaide to Darwin. A bit later, during the First World War, attempts had been made to create a more permanent road or track to enable vehicles to pass South to North, also a 3,000km journey. This road could not withstand flooding and intrepid vehicles would find their routes bogged down following heavy rainfall. Vehicles were not constructed to withstand these conditions and the early pioneers had proceeded on bullock carts or used mules, horses and camels to move around.

It was not until 1987 (check date), in my own lifetime, that a tarmac road was laid to enable reliable vehicular access to these parts and voyages still took days.

So when Flynn, in the early 20th Century, developed his ideas for the flying doctor service it was in recognition of the remoteness and isolated nature of Outback settlements.

There were no tarmac roads and no 4x4 vehicles capable of travelling inland. If 80% of Australians live in coastal area now, this was even more so then.

At the turn of the century, most city-dwellers, dismissed these settlers as "outbackers" following gold rushes and promises of fortunes from the land. The reality was different. For every adventurer to strike it rich a hundred more struggled to survive.

Many an unnamed grave marked the end of a bushman's cherished hopes.

They were battlers looking for a new way of life, new challenges, a place to take their herds. The big farming stations were miles apart. Families lived in simple homesteads, overseeing vast tracts of land. The men were forced to spend much of their time out in the mustering camps rounding up sheep and cattle.

In the harsh, sparsely settled landscape, distance and isolation were tangible barriers.

While Sydney and Melbourne had splendid Victorian public buildings, townships of the Inland were mostly makeshift huddles of corrugated iron with a hotel, a store, and a police house.

Communication was virtually impossible. Rudimentary telephone and telegraph links existed only near larger towns.

Radio communication was practically unknown. Motor cars were novel and unreliable on tracks gouged by bullock wagons and camel trains.

And so to John Flynn.

JOHN FLYNN, was a Presbyterian minister, who arrived in Australia in 1911 and he was troubled by the lack of medical services in these remote areas.

Flynn’s point was that these pioneers had opened up the wealth of Inland Australia for the benefit of all, but in doing so had cut themselves off from many of the advantages that wealth was bringing to coastal communities.

Flynn was employed by the Presbyterian Australian Inland Mission to highlight the plight of these remote rural communities. Isolation and loneliness were common place. But what struck Flynn most, was the absence of medical facilities. There was no doctor up the road. A sick or injured man or woman had to be dealt with by primitive first aid available on a station. The brutal fact was that often, the result was death.

Flynn founded the Inlander - the magazine of the Australian Inland Mission - to publicise the outback. This magazine would help him lobby and campaign for his Flying Doctor Service.

In 1917, Reverend John Flynn received an inspirational letter from Lieutenant Clifford Peel. The young airman and war hero suggested the use of aviation to bring medical help to the Outback.

He suggested to Flynn that what was needed was an aerial medical service for hard to reach locations. Sadly he was killed in 1918.

So it was his blueprint that fired Flynn’s imagination. He spent the next ten years lobbying for an medical service, and subsequently he spent his working life championing this cause, raising funds and lobbying benefactors, politicians, the Church and anyone who would listen.

One of those early benefactors was Hugh Victor McKay. He had made his money manufacturing the Sunshine Combine Harvester.

Flynn knew McKay - also a staunch Presbyterian - and his sons, and regularly corresponded with them.

While helping to build a base hospital in Alice Springs, Flynn received news of his friend's death. McKay had made provision for Flynn's dream. The Australian Inland Mission was to have £2,000 for a one-year experimental "Flying Doctor Service" in Cloncurry provided that a further £4,000 could be raised by the Church.

So with the help of McKay’s generosity, in 1928, Flynn founded the Australian Inland Mission Aerial Medical Service, later known as the Royal Flying Doctors Service, the world's first comprehensive aerial medical service. Flynn selected Cloncurry as the base for the service due to its proximity to growing populations in mining camps and scattered pastoralists who lacked access to medical facilities.

Cloncurry boasted one of the earliest airstrips, facilitating the transportation of medical staff and supplies to remote areas. For seven "experimental years" Cloncurry remained the only Flying Doctor base.

Qantas supplied the first aircraft to the fledgling organisation, VH-UER a De Havilland DH.50, dubbed "Victory". On 17 May 1928,[6] two days after inception, the service's first official flight piloted by Arthur Affleck departed from Cloncurry, 85 miles to Julia Creek in Central Queensland, where the plane was met by over 100 people at the airstrip. Qantas charged two shillings per mile for use of the Victory during the first year of the project.[6]

Then Flynn's efforts began to bear fruit. In 1932, the success from its operations in Cloncurry, and the increasing public awareness to this vital rural service, resulted in a push for a national network of flying doctors. In 1934 this was realised with the new Australian Aerial Medical Service opening up "Sections" across the nation. Bases were then established at Wyndham, Port Hedland, Kalgoorlie, Broken Hill, Alice Springs and Meekatharra along with two additional Queensland bases at Charters Towers and Charleville.

One of his early Doctors at Cloncurry was Dr Vickers, young and recently qualified. Vickers had some of Flynn’s campaigning zeal and later on was to establish the flying doctor base at Charleville, where he served until 1954. As a Nuffield Fellow in 1954, he canvassed in England for the development of the flying doctor service on a British Commonwealth basis. Then, until his retirement in 1966, he was Superintendent of the Queensland Section of the (now) Royal Flying Doctor Service and Medical Consultant to the National Council. He was appointed OBE in 1951 and CMG in 1955. Following his death in 1967, his ashes were scattered from a flying doctor plane over Cloncurry.

Communication

The second big issue identified was the lack of means of communication in the event assistance being needed. Flynn's idea was to have cheap, hardy and easy-to-operate wireless transmitting sets in every outback home or bush camp, to connect people with services.

Flynn collaborated with George Traeger, an engineer, who developed a wireless pedal radio. It transmitted its first message on June 19, 1929, from Cloncurry to Augustus Downs Cattle Station in Queensland's Gulf of Carpentaria.

In 1939 the Australian Inland Mission handed over the Cloncurry Base to the new organisation, the Australian Aerial Medical Service with the "Flying Doctor" name becoming official in 1942. It aimed to provide healthcare to people in isolated regions with limited access to medical facilities.

As an aside, my own Grandmother Dr Ellen Kent-Hughes practiced medicine in Mitchell, one of the tiny inland towns we passed through. And I understand that her letters from the late 1920’s refer to her involvement with the Flying Doctor Service. Doubtless she would have been one of very many people who were able to make a small contribution. If I find out more, I will update this blog!

John Flynn himself died in 1951 and was buried by Mt Gillen. His memorial stone can be seen outside Alice Springs. The story of his stone in the image is told elsewhere in another blog.

Queen Elizabeth II visited the Flying Doctor Service's Broken Hill base in 1954 to speak on the radio network and the Service was given a royal prefix in 1955.

Although Flynn's work was among the white population of the outback, in the Inlander he portrayed the need for Church work among aboriginal people. In practical terms, the service gave medical security to everybody.

The Royal Flying Doctor Service today

So Flynn’s work is continued by the RFDS, and other institutions which provide care for people in isolated outback Australia, including Angel Flight which consists of volunteers who mainly own their aircraft and who fly out to a point to pick up the patient. Then a volunteer picks them up at the airport and takes them to the Doctor or a motel.

The Flying Doctor Service has become a world class organisation, with supportive financial grants from Federal and State governments. It operates from 14 bases - Mt Isa (formerly Cloncurry), Charleville, Cairns (formerly Charters Towers), Wyndham, Derby, Broken Hill, Port Augusta, Alice Springs, Port Hedland, Carnarvon, Meekatharra, Kalgoorlie, Jandkadot and Launceston.

One hundred thousand consultations are handled each year; two million miles flown. Thirty-two aircraft, largely owned by the service, make 6500 flights a year, carrying 9000 patients. Modern methods of operation combine regular clinic flights to aboriginal communities, mining camps, station properties and other inland settlements, with daily radio consultations where anyone within range of a base may speak with the doctor to obtain medical advice.

In an earlier blog when passing through Blackall, I touched on my links with the MacDonald family who lived on a remote farm station at Coolatai in the Blackall district. It is this family who are related to me and, more closely, to many of those we are visiting on this fabulous tour.

Thanks to both the RFDS and the volunteer service Angel Flight, the last MacDonald farmers on Coolatai in the 2020’s, were able to attend many necessary medical appointments particularly towards the end of their days. This would have given them peace of mind and a medical service comparable to their relatives in Charleville, Melbourne, Brisbane and Byron Bay!

I need to acknowledge the Flying Doctor museums at both Cloncurry and at Alice Springs for much of the information contained in this blog. And to also add if there are any mistakes they will be all mine!

In Cloncurry there is an actual early plane to see. And in Alice Springs they have a mock up of an early light aircraft inside the museum and a couple of the photos show the cramped and basic conditions for staff and patients.

Below, is an example of a medical supply kit, another Flynn innovation, which was distributed to remote locations so that these could be accessed on the instructions of a Doctor over a radio. Early example of tele medicine!