What has the Royal Flying Doctor Service in common with beBee?

When I was a young fella in tartan territory, way before I moved to the land of milk and honey down under, I already knew much about Australia from the movies, the radio (no TV back in the early fifties) and my grandma, who had sailed there and back, via the Suez Canal.  She brought me back a koala bear (we called them bears back then), not a real one, but it was wonderful all the same.  Certainly different from the teddy bears we had in the toy shops.

Later, when I was attending primary school, all the kids knew about the Land of Oz, after all, "That's where Skippy the kangaroo comes from, isn't it?

Then there was the outback, bigger then Ben-Hur!  All the kids had heard about the outback, where the aboriginals went walkabout, played the didgeridoo, and there were cattle stations the size of a small country. We had a visitor come to our school in Scotland to tell us about the School of the Air, where the outback kids were taught by radio. No clip round the ear from those teachers.

But the magic for me was always the Flying Doctor. We often listened to a serial about it on Saturday night radio at my auntie's. I can still remember one line which has stuck in my mind all these years, as the doc, in a broad 'strine' accent, called back to base over the radio with, "Floyin' docta ta Wollamboola Bise, come in Plise". 

My cousin and I were often treated to a Pathe Pictorial newsreel, featuring these magnificent medical staff and their flying machines, when we spent the occasional rainy Saturday afternoon at the Cartoon Cinema in Aberdeen. Those larger than life, screen depicted, miracle workers flew through sun kissed skies to rescue the sick and injured from remote bush townships and cattle stations and bring them back for hospital treatment in the towns and cities, or else provided regular clinic services in the middle of nowhere.

Well, here we are, several decades on, and the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) is still very much alive and an integral part of the Australian outback. You can see the many active bases and flight routes in this map below, taken from the RFDS website.

You can understand from the above why the RFDS is "one of the most comprehensive aeromedical organisations in the world, providing extensive primary health care and 24-hour emergency service to people over an area of 7.3 square kilometres". Even more so when you of realise that the distance from Melbourne (in the south) to Cairns (in the north) is about the same distance as from Madrid to Istanbul.

The RFDS began in the early 20th century when Reverend John Flynn, who had seen first hand the struggle of the early pioneers, had a vision "to provide a 'mantle of safety' for people of the bush". He used a large bequest from a supporter of his cause to open what started off as the Australian Inland Mission Aerial Medical Service, flying out of Cloncurry in Queensland.  This was inevitably to expand to the present day RFDS fleet of 66 aircraft, flying almost 27 million kilometres each year. 

That's the equivalent of 34 trips to the moon and back, or more than 600 flights around the Earth.
RFDS website

"If you start something worthwhile - nothing can stop it"
John Flynn, founder of the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

https://www.flyingdoctor.org.au/qld/

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When not researching the weird or the wonderful, the comical or the cultured, the sinful or the serious, I chase my creative side, the results of which can be seen as selected photographs of my travels on my website at:

http://ken-boddie.squarespace.com

The author of the above, Ken Boddie, besides being a sometime poet and occasional writer, is an enthusiastic photographer, rarely leisure-travelling without his Canon, and loves to interact with other like-minded people with diverse interests.

Ken's three day work week (part time commitment) as a consulting engineer allows him to follow his photography interests, and to plan trips to an ever increasing list of countries and places of scenic beauty and cultural diversity.