Royal Flying Doctor Service celebrates 90th birthday with first flight re-enactment
Updated
The world's first flying doctor service has taken to the skies to celebrate 90 years of delivering healthcare to outback Australians.
The Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) took flight on May 17, 1928 when a leased Qantas plane that cost two shillings per mile departed Cloncurry for Julia Creek.
Ninety years later, the Antique Aeroplane Association of Australia has re-enacted the inaugural flight with 20 historic aircraft taking part.
Association president Matt Henderson said anybody interested in aviation was captivated by the early work of the RFDS.
"If you think about the type of aircraft they were operating when they first started in the 1920s they were open cockpit biplanes — pretty rudimentary," he said.
"And most of our old members' aircraft that are here are of similar vintage."
Bruce Pearcey, who flies a 1943 Stinson, said travelling in the footsteps of RFDS pioneers had been an eye-opening experience.
"One of the things this trip has shown me is just how brave the early aviators were, flying across the vast expanses between stations and towns in Queensland is just amazing," he said.
"For the uninitiated, there are not that many landmarks to navigate by, so they must've had an uncanny sense of where they were and where they were going."
The beginning
The RFDS began after John Flynn — a young missionary who founded the Australian Inland Mission — witnessed the lack of medical care available to those in the outback.
He had dreamed of a service to overcome the isolation but it wasn't until engineer Alfred Traeger's pedal radio invention came into being that the service was able to take off.
The radio used a generator to power a transceiver, enabling calls for help without electricity.
RFDS Queensland CEO Nino Di Marco said while the service had drastically changed over the 90 years, Mr Flynn's original vision remained.
"What was 90 years ago a dream, is now a reality," he said.
"We still use aviation as our primary platform to be able to reach people in rural and remote communities.
"The development of communities in rural and remote areas was, in part, able to happen because of the RFDS providing healthcare service to them through aviation."
'Honouring Dad' — the first permanent flying doctor
Allan Vickers was one of the best-known and the first permanent flying doctors and served Cloncurry as the medical superintendent from 1931–1934.
His son, Robert Vickers, who travelled to Cloncurry to watch the flight re-enactment, said while his father ended up establishing five RFDS centres, his entry to the medical service was not as easy as he had hoped.
"My Dad went to the University of Sydney, and in 1928 when the first advertisements for the flying doctors service were published, he applied but as fate would have it he was rejected on the grounds that he had insufficient experience," Mr Vickers said.
"On his way to London to study surgery, he had a couple of days to fill in in Sydney waiting for the ship and he thought he'd call on John Flynn and see how the flying doctor service was going — this was 1931."
"It was going very badly. The doctors didn't stay, and the Australian Inland Mission who were running it were 2,000 pounds in debt.
"John Flynn said to my father: 'I'd like you to go to Cloncurry'. He was to stay six months but ended up staying with the RFDS for the rest of his working life."
Mr Vickers was also instrumental in ensuring the survival of the RFDS when he spoke to parliament and secured the first Federal Government grant.
"No-one's ever thought of a better way since, and it's a uniquely Australian organisation and it gets more important and more significant as the years go by," Mr Vickers said.
Topics: doctors-and-medical-professionals, health, history, regional, charities-and-community-organisations, community-and-society, cloncurry-4824, perth-6000, julia-creek-4823, sydney-2000, brisbane-4000
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