Flying Doctors

The Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia is a not-for-profit charitable service providing aero medical emergency and primary health care services together with communication and education assistance to people who live, work and travel in regional and remote Australia.

There are eight RFDS entities that provide the service and fund raise for the RFDS nationally. These entities are called the RFDS Sections and together they form the Australian Council of the RFDS.

The Australian Council is the national coordinating body and through this Council, the Service communicates with the Commonwealth Government on national issues, including negotiation for funding. The National Office is situated in Sydney and manages and distributes Commonwealth Government funds to RFDS Sections and coordinates national strategies on health, aviation, communications, public affairs, fundraising, legal and industrial matters.

This is the story of how medicine, aviation and radio were combined to bring health care to the people who live, work and travel in the more remote areas of Australia.

Established in 1928 and developed on a national basis in the1930s, the Service soon provided not only emergency medical aid to the people of the Inland, but also a comprehensive health care and community service.

The development of the Inland was in many ways made easier by the presence of the Flying Doctor.

Previously, serious illness or accident often meant death and the Inland holds many graves of people who might have lived had they been able to receive medical aid quickly enough.

The late Sir Robert Menzies, Former Prime Minister of Australia 1939-41 & 1949-66, once very aptly said that the Flying Doctor Service represented the greatest single contribution to the effective settlement of the far distant back country that we have witnessed in our time. The RFDS was the first comprehensive aerial medical organisation in the world and to this day remains unique for the range of primary health care and emergency services it provides and for the huge area of sparse population and climatic extremes over which it operates - 24 hours a day, 365 days a year The story of the Flying Doctor Service is forever linked with its founder, the Very Reverend John Flynn - it is a story of achievement that gave courage to the pioneers of the Inland.

In 1911 the Reverend John Flynn took up his first appointment at Beltana Mission in the north of South Australia.

Flynn became very close to the people of the outback and in 1912 he was appointed as the first Superintendent of the Australian Inland Mission (AIM), the bush department of the Presbyterian Church.

He began his missionary work at a time when only two doctors served an area of some 300, 000 sq kms in Western Australia and 1, 500, 000 sq kms in the Northern Territory.

Flynn began establishing bush hospitals and hostels in remote outback areas which alleviated much of the dread associated with the great ...