Australia's Unique Outback Medical Organisation.
This is the story of how medicine, aviation and radio have been jointly put to work in the service of the people who live, work and travel in the remonte inland of Australia. It is a fascinating story of a uniquely Australian venture. Established in 1928 and developed on a national basis in the 1930's the Service soon provided for the people of the Inland not only medical aid in emergencies, but also a comprehensive health care and community service. The Service today covers more than 7,150,000 sq kms an area larger than Western Europe, reaching into the very heart of the Australian Continent - the land of the flying doctor, the flight nurse, and pilot.
• No doudt the development of the Inland would have been seriously retarded but for the work of the RFDS. Former Prime Minister of Australia, the late Sir Robert Menzies, once very aptly said that the Flying Doctor service started, serious innness or accident often meant death. The Inland holds many lonely graves of people who might have lived had they been able to receive medical aid quickly enough. MANTLE OF SAFETY The story of the flying Doctor Service is forever linked with its founder, the Very Reverend John Flynn - Flynn of the Inland - a story of achievement that gave courage to the pioneers of the inland. John Flynn's vision of providing a Mantle of Safety (as he called it) for the people of the Inland can be traced back to the years immediately preceding World War l, when was one of several church bodies undertaking missionary work in the Inland.
• The AIM was conscious of the terrible isolation of Inland people, so remote from medical and religious care. Jojn Flynn began his missionary work in 1912 , 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. It did not take him long to realise that air transport and radio were needed to break the isolation of the Inland and to provide adequate medical care for its people. But he had to wait many years before he could translate his vision of a flying doctor service into practice.
• Aircraft at that time were not suited for ambulance work and radio was then very much in its infancy. John flynn in October 1918 in the quarterly magazine, The inlander which he edited, published an article outlining the feasbility of air transport in the Inland and its possible use for air ambulance work.The article was written by a young Australian medical student, Clifford Peel who, while serving with the Australian Flying Corps in World War l in France was killed in action. But as developments showed, Peel was ahead of his time. Nevertheless, despite the great difficulties facing him John Flynn worked towards the fulfillment of his vision with an extraordinary tenaccity that was born out of true compassion for the people of the Inland.
• BIRTH OF THE FLYING DOCTOR SERVICE
• The Flying Doctor service, then known as the Aerial Medical Service under the control of the Auistralian Inland Mission, became operational on May 15, 1928. The first flying doctor of the Service was Dr k St vincent Welch and the first flying doctor pilot, an aircraft and servicing.
Qantas, today a major international airline, was in those days still a small bush airline, known as Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Service. (Q.A.N.T.A.S).
• The first aircraft used by the newly established Service was a de havilland DH-50A, a single engined, timber and fabric biplane, which cruised at 80 miles an hour and could carry, apart from the pilot, a doctor, nurse or sitting patient and a strecher.

  Je suis allé faire un contrôle pour ma jambe suite à l'accident, aprés avoir trop marché j'avais mal, il faut dire qu'il y a tellement de sites à visiter et être handicapé dans le désert ce n'est pas le pied !..