Endpaper maps, b/w photos pp. xii, 306 #130216

Flynn recognized that his hospitals and padres could do little to alleviate the agony suffered by patients conveyed by camel, horse, or buggy over hundreds of trackless miles to his out-post hospitals. As early as 1919 he wrote in his Inlander magazine of the need for the wider mantle of safety that only radio and aircraft could supply. With the initial help of air force pilot Clifford Peel and later (Sir) Hudson Fysh, a founder of QANTAS, Flynn reached one of his goals when on May 17, 1928, a de Haviland 50, leased from QANTAS and named Victory, answered its first medical call.

In 1925, by chance, he met a young Adelaide radio enthusiast, Alfred Traeger, who expressed great interest in Flynn’s vision. This meeting was destined to change the history of communication in remote areas of Australia. The following year Flynn invited Traeger to join his staff. Their first successful two-way transmission was from Alice Springs in November 1925. However, the heavy copper oxide batteries used were unsuitable for remote homesteads. Traeger persisted until he perfected a transceiver for which the current was provided by the operator using cycle pedals to drive a small generator. In June 1929 this unique pedal radio using a hand-operated Morse code transmitter went into service in remote homesteads and Flynn hospitals through the new Flying Doctor base at Cloncurry. The pedal radio provided the link between patient, hospital, and Flynn’s Aerial Medical Service to complete his mantle of safety.

The final phase of Flynn’s great service to the people of remote areas began with his merging of his Aerial Medical Service into an Australia-wide community service—now known as the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia (R.F.D.S.). Flynn had recognized that his Flying Doctor Service, supported by limited resources, could never achieve his vision of a service for two-thirds of Australia. With the support of the 1933 Australian State Premiers’ Conference and his own church, he gave his Flying Doctor Service and all its transmitting equipment to the new organization and the pedal radios to the people of the outback. Flynn’s work was publicly recognized in the award of the O.B.E.(Order of the British Empire) in 1933.

Aboriginal Studies RFDS Royal Flying Doctor Service