Dr. John Biggs recalls his times with the Flying Doctor Service
It gives me much pleasure to recall my times with the Flying Doctor Service. As a young doctor in Melbourne I had read a good deal about the service and I had tea one day with a Reverend McKay. He told me more about the service and suggested I write to RFDS in Queensland. In November 1962 I went to Charleville and spent a fortnight with Dr Timothy Joseph O’Leary, flying with him on his weekly circuits and taking part in his clinics. Thargomindah was then a very small hospital with a number of beds but no current patients. I was later to spend the night there, so hot and so worried by mosquitoes.
My first visit was on Melbourne Cup day and the clinic stopped while doctor, nurse and patients gathered round a large radio to listen. It was a big clinic and we were there from about 10am until 4pm, before flying off to Tobermory Station where we stayed the night. I recall the name Watts and Mrs Watts was a most gracious hostess. Early the next morning we sat down with station staff to a breakfast of steaks and eggs, all served on a large silver platter. Tim had pointed to the large shed on Tobermory as we flew in, saying the name on the roof was to allow identification when floods surrounded the homestead.
Flying out of Charleville was in a DeHavilland Drover with engines on the wings and on the nose. The pilot at the time was Des Robinson, seconded from Trans Australia Airlines for a year. He told me the post with RFDS was eagerly sought since flying, as was said, by the seat of the pants,was becoming rare even in 1962. I was later to be flying alone with Des when I asked about taking off from Thargomindah at first light. It was certainly good to get away from the mosquitoes but it also helped in making radio contact, I was told.
We flew on from Tobermory to Eromanga and I remember it as a dusty township with a Flying Doctor clinic in the main street. One of Tim O’Leary’s skills was dentistry and I recall him battling with a molar and showing success by holding the forceps and tooth out the window. At another station, whose name I forget, the owner and his family had invited people from, as it was told me, a hundred miles around for an evening of dinner, much talk and even carpet bowls. The clinic seemed to be a stimulus for a regional get together and as a city boy I found the evening as pleasurable as it was surprising.
We went on to Jundah and met the Sister, Sandy Douglas and her husband Bill. I was told many hospitals in outback Queensland were similarly staffed with a Sister able to care for a great range of illness and her husband looking after the structure and the supplies. It seemed a good arrangement and I wonder if it still pertains.
In January 1963, preparing to start training at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne, I received a telegram from Queensland asking if I would do a locum for Dr O’Leary, whose mother was ill in Ireland. With my wife and year-old son we set off for Brisbane on the train and had one of the fastest State medical registrations ever. I flew out to Charleville and was put up at Corone’s Hotel, almost empty at this time of year. The visit was enlivened by the invitation, I think customary, for the visiting doctor to join the Corone family at Sunday lunch, a magnificent meal. I attended the Presbyterian Church on the Sunday, recalling the beginnings of the Flying Doctor service by Flynn and the Inland Mission. Des Robinson was still the pilot and the two of us resumed Dr O’Leary’s clinic schedules. There were a couple of emergency calls, one of them way to the south, almost to the NSW border. A stockman had abdominal pain sufficiently severe to call the Doctor and we flew for hours above the trees lining the otherwise indistinct Cooper Creek. Look out, said Des, for smoke from a fire, for this will both show us where the patient is and also which way to land. The man was got into the plane, examined and reassured.
A year later, in January 1964, I returned to Charleville, again as an observer. Tim O’Leary was back in action and the highlight of this time was a visit to Bedourie where I was shown the ever-flowing bore, and to Birdsville where we went to the Inland Mission Nursing Home. The two nursing sisters we met were impeccably uniformed and as I recall gave us afternoon tea. They must often have seemed lonely in what was then a very remote part of the country. About this time a family driving on the Birdsville track had run out of water and all lost their lives. The press said they had perished, a word that seemed to me then to sum up the isolation of Birdsville.
In 1965 I was working at the Brisbane Royal Women’s Hospital and arranged a visit with the Flying Doctor based in Charters Towers. But that’s another story.
Written by Dr. John Biggs
© Dr. John Biggs & the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) 14th April 2008