Sunday September 8, 2019
Road video and map – Erldunda to Alice Springs
I have three days of heavy driving ahead to get back to the east coast and so, today, I took it easy. I drove the 200 km/125 miles to Alice Springs and, after a couple of shopping stops, visited the Royal Flying Doctor Service tourist facility here. This is the largest airborne medical service in the world and the tourist facility told the story of its inception in 1927, described the innovations that allowed it to serve the Australian outback and documented its growth to a modern nationwide service. The presentations were modern, using a holographic theatre and virtual reality headsets to help educate visitors, as well as a mock up aircraft and traditional museum displays.
The service was inspired by the death of a cowboy 11 days after he was injured in 1919 because it took 12 days for a doctor to reach him. In 1927 they originally contracted one aircraft from Queensland and Northern Territory Air Services (QANTAS) but now own 71 custom equipped aircraft operating from 23 air bases. In addition to responding to emergencies they provide routine health clinics for rural communities and transfer patients between medical facilities all over the country. The service is free once it is approved by a team doctor.
There would be little point in starting an air based medical service without good communication and one of the great innovations was this pedal powered radio transceiver. One was supplied to each small community.
The map shows Royal Flying Doctor Service planes airborne while I was visiting. Since it was a Sunday afternoon these are likely emergency flights as routine work is done on weekdays.
Really interesting I remember watching flying Doctor programs when I was a child.
Me too. I looked it up – it was called “The Flying Doctor” and it began in 1959.
I used to watch the Flying Doctor too. And Skippy!
How cool that you got to see the place.
Cathy
Those are fairly recent Schwinn Bicycle pedals!
Interesting. I hadn’t looked closely at the pedals. Photos of the original devices seemed to have something looking like a large bar of soap as pedals.
What is Alice Springs like? I’ve always been curious about a town so far from everywhere else.
Alice has only 25,000 population (of the total 60,000 in outback Northern Territory) but feels bigger and very modern. No high-rise buildings but plenty of shops, businesses and hotels that appear to be doing well. Plenty of flights arrive each day and it has good road and rail connections to the coast so it does not feel too isolated.