Necessity is the mother of invention and when the nearest school or hospital can be days away by rough dirt track, extraordinary people get busy creating amazing ways to manage.
Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory, is both central and remote. A place explorers thought couldn’t exist until a gap was found through the hills and mountain that encircle it, it has become the epicentre of two of Australia’s greatest, most widespread and essential community services – The Royal Flying Doctors and the School of the Air.
A missionary, John Flynn, first conceived the idea of the now essential medical service and the first flight in 1928 was the start of so much more than he could have imagined.
A model of the first plane
The first pilot – Arthur Affleck, had no radio, no navigational aides and only rudimentary road maps. He navigated by fences, river beds and telegraph poles.
True pioneers and life-savers
Anything you need for everything imaginable
The modern set up would have been a dream back in the day
The Royal Flying Doctors Service now has 63 planes spread all across Australia, providing emergency care and weekly clinics to some of the most remote places you can imagine across vast distances.
How Europe fits into Australia
The Royal Flying Doctors are never far away
Simple but effective
We have not passed through an outback station or pub that didn’t have a fundraising tin for the RFDS – because they know it is their lifeline. This small section of map indicates the landing strips for the planes. Red and blue are different types of dirt track. Yellow is bitumen – the stuff the rest of us are used to landing on.
There’s only one yellow marker
The doctors in action
An emergency airstrip on an outback road
The facts and stats for this service are quite incredible
John Flynn’s idea could not have taken off without Alfred Traeger. He invented a portable, pedal-powered two-way radio that allowed more effective communication over 500km. It was the breakthrough the service needed to cover the whole country.
The incongruous sight of the inventor at work in the outback
A small machine that made huge things happen
Traeger’s invention was instrumental in creating another of Alice Spring’s great claims to fame – the School of the Air.
Come one, come all
Boasting the largest classroom in the world, the School of the Air has been transmitting classes to far-flung outback children since 1951. Starting over the radio and now in full-technicolour over the internet.
Early days of the Air
Perhaps not everyone was excited by the breakthrough
Real distance learning
The modern radio set up, before the advent of the internet
Prince Charles & Lady Diana were two of many celebrity guests
The main broadcast studio now
School packs and timetables
There are 150 children at various levels up to age 14, and spread across more than a million square kilometres.
The dots on the map show the remote classrooms
The children tune in from far afield
Sadly we don’t have the pictures to do justice to this story. The school was off on mid term break when we visited, but just imagine for a moment how important it must be to remote families across this vast continent to have access to such a service. The children’s artwork gives a hint of the very different lives they lead and the need for their teachers to understand them.
School art depicting outback life
Not an average school day
Mum is the helicopter pilot
Dad runs the outback jail
Alice Springs was the place that didn’t exist. For many years explorers couldn’t find a way through the MacDonald ranges and today the town is still surrounded by vast nature.
Surrounding Alice
Anzac Hill at Alice Springs, surrounded by hills
It is perhaps no surprise that the mothers and fathers of invention created such great community services in a place that was so far from anywhere. Alice Springs was central to outback development and many pioneers were born or passed through here. We take our inspiration and determination from them, though Sara might skip the bonnets!
The first of many
