The Outback

The Australian outback has been romanticized by authors and film makers. Its reality is hard work, aridness, and casual danger. But perhaps the most defining characteristic is distance. Although there is no agreed upon definition of the perimeter of the outback, a general description allows for a size of about 2.5 million square miles. Compare this with Alaska (663,000 square miles) and Texas (269,000 square miles). Although the Outback occupies the center of Australia, some scientists argue that its limits extend to some of the coastal regions. This map probably makes it a little too large to the south and northeast, but you get part of the idea:

Outback Australia, as defined by PEW Charitable Trusts. Picture: PEW Charitable Trusts.

Oh yeah, distance: from Darwin (not usually considered part of the outback), on the “Top End” to Alice Springs is about 930 miles. From Alice to Adelaide (on the southern end of the Stuart Highway) is about another 900 miles. The Stuart Highway is paved the whole way – as of 1987. For an alternate way to cross north to south, try The Ghan, a luxury railway.

 

Lounge Car on The Ghan

If you want to go west, you can take the Eyre Highway from Port Augusta in South Australia to Perth, Western Australia, a distance of just over 1000 miles. This highway was sealed in 1976 and features the 90 Mile Straight, a section 91.1 miles long with no curves.

The Eyre Highway runs along the southern edge of the Nullarbor Plain. If you really want to experience the Nullarbor, you can travel on the Indian-Pacific Railway, which includes the longest straight-section of track in the world – almost 300 miles.

Indian-Pacific Sleeper Cabin

If you’re really brave & adventurous (or profoundly stupid) you can drive the 620-mile Trans Access Road which runs alongside the railway and is completely unsealed.

To American eyes, the size of Australia is not much different than the continental US -bigger than most places, but not as big as Canada or Russia. But climate and geography matter: the vast expanses coupled with one of the most arid climates in the world means there is nothing in the center of Australia even remotely close to the American Great Plains. The absence of heavily productive farmland, means that the population is fairly small. Again, defining the region is up for debate, but a 2006 study (pdf) put the population at about 690,000. FWIW (and it’s not worth much since the population is not evenly spread), that works out to 36 square miles/person.

There are outback towns some legendary, such as Alice Springs. Others well-known, to Australians (at least to my generation; they may be well-known today, I just don’t know): Bourke, main town of the New South Wales outback and source of the phrase “back o’Bourke” (an extremely remote place). Resource towns like Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie (both gold); Coober Pedy (opals); Broome (pearls). There’s also the legendary Birdsville, home to the world-famous (yes, really) Birdsville Races. The normal population of the town is about 100, but up to 7000 attend the races:

This is one of the things that distance does: it makes for small towns. Coolgardie, now long after its mining heyday has less than 900. Bourke, only about 1800. Kalgoorlie has fewer than 30,000. Even the magical Alice only has about 27,000. And remember, Alice and Kalgoorlie are big outback towns. It’s not just a lack of opportunity that keeps these towns small. It’s a lack of everything. They’re hard to get in and out of. Unless you favor a very isolated life and get on with all the neighbors, you may not want to live in these towns. For example, Birdsville is connected by the legendary Birdsville Track to the South Australian town of Maree; about 320 miles. It’s considered a high-quality road because it is a graded dirt road, now passable by non-4WD vehicles. Oh, and if you drive the Track, the big town of Marree has a population of 630.

The distances between towns, and between towns and small working mines, communities and cattle and sheep stations (ranches) are significant. For many of the small number of people who live in the outback, the few towns are far from them. The climate in the region means that cattle stations (ranches) are huge because the stock is spread out. Until the 1970s, many of these stations were family-run. But they were, and still are, big (distance remember). Anna Creek Station—the biggest in the world—is about 9100 square miles. (bigger than the land area of eight American states).  For comparison, the largest ranch in the US is King Ranch in (where else?) Texas at 1290 square miles. King runs 20,000 head of cattle, Anna Creek ran about 17,000 in 2012. The nearest town to Anna Creek is Coober Pedy, a 2 ½ hour drive away, most of it on unpaved roads.

Obviously, the distance presents challenges. You don’t have a problem getting fresh meat, but most other supplies have to be obtained from the closest town (these days, I suspect there are more deliveries, but I doubt they have taken over). But what about emergency medical care? Education?

The Royal Flying Doctor Service

Emergency medical care was a significant concern for those who worked in the outback. Of course, in the early days of European settlement, emergency medical care in the outback was probably no worse than such care in a hospital. That is, it was based on dubious scientific certainty and odd assumptions. But, as medical care advanced in the twentieth century, there was a growing advantage to having access to trained physicians and modern medical care. Concern for access to medical care was expressed by many charitable groups, including a number of mission organizations (these groups were focused on providing clergy to white communities rather than evangelizing indigenous peoples). One of the men who sought to bring medical care to the outback was Presbyterian minister John Flynn.

Rev. John Flynn (1880-1951)

Flynn was born in 1880 in what was then the Colony of Victoria, part of the British Empire. As a young man he developed an interest in first aid and, while in theological college, he spent two summers as a missionary to sheep shearers. After being ordained, he worked out of the small South Australian town of Beltana (2016 population = 26) where he traveled to outlying livestock stations. Flynn was instrumental in the creation of what became known as the Australian Inland Mission (n.k.a. Frontier Services). The AIM ministry was primarily to small outback towns, isolated cattle and sheep stations, mining sites, and so on. Flynn was one of a small number of men who spent most of their time traveling around such locations to preach, baptize and so on (the idea of baptizing kids in the outback always brings to my mind the classic Australian poem “Bush Christening“).

Like many “modern” missionaries, Flynn was concerned with temporal as well as spiritual needs and sought funding to construct basic health care facilities and/or small hospitals in outback/bush towns. As welcome as these facilities were, they could not always help those injured or taken suddenly ill on isolated stations or in very small outback settlements. In some cases, men or women with basic medical training attempted to provide some kind of relief before victims were transported by road. But those suffering severe illness or injured in accidents, often died before they could be transported to any kind of medical facility. Occasionally, doctors tried to reach victims, but often arrived too late. Medical care improved in the early twentieth century driven, in part, by the tragedy of WWI. By the 1920s, survival chances from accidents increased if one could get professional attention quickly. Motor vehicles made this somewhat more accessible (for a terrific fictional, but realistic, post-WWII account, see the classic Anglo-Australian novel, A Town Like Alice.).

As early as 1917, Flynn was, apparently, contemplating the use of even more modern technology to aid in health care in the outback. That same year he received a letter from Lt. J Clifford Peel, written in 1917 as Peel sailed to serve in the Australian Flying Corps in France. Peel had heard of Flynn’s work in the outback and his letter proposed the use of aircraft to transport the sick and injured to medical care. Even in 1917, air travel made more sense than using the rudimentary roads in the outback. Sadly, Peel would not live to see the fulfillment of his vision. He set out on a recon mission on September 19, 1918 and never returned. Just one more casualty of the folly of nations.

Peel’s idea appears to have lodged in Flynn’s mind. By the 1920s, as aircraft became more common, the idea merged with another relatively new technology: radio. Commercial radio had emerged in the 1920s, often made possible by the knowledge gleaned in the WWI. By 1928, Flynn had raised enough money to institute an aerial medical service. AIM contracted with the Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Service (QANTAS) to operate one aircraft out of the Queensland outback town of Cloncurry (2016 population 2700). The service was initially known as the Aerial Medical Service, transport was conducted in a de Havilland DH-50A, and QANTAS charged 2 shillings/mile for the service. The first flight took place on May 17, 1928 to Julia Creek (2016 population 500) 85 miles from Cloncurry. The pilot was Arthur Affleck, the surgeon on board, Dr. K St. Vincent Welch. Welch had been called to treat two patients, one of whom had tried to commit suicide by cutting his own throat.

De Havilland DH50A: same model but not the actual aircraft

Within a year, technology aided the nascent service even more. In 1929 Alfred Traeger developed the pedal radio. First powering a morse code keyboard it then was used to power radios. This radically changed communications in the outback as electric power was still a pipe dream for most and batteries were too expensive.

Alfred Traeger operating a pedal radio utilizing a morse keyboard.

 

Pedal radio in the field.

By 1934, the renamed Australian Aerial Medical Service had three bases in Queensland, and six more in other parts of the outback. In 1937, the first female doctor – Jean White – began working for the service. Nurses, known as flying sisters (no relation to the Flying Nun) began working for the service in the 1940s. The nurses were responsible for some important innovations to the service including a medical chest with numbered medicines and a chart with parts of the body numbered so that, on first contact with someone at a remote site, doctors could have more accurate information.

In 1942 the service changed its name to the Flying Doctor Service. It had quickly gained attention from overseas. In 1932, the British Medical Journal reported on a lecture given in London by Dr W.D. Waljer of Adelaide on the work of the flying doctors. In 1936, the New York Times ran a story on the work of these “flying doctors.” That story included the account of the first trip from Port Hedland (2018 population 14,000) in Western Australia 125 miles away to care for a woman who had already been two days in labor. The Times also reported on the work of a doctor at the original base in Cloncurry who had flown (after visiting needy people in other locations) to the South Australian town of Innamincka (2016 population 44) to operate on a young woman who recovered.

In 1954, during her first visit to Australia, Queen Elizabeth II visited a Flying Doctor Station. Of course, rather than have her visit the home of the Service in Cloncurry, those m-f in N.S.W. managed to steal the limelight so she visited the base in Broken Hill. Nonetheless, she broadcast across the service’s radio network and later authorized the use of “Royal” – the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS).

18th March 1954: Queen Elizabeth II broadcasting from a Flying Doctor base at Broken Hill, New South Wales during a Royal tour of Australia. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)

If you run a web search for “flying doctor aircraft” you can get an idea of how the service’s ‘planes have kept pace with technological development. Up until the 1960s, the service continued to lease aircraft from other entities, but, in the 1960s, it began to purchase its own. It now uses 4wd vehicles as well as aircraft. Of course, technology continues to advance, and many RFDS aircraft are jets or prop-jets. Communication is more often done by satellite phone, or more sophisticated radio. But the RFDS continues to provide medical care to the isolated residents and communities in the outback.

Such care often still has an edge of adventure to it. Unlike the myth sold to Eisenhower about the American interstate system, the RFDS does sometimes use the outback highways (such as the Stuart Highway) as landing strips in an emergency.

                            

The most recent such incident I could find was from 2020, just outside Eucla, Western Australia (2016 population = 53). This online story is annoying because it uses the event to demand money but, if you scroll down, there’s a short clip of the landing.

Of course RFDS planes didn’t always land on paved highways. One story concerns a mission in a Queen Air which had landed on a dirt road to evacuate the badly injured victims of a road crash in Western Australia. Fully loaded with victims and personnel, the Queen Air needed 90 knots to get airborne. At 85 knots, they’d run out of road; the pilot pulled back on the stick; the props shredded the shrubs, and they got airborne. The pilot looked at the doctor and said, “there, I told you, a piece of piss.” There is more than one story of a take-off/landing strip being marked in unusual circumstances. Melanie Smith, manager of the Canobie cattle station in northwest Queensland, reports that, on occasion, they’ve soaked toilet paper rolls in diesel, stuffed them in empty pineapple or coffee tins and, when they hear the aircraft engines, lit them on fire. Another doctor told the story of taking off from a bush airstrip at night when kangaroos began popping up along and across the runway. As the doctor told the story, the pilot threaded his way through all the hopping trespassers until the plane was airborne. The doctor turned to the pilot and congratulated him on such a brilliant piece of flying. The pilot responded, “Is it safe to open my eyes now?”

Another account tells of a sixteen-year-old pregnant girl from an aboriginal community who was evac-ed out. As they got underway, the pilot radioed in to their destination—Alice Springs—to let them know the Persons-on-Board (POB) number was six. Before they’d started their descent into the Alice he’d amended the POB to seven as the RFDS doctor has delivered the baby en route.

The School of the Air

The RFDS also had one important offshoot. In 1950, progressive educator Adelaide Miethke, who had supported the work of the Flying Doctors, witnessed how two-way radio was revolutionizing medical care in the outback. She conceived the idea of what would become the School of the Air. Lessons would be mailed to students to complete then, a couple of days a week, the class would meet—via the radios used to call the RFDS—with the teacher. The teacher would speak with each student individually while the rest of the class listened in. In June, 1951, the first lessons were flown out of Alice Springs destined for children in isolated stations and the SOTA became a way-of-life for thousands of outback kids.

Adelaide Miethke (1881-1962)

 

Time, of course, marches on. While it hardly seems possible, the population of the outback has become even smaller than what it was when John Flynn began to think of new ways to bring health care to the region. The diminishing population, coupled with technological advances, has brought some changes to the outback. These days, the SOTA utilizes satellite ‘phones, internet, and personal computers.

Cattle are now surveyed from light aircraft and helicopters so that those running the stations know where to go to get the herds/flocks in. Stockman (cowboys) use motorbikes instead of horses so that fewer people can now accomplish the same amount of work. Some outback towns have disappeared while many have shrunk. But, at least until the insect ranchers get a hold of us, the outback is not going away. The RFDS and the SOTA remain vital components of life in the red center.

Music: Aussie folk-socialists sing about life in the outback.