Official Dinner to Celebrate the 90th Birthday of the Royal Flying Doctor Service

Senator Barry O’Sullivan; Member for Traegar, Mr Robbie Katter MP; Mr Mayor and Councillors; ladies and gentlemen,

I thank Mr Hombre Major, Elder of the Mitakoodi peoples, for his Welcome to Country, and acknowledge the traditional owners of Cloncurry.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Pilot Arthur Affleck and Dr Kenyon St Vincent Welch didn’t waste a second when, exactly 90 years ago tomorrow, they received an emergency call from Julia Creek Bush Nursing Home. Without any navigation aids, they lifted off from Cloncurry in a single-engine de Havilland and went to the rescue, 100 kilometres east.

It was the inaugural flight of the Australian Aerial Medical Service, which would soon be renamed The Flying Doctor Service of Australia.  The Flying Doctor Service of Australia received its royal warrant in 1955 following Her Majesty the Queen’s visit to the Broken Hill base on her tour through Australia.

Her stay marked the start of a close and enduring friendship between the Royal Family and what is today known as the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia.

As recently as last month, the Prince of Wales travelled to the RFDS base in Cairns to dedicate the latest addition to the RFDS aeromedical fleet and appropriately name it Outback Angel.

The Prince’s patronage of the RFDS Friends in the United Kingdom has helped to drive donations which support the Service to provide extensive primary health care and 24-hour emergency services to people spread over an area of 7.69 million square kilometres.

The RFDS has helped us overcome what historian Geoffrey Blainey famously described as ‘the tyranny of distance’, providing a mantle of care over the outback against the constraints of the vast and unforgiving Australian landscape.

I think back to that day in 2015 when I was given the opportunity to join an RFDS crew on a return flight from Cairns to Aurukun. Their professionalism and dedication made a lasting impression on me – and a lasting difference to the health and welfare of that remote community. No organisation more perfectly symbolises the values of compassion, service and mateship than the RFDS.

I am immensely proud to be your Patron in Queensland and congratulate you wholeheartedly on your 90th birthday, and speaking on behalf of all Queenslanders, especially those living in the Outback, I wish you many more birthdays to come.

Thank you.