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Having offered this insight, he glances briefly outside his window to the desiccated outline of Lake Eyre below and unfolds his newspaper to solve another cryptic crossword clue. When you spend so much of your work life in an aeroplane, crisscrossing South Australia all day by plane, it’s good to keep the mind busy. The job also typically involves tons of paperwork – don’t even mention the paperwork, everyone just rolls their eyes – but there’s also time for a catnap if you’re feeling bushwhacked.

“The best thing about this job is the variety,” says Dr Alistair, echoing what every single RFDS pilot, medico and nurse says about working for one of Australia’s most iconic organisations. “From one day to the next, you just never know where you’re going to go, what you’re going to see, or what will come up. Of course, it’s not great when you’re called out at 3am and you’ve got hours of flying before you reach a patient. But you get to know and understand intimately the community and its concerns... the continuity of care you can offer is what it’s about.”

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Despite a nasty head wind, pilot Alan Ransley makes another smooth landing as Dr Alistair chats. We stop briefly at Marree, [population 100] at the most southerly point of the Birdsville Track to pick up Dr Scott Lewis, another flying doctor who’s been seeing patients while the rest of us flew north. Marree has the luxury of a full-time RFDS community nurse, June Andrews, who has corralled patients for this fortnightly clinic. Dr Scott climbs aboard and reports a routine day of ankle injuries, joint pains, diabetes and other ‘standard conditions’. A registrar at Adelaide University who plans to set up general practice in Wudinna [population 600] on the Eyre Peninsula further west, Dr Scott will be the first Australian-born doctor to enter solo practice in South Australia in more than a decade. “It’s the land,” he offers by way of explanation.

“I love the land.”

Finally, at about 4pm, we land at base and pilot Alan Ransley reports we made a total of seven stops (two for refuelling); were in the air for 3.1 hours; covered 1,500 kilometres of terrain; and used 1,200 litres of fuel at a cost of $1.60 a litre. In total, 12 patients were attended to... all of them for GP consultations, which most Australians only have to travel five minutes to attend. And for this, one senior pilot, a senior doctor and a community health nurse put in a full working day. Taking primary health care to the rural community, as RFDS founder, Reverend John Flynn, visualised way back in 1928, doesn’t come cheap, that’s for sure.

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