Heroes of the outback

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We’ve just landed at Mungerannie Station on the Birdsville Track in South Australia and the dust is still settling as we climb out of our 12-seater plane. The airstrip is nothing more than that – a strip of bush flattened for incoming and departing Royal Flying Doctor Service crews – and within seconds we’ve reached two dusty vehicles parked near the runway.
A barefoot man with ragtag beard, shades and a grimy stockman’s hat that almost entirely disguises his features steps forward to welcome Dr Alistair Miller. Here in the Outback, a visit from a flying doctor is always appreciated; and the co-manager of Mungerannie Station’s one and only pub, Phil Gregurkie, looks rugged yet friendly… pleased, even. In a town with a population of 18 – and numbers continuing to fall – you’d look forward to a visit from a medico too, especially when, as is the case today, there’s an absence of medical crisis. Dr Alistair will be seeing just two patients here for routine check-ups.
Both men are waiting patiently at the runway to ferry the good doctor and his team (senior pilot, Alan Ransley, and community health nurse, Christine Freeman) to the pub a short 500 metres away where the medical consultations are to take place. Within minutes, Mungerannie’s publican has ushered everyone inside for a thirst quencher. While he has a swollen ankle checked, his partner, Pam, an Englishwoman with peaches-and-cream complexion, offers visitors a choice of toasted sandwiches or sausage rolls. But what’s a Yorkshire lass like her doing in a remote outpostlike this? Don’t ask. “I’m an English rose withering in the Australian desert,” says Pam, only half-joking.
Meanwhile, in the dining area, out of view of any visitors propping up the bar, Dr Alistair’s medical consultation is in full swing. Could it be gout that’s causing Phil’s aches and pains? Or has he broken something? Phil will only know for sure once he visits Port Augusta to have X-rays. “It’ll have to wait,” he says matter-of-factly. “There’s too much to do here. I need a few more reasons to go to Port Augusta. With Panadeine Forte, I’ll be okay.”
The drive to Port Augusta, some 500 kilometres south of Mungerannie, typically takes Phil about six hours each way. That’s one long drive for a couple of X-rays. Pam needs him at the pub, helping out with the tourists that visit their establishment daily.
Tourists? Here? One finds it hard to believe. You gaze out the front door of the pub and all you can see is a fuel pump and a couple of thorn bushes doing slow cartwheels in the dust. Phil points enthusiastically to a creek nearby and recommends we try the ‘hot tub’ on the banks. But we’re so dehydrated, the last thing anyone feels like is something ‘hot’. Staring at the vast expanse in every direction, it‘s hard to imagine Mungerannie as a tourist destination. For Mel Gibson in Mad Max, perhaps, but... who else?
Amazingly, at that very instant, a jeep pulls up from nowhere and a family of four pile out, keen to stretch their legs. Turns out the folks are from Queensland and headed west. As they fossick about, gazing at all the Outback paraphernalia that festoons the pub ceiling and walls, Phil is back in his role as host and Dr Alistair and Christine are ushering their second patient, Nina Betts, to the ‘consulting rooms’.
Nina is expecting her third child in a couple of weeks and she doesn’t have the luxury of an obstetrician within a 500-kilometre radius. “We’re in the middle of nowhere here,” she says pointedly, obviously feeling the isolation at this critical time. Nina explains that she helps her husband, Luke, run a cattle station owned by Luke’s parents. The station covers 4,750 square kilometres and its 4,000 head of cattle have lately been decimated to around 1,500, maybe less. “We’re hanging in there,” says Nina with a mild trace of stoicism and disappears into the pub’s dining room cradling her belly.
Legs up in stirrups at the pub? Pelvic examination on a bench normally used to serve hot pies and chips? In the world of the Flying Doctors, honestly, anything is possible. They have seen everything. They’ve delivered breach babies in the back of aeroplanes; conducted CPR on
the back of utes; tended to the seriously to head home. The doctor has only seen three patients today – earlier, we visited another cattle station en route to Mungerannie – but he feels he’s made a difference. The mother-to-be certainly needed to be examined and listened to; out here, when it’s the same handful of faces you see day in and day out, you can only grumble about the difficulties of running a cattle station and family so many times.
“Station life’s changed,” muses Dr Alistair as pilot Alan Ransley lets the Pilatus PC-12 throttle go and we start our ascent. A graduate from the University of Edinburgh who came to Australia more than two decades ago, Dr Alistair worked briefly in a Sydney general practice before joining the Flying Doctors in 1989. Born in Scotland’s Shetland Islands, the doctor understands the kind of people who choose to live in isolated communities. But, he says, he’s noticed how things have taken a turn for the worse in the Australian Outback.
“Once upon a time, the cattle stations were full of life. It was almost a glamorous life; stations ran in families and station managers had plenty of help. You had time for tennis and tea on the lawns. Now stations are bought as investments and a married couple are put in charge to manage the station and they have to do everything. No wonder the women say they haven’t got time to bring up the children. It’s not like it used to be at all... it’s very hard work and involves long hours,” Dr Alistair muses.
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.”
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.
However, what Dr Alistair quite modestly didn’t articulate, is that what this routine clinic run does, through its early diagnosis of potentially life-threatening conditions and delivery of important health education messages, is help to save lives – many thousands over the years.
The next day we accompany a different crew on a day of on-call flights that can include anything from ‘Code 1’ emergencies to more routine transfers of patients from smaller regional medical centres to major metropolitan hospitals where higher levels of care can be provided. Alan Ransley is in the cockpit again and this time he’s accompanied by his wife and senior flight nurse, Gabrielle Ransley. Having trained and worked in in the air every year. But it’s never about the money. Our charter is to provide healthcare for the people who live, work or travel in rural and remote Australia. That’s our job and also why we rely heavily on community support.”
And, certainly, there’ll always be those, whether flat on their back after a droving accident or in pain after a mining incident, or just plain ill from life’s travails, that’ll
be calling the Flying Doctors number.
“It’s funny, you know,” says Phil, “how the patient demographics have changed. We’re still seeing the same number, but they’re not the country folk we used to see. There are far more miners and tourists and temporary residents; you don’t come across a jack or jillaroo like you used to in the old days.”
Either way, regardless of who they are treating and for what reason, here, in the land of a thousand stars, Phil says the objective of the Flying Doctors remains the same. “We’re here to help those in need,” he says simply. “And that’s what we’ll continue to do.”