Life with the Flying Doctor in the 1960s

Earlier this year, our flight crew undertook what was expected to be a routine patient transfer. Cynthia Edmonds was picked up with her son, Mark, in Mildura, and flown up to Bankstown so they could return to their Sydney home.

However, not long into the journey, flight nurse Ruth Coleman discovered that this wasn’t Cynthia’s first interaction with the Flying Doctor – far from it. Back in the ‘60s, Cynthia and her husband Carl spent six months in the Kimberley region of WA, with Carl working as a Flying Doctor GP.

“She had all sorts of stories to tell about being, in her words, 'the doctor’s wife', including about the Dove aircraft in use at the time,” says Ruth.

Cynthia and Carl flew from Perth to Derby in early January 1962. Having graduated from Sydney University in 1960, Carl had applied for a job with the Flying Doctor in Western Australia, with his long term goal being to study and work in the UK.

“I was born in Adelaide, and had the benefit of travelling around South Australia, but nothing there was even faintly similar to the Kimberley area of Western Australia,” says Cynthia. “This part of Australia was really unknown to us both.”           

Just how different the Kimberly was to Adelaide became apparent the moment their plane touched down in Derby. “[When we landed], I stood on the top step of the plane and surveyed the countryside around the airport. I thought it was an occasion when something good should be worn, so I had worn my pale blue box pleated sleeveless dress, white sandals, white bag and a white brimmed straw hat with pale blue rosebuds around the brim,” says Cynthia.

“I never wore it in Derby again.”

Cynthia remembers the plane sitting on soil so red that she felt she couldn’t even begin to imagine it. This was the first of many surprising discoveries.

“We had been given the large old house in the grounds of the hospital,” she says. “It seemed to me that the outside was made of fly-wire, with louvred windows, a galvanized iron roof and interior walls to divide the rooms.

“The kitchen stove was gas with the gas jets across the back. I lit this one day and put in some scones that I had made. It seemed to be taking a long time, so I opened the door, and the unlit gas in the oven went up with a great whoof while my head was still in it!” remembers Cynthia. “No eyelashes, no eyebrows and with a singed hair line, I rushed across to the hospital and was told to stand under a cold shower to cool off. The hair all grew back, but I never cooked scones again.”

The house also had a great wraparound verandah, with one side designated for injured dogs.

“There was no vet in Derby, and so the doctors seemed to be the de facto ones who looked after any injured animals,” says Cynthia.

Cynthia remembers her days starting with radio calls for Carl from families far away. Carl would then board the Dove aircraft and head off to where he was needed, though Cynthia unfortunately never had the chance to join him on these journeys. “I often heard about the welcoming families always there when they landed and the marvelous food they were plied with!”

Perhaps the highlight of Derby’s social calendar was the annual competition between the residents of Broome and Derby to see who could be first to make it from one town to the other during or after the wet season.

“Lots tried, and most failed,” says Cynthia.

As newcomers to town, Cynthia and Carl were excited to join in.

“Carl borrowed the hospital 4-wheel drive, and away we went one weekend. We were told that we must stop at every phone en route and phone in to let the base know where we were. The first one didn’t work, and neither did any subsequent one, so we were really on our own.

“The brolgas were dancing and the birds were singing everywhere, it was a truly beautiful journey. The Fitzroy River was flooded and a truck with a crowd of workers on the back was stuck in the river on the Broome side. So we drove up, Carl got out, tied the truck to our 4-wheel drive and pulled them back to Broome side. They were not at all grateful as they had wanted us to take them back to Derby!”

When Cynthia and Carl finally drove into Broome, they were told by a police officer that they were the first to arrive and therefore that year’s winners. They were also told that the flooded river they had so recently crossed was actually full of crocodiles, and that people had been taken before. “All night I kept thinking about that river and that it must be crossed again,” Cynthia remembers.

Despite the excitement of being that year’s wet season victors, perhaps Cynthia’s strongest memories of her time in Derby are tied to the excitement felt at the hospital when the first patient was brought in by helicopter.

“The verandahs were swept, the patients arranged and brought outside to see the helicopter, and the staff were in their immaculate whites,” says Cynthia. “The nurses – some of whom had trained in the UK and Ireland – had even polished the silver buckles on their uniform. Never had the place looked so immaculate.

“So in comes the helicopter, and as it hovered and slowly came down to the ground, its blades sent up a twirling dervish whirlwind of red dust from the red soil that had so entranced me when I first landed. It now covered the hospital and all the staff in that same glorious colour.”