Rev. Flynn Advocated a Flying Ambulance for Australia's Outback
His vision for the Australian outback transformed his country.
ON THIS DAY, 17 May 1928, Doctor K. St. Vincent Welch inaugurated Australia’s flying doctor service by answering a call for a minor emergency at Julia Creek. He would visit two hundred and fifty-five more patients that way within the year. The service, however, was not the doctor’s idea. It was conceived in the mind of minister John Flynn.
Flynn was born in 1880 at Moliagul in Victoria, Australia. His mother died when he was three, and his father, a Methodist lay pastor and school teacher, raised him alone. When his father transferred to a school near Melbourne, Flynn joined the nearest church, which was Presbyterian. It was as a Presbyterian that he did his life’s work. In becoming a minister he determined: “If it is true that Jesus is God’s Son, and that through Him whosoever will may approach the Father Himself, what more honorable calling can a man follow than to realize this fact and act upon it?”
Flynn soon developed a desire to reach the people in the Australian outback, who were cut off from civilization. Could not isolated bush stations be linked to the settled coast by railroads, radio stations, traveling pastors, and nursing stations? And could not the children, he reasoned, be educated with correspondence classes? Thus, he developed a pedal-operated radio, published The Bushman’s Companion with practical advice, and founded the Australian Inland Mission.
With the development of airplanes in World War I, he also saw the possibility of bringing quick medical help by air when an accident or emergency called for it. Such emergencies were not unknown. In one tragic case, a young man named John Darcy was seriously injured in a fall from a horse. He had to be operated on without anesthesia by an untrained man using a penknife and flashlight, following instructions relayed by Morse code. The operation took seven hours. A doctor left Perth to tend Darcy, but it took him thirteen days to reach the site. Darcy had died three days before.
In his efforts to stir Australia to action, Flynn founded the Inlander magazine reporting on outback conditions and suggesting ways of improving life. Thousands of ordinary people donated to the cause. He himself visited lonely places to bring the Gospel and give practical assistance—such as fixing clocks.
He had an uphill fight getting the government to support seven flying doctors at strategic locations, but his persistence and prayer prevailed in 1928. Later, during World War II, Australians realized that without Flynn’s initiatives, the nation would have been in a much weaker position to carry on its fight against the Japanese.
—Dan Graves
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And like many before and after him, Flynn cared for the sick as an act of Christian love. For more such stories, see Christian History #101 Healthcare and Hospitals in the Mission of the Church
