At first glance, the iconic image of the Royal Flying Doctor Service – an aircraft landing on a dusty outback airstrip on a ‘swoop and scoop’ mission to pick up an injured patient – seems far removed from Ballarat.
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But the RFDS is actually very active around Ballarat, albeit in a ground-based capacity rather than in the air.
The Ballarat RFDS base runs an inter-hospital non-emergency patient transport service and provides primary and tele-health services for people in more remote areas.
Across Victoria the RFDS provides regional residents with a range of services including a rural women’s GP service, mobile eye care, mobile dental care, mental health programs and non-emergency patient transport.
The RFDS this year marks the 90th anniversary of its first flight from Cloncurry to Julia Creek on May 17, 1928, and its first celebration was in Ballarat this week with a reception for supporters.
“The RFDS actually began in Victoria, had its first meeting at Melbourne Town Hall, and its founder John Flynn was a Victorian born just 100km from Ballarat at Moliagul,” said RFDS Victoria chief executive Scott Chapman.
RFDS Victoria also opened the first permanent RFDS base in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, and ran it for 70 years before handing it over to RFDS WA in 2000.
“There’s the aeromedical retrieval stuff that everyone knows the service for, but then there’s inter-hospital transfers and primary health, two things we do in and around Ballarat,” Mr Chapman said.
“We won’t compete and duplicate services, but we go in to very small communities to provide services where they are not being provided.”
Mr Chapman said it was important to recognise the service’s 90 year milestone to raise the profile, relevance and education levels around the service and let Victorians know they operate locally, not just in the middle of the desert.
“The purpose of the RFDS is to overcome barriers to accessing good health, and those barriers are distance, cost, cultural and all those sort of things.”
The RFDS has about 500 staff in Victoria, including about 30 in Ballarat. Across Australia the RFDS has a fleet of 69 planes, 115 road service vehicles and more than 1400 professionals providing emergency medical and primary health.
