FLYING SAMARITAN

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 6, 7 July 1938, Page 19

FLYING SAMARITAN

INTREPID WOMAN DOCTOR

AUSTRALIA'S OUT-BACK

From the old miniiig town of Croydon, in Queensland, as far north as Koolatah, stretches the practice of Dr. Jean White, Australia's first flying | woman doctor, who has just completed her first year's medical work in the j outback, states an Australian exchange. Completing her. medical course at Melbourne University, she gained experience at the Melbourne General, Adelaide Women's, and Sydney Children's Hospitals before joining the Australian Inland Mission. "Although I ani just starting on my first holiday, I am already wishing to be back there again," said Dr. White on her arrival from Brisbane. "I love the life, and I feel as though I am really accomplishing something." Dr. White thinks nothing of flying hundreds of miles, to attend a patient, and, if necessary, fly the case back to her hospital at Croydon, or on to Cloncurry several hundred miles away-, if an operation is needed. But by regulations regarding the use of the Qantas plane she is restricted from flying at j night. She always makes an early I start as soon as the instruments can be seen—the "small daybreak" start is the description ; the blacks give to her dawn flights. "Most of my emergency calls are due to accidents, and frequently broken legs and arms want setting. Sometimes there are. urgent appendix cases, and

other times patients have to be flown back to the hospital for X-ray treatment," said Dr. White. "The hospital at Croydon has about eight beds and is in charge of Matron J. Hulbert, | who has been stationed there for about J two years." , i Dr. White's Fox Moth, which is piloted by Pilot C. Swaffleld, is always \in readiness to fly ofl^ into the bush when a call for help comes over the air. It has stretcher accommodation and is equipped with a wireless set weighing about 451b, which can both send and receive messages. "We sometimes use it in the air, but reception is usually poor because of the engine noise. As soon as we arrive anywhere the first thing we do is to send back a message to Cloncurry to tell of our safe arrival," said Dr. White. A^ the country in her area is very heavily wooded, Dr. White said that they usually follow the coastline as far as possible, and do not cut across country until it is necessary. "We have to be our own weather prophets, and T am becoming quite an expert in picking the clouds which mean bad flying weather," she said. "The landing grounds are being improved now, and at Delta Downs we can land right at the front door of the radio centre. A new landing ground has just been completed at Mitchell Downs, and we were the first people to land there. The natives held a special corroboree, and they spent a long while practising imitations of the whirr of the propeller."

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