FLYING DOCTOR

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21878, 14 August 1934, Page 11

FLYING DOCTOR

STRENUOUS JOURNEYS 1700 MILES TO AID SICK The "Flying Doctor" of the Australian Inland Mission covered 1700 miles in a recent fortnight, responding to urgent calls for medical aid —one to figlit an epidemic among aborigines on Mornington Island, and another to perform a delicate operation on a white patient in a nursing, home in the heart of the Australian desert. A wireless appeal for aid from the mission station on Mornington Island reached the mission radio station at Cloncurry. Leaving Cloncurry on Sunday, July 29, in the ipission aeroplane Victory, the doctor arrived at Mornington, 303 miles away, in time for lunch. He spent Sunday afternoon and all Monday treating the sick aborigines, and, after sending a message to Brisbane for medicine to make up the shortage in the supply at the island, he left on Tuesday on his return flight to Cloncurry, calling en route at Burketown and treating several sick white people there,, On Tuesday a call was received from the Elizabeth Symon nursing home at Innamincka, South Australia, and after a flight of 545 miles from Cloncurry the doctor successfully operated on a patient in tlie home. The home, which is named after a daughter of the late Sir Josiah Symon, who contributed largely to its funds, is in the centre of a stony desert.