It wasn’t until 1937 that the Flying Doctor started looking at servicing Wilcannia. In June 1937 the Barrier Miner reported that “the “flying doctor,” Dr. L. E. Odium, accompanied by Pilot Anneal’, left at 12.30 o’clock to-day ‘ on a survey flight to Wilcannia. : He expects to return to Broken Hill shortly after 5 o’clock this evening, and if he has the time to spare – will make a call at Menindee on the return journey. This district is strange to the doctor and he wishes to become’ thoroughly acquainted with the area.”
The need for a Broken Hill based service became apparent in March that year when an Inter-City Airways plane was utilised to convey a man in a serious condition at Ivanhoe to the Wilcannia Hospital for urgent medical treatment.
Before Pilot Gattenby departed at 5 o’clock this morning, portion of the seating accommodation of the machine was dismantled in order that a stretcher might be placed inside the plane. The only passenger from Broken Hill to Sydney was Mr. R. M. Barclay. White and Hosier, local agents for the line, were advised of the man’s plight. It was decided to leave one and a half hours earlier and take the man to the Wilcannia Hospital. The patient is believed to be in a very serious condition.
By 1939 Wilcannia was regularly serviced by the Flying Doctor for medical emergencies. Back then, Wilcannia always had a resident Doctor so the service was only called upon in emergencies.. The Barrier Miner and other papers reported that”
“The acting flying doctor at the Broken Hill base, Dr. C. A. Moody, established a new record for the base on Sunday 5th November by answering three calls in the one day. At 4.30 a.m. Dr. Moody left for Wilcannia, where the X-ray equipment at the hospital had failed, and picked up a patient who had a serious internal complaint. He then flew to Ivanhoe, landed there at 7.40 a.m., and picked up another patient. The plane returned to the Broken Hill aerodrome at 10.35 a.m., and the two patients were immediately transferred to the Broken Hill Hospital by ambulance. A little more than half an hour later Dr. Moody took on another patient, who urgently needed specialist treatment in Adelaide. Apart from breakfast before leaving Broken Hill at 4.30 a.m. and a cup of coffee at 11.30, neither the doctor nor the pilot, Max Dunn, of, Australian National Air ways, stopped for meals.”
The site for the first base, on the Wilcannia Road, was chosen in late 1937, the first sod was turned on the 31st May 1938 and the wireless station at the Base opened on the 28th June 1939.
This article appeared in the Wilcannia News, June 2023.
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