1880 - 1951
Overview:
John Flynn was the original flying doctor in outback Australia. As well as attending to the health needs of many people living in remote areas, he also advised them on faith, and volunteered his social services knowledge. He was a man on a mission who founded one of the great national services in Australia.
Country:
Australia
Type
of hero: Environmental, Cultural and Development Rights
Attributes:
Created the Royal Flying Doctors Service for outback areas in Australia.
Biography:
John Flynn was born in a small town called Moliagul on the 25th November 1880. He worked as a teacher for four years before joining the Home Mission staff of the Presbyterian Church
Ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1911. He was then placed in charge of investigating the missionary needs of the Northern Territory and Central Australia. He took this on as a special challenge – noting not only the need for spiritual guidance, but also the need for medial and social services.
His new venture was called the “Australian Inland Mission”. He remained superintendent of this organisation for the next 39 years. Flynn urged that as well as delivering Gospel readings, the missionaries should provide news services, reading material and basic medical and dental care to people in these isolated areas. Initially many of his travels were by camel. Once the aeroplane came into more frequent use during WW1, he saw the potential to provide even better coverage of the remote areas of Australia. The second problem was devising a way to contact the service. There were no telephone services, and no electricity. The problem was eventually solved by the development of a foot-powered generator, which enabled one person to operate a simple transmitter with a range of close to 500 km.
The service was renamed the “Royal Flying Doctor Service” in 1954 and spread to cover most of the areas in outback Australia. As well as the medical services, the radio network became the means of educating thousands of children through the “School of the Air”
Citations
& References:
Links:
http://www.emerge.net.au/~roblee/flynn.html
http://www.abc.net.au/btn/australians/flynn.htm
http://www.naa.gov.au/research/factshet/FS159.html
References
Nic Van Oudtshoorn (Ed.) 1992 Famous Australians Bay Books Kensington
Go
back to Great Heroes of the Twentieth Century
