“Even to the ends of the world”

This weekend we celebrate Whitsunday or the First Christian Pentecost.  It is also Royal Flying Doctor Service week as this unique Australian service celebrates 80 years since its first flight on 17^th May, 1928.

The events of the First Christian Pentecost are well known to most of us as recorded in Acts Chapter 2. Jesus had told his Disciples to wait in Jerusalem. It was as they waited in fellowship, praise, prayer and reflection on the days of Jesus’ presence with them that the Holy Spirit came upon them.

These men who until now had been wondering what would happen and who were in fear of those who had crucified their leader, Jesus, stepped boldly out into the crowd. The Disciples spoke and all the people understood them in their own language.

 Luke when he writes of this event in the second chapter of Acts is careful to include the many places the listeners came from.  He says each of these people heard the Disciples speak clearly and intelligently in their own familiar language.

Now a lot has been said about this occasion but the one thing that is abundantly clear is that the Holy Spirit gave the disciples the gift of communication. It can be speculated that this communication was aided by the gift of hearing.

Whatever happened communication took place and people were able to respond to the message they received from the Disciples. It gave the Disciples reason to think about Jesus command that they were to preach the good news and make disciples beginning in Jerusalem and going on to the ends of the world.

There are many stories of the remote places on the surface of this earth which may be considered the end of the world. However, the remoteness of many sheep and cattle properties in central Australia must seem to most to be the end of the earth.

Australia is approximately the size of mainland United States of America.  At the time of World War 1 in 1914 the total population in Australia was less than 5 million. Many of these people were gathered in cities so the outback population was very sparse.

It was into this remote end of the world that a newly ordained Presbyterian (Church of Scotland) Minister the Reverend John Flynn came. In 1911 John was appointed a Minister in remote northern part of South Australia. John had been born on the Gold fields of Victoria. His mother died at childbirth when he was two and  he was reared in Sydney by her eighteen year old sister. During his training for Ordination, he acted as a Lay Preacher (someone who preaches the Gospel without formal qualifications) in country Victoria. During this time he published a comprehensive guide for people living in remote areas. It covered many subjects including first aid, postal services and even instructions for conducting a funeral.

It had been said that the many lonely and isolated bush graves caused John Flynn great distress. He knew that each grave held not only a story of a loved person but often the despair of medical help not being available. Flynn worried that many of these people should not have died.

A year after arriving at the remote mission in northern South Australia as its ordained Minister, Flynn was asked by his Presbyterian Church leaders to conduct a survey of the needs of the aboriginal people and the white settlers in the Northern Territory. The purpose of the survey was to see how the church could help bush people. (For those not familiar with Australia, the west and east boundaries of South Australian and Northern Territory run north south across the whole continent. They share between them the central third of the continent. The east west boundary between the two give each approximately half each of this central third with each having appropriately a south or north coastline).

This survey resulted in the establishment of the Presbyterian Church’s Australian Inland Mission with Flynn in charge. He established fifteen hospitals which were scattered all over the outback. These hospitals were run by nurses who cooperated closely with patrol padres.

When Flynn appointed padres, he knew the work would be tough. They had to work to be accepted amongst the tough people of the bush and earn their respect. Flynn told the padres to “Go out there and listen to people”.

Listen they did as they worked  along side the settlers giving them a day or three free labour at the tasks of the property, listening to their stories and concerns, and telling their own dreams of making the bush a safe place for a man to settle, marry and raise a family. Flynn and ‘Flynn’s mob’ were soon accepted.  

Flynn knew that even with his growing number of hospitals, the main problem was transport and communication.

The development and use of aircraft in World War 1 gave him the vision of solution to transport problems. Why not use planes to fly medical help to where it was needed?

It took time to persuade others and organise the flying medical service. His dream to make the outback secure was slowly progressing. Between 1913 and 1927 Flynn used his magazine The Inlander as a vehicle to elicit financial support, to publicise the Mission's achievements and to make known his plans for the future. He believed that a 'mantle of safety' could be created for the isolated communities of Northern Australia only with the establishment of an aerial medical service and the introduction of radio communications.

Despite many setbacks and considerable opposition, Flynn's vision became a reality. On 17 May 1928, Dr K St Vincent Welch with pilot Arthur Affleck at the controls of Victory, a De Havilland 50 aircraft leased from QANTAS, flew from Cloncurry to Julia Creek to answer the first call received by the AIM Aerial Medical Service. Records show that in his first year, the world's first flying doctor - Dr St Vincent Welch - saw two hundred and fifty-five patients suffering everything from typhoid fever to gunshot wounds.

Flynn's idea had worked but people living far from telephone and telegraph wires still had no way of calling for medical help. Flynn saw the development of radio communications as an opportunity for people to call for help. These were days when radio broadcast stations were still being established in many cities. Radio was mostly considered experimental and was still more of a novelty than a fact in Australia at this time.

Flynn knew there was another problem. Many of these remote properties did not have an electricity supply of any kind and radio needed an electricity supply. Flynn experimented with running generators for electricity from car engines. His success was limited and not encouraging of an ongoing solution.

Encouraged by Flynn, a young inventor from Adelaide, Alfred Traeger, came up with the solution, a pedal-powered wireless. This was a device pedalled like a bicycle which turned the generator to produce the electricity to power the radio. When in 1929, the first pedal wireless built by Alfred Traeger was installed in Queensland, Flynn's quest for the more adequate protection of isolated communities was fulfilled

Traeger’s pedal radio was to revolutionize life in outback Australia. By the radio people were able to call for assistance from Flynn’s Aerial Medical Service. Sometimes, the plane was not needed to transport doctor or patient but reassurance and medical advice over the two-way radio system solved the problem at much less cost.

In 1942, Flynn’s Aerial Medical Service became the Flying Doctor Service of Australia, and in 1955 the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia or as it is known the RFDS.

The story of the breaking of the isolation of the out back by Flynn’s two-way radio system included the development of the “Schools of the Air” where children are taught regularly by a teacher sitting in a school radio studio teaching her students who maybe hundreds of miles from her and hundreds of miles from each other. 

Regular chat sessions became a feature too, when people, particularly the isolated wives could chat to their neighbours just like their city cousins do. It was also a way of discussing seasons and markets for the cattle on a thousand hills. Importantly, it reduced the isolation many felt at their end of the world.

The burial service for Flynn on the 23rd, May, 1951 was linked up to the Flying Doctor network and was heard at remote stations and settlements all over the outback.
Flynn's work is perpetuated throughout the outback in many ways.

The Royal Flying Doctor Service and the Australian Inland Mission are still working testimonials to his drive and vision.

A former Governor General of Australia, Sir William Slim once said of Flynn.'His hands are stretched out like a benediction over the Inland.'

Acts 1 (The Message – Selected Verses)

1 Dear Theophilus, in the first volume of this book I wrote on everything that Jesus began to do and teach

2 until the day he said good-bye to the apostles, the ones he had chosen through the Holy Spirit, and was taken up to heaven.

3 After his death, he presented himself alive to them in many different settings over a period of forty days. In face-to-face meetings, he talked to them about things concerning the kingdom of God.

8 What you'll get is the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit comes on you, you will be able to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, all over Judea and Samaria, even to the ends of the world."
9 These were his last words. As they watched, he was taken up and disappeared in a cloud.

10 They stood there, staring into the empty sky…

Acts 2 (The Message)


A Sound Like a Strong Wind
¹When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.

²Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force--no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building.

³Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks,

⁴and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them.
⁵There were many Jews staying in Jerusalem just then, devout pilgrims from all over the world.

⁶When they heard the sound, they came on the run. Then when they heard, one after another, their own mother tongues being spoken, they were thunderstruck.

⁷They couldn't for the life of them figure out what was going on, and kept saying, "Aren't these all Galileans?

⁸How come we're hearing them talk in our various mother tongues?

⁹Parthians, Medes, and Elamites;
Visitors from Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia,
Pontus and Asia,

¹⁰Phrygia and Pamphylia,
Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene;
Immigrants from Rome,

http://www.rba.gov.au/CurrencyNotes/NotesInCirculation/bio_rev_john_flynn.html

http://www.flyingdoctor.org.au/

http://www.ebroadcast.com.au/ecars/News/1999/990210.Traeger.html

http://www.flyingdoctor.net/Communication.html

http://www.mtisasde.qld.edu.au/

http://www.longreacsde.qld.edu.au