Page 183 - WDT Winter 2018 japan

tle boat, car, horse and foot--Dr. Holland
arrived too late: Darcy had died just the
day before.

The story received outraged nation-
wide attention. Flynn, among those
who crusaded for better, faster medical
treatment, coincidentally had received
a letter from Lt. Clifford Peel, a young
medical student in WW I with an inter-
est in aviation. Peel had proposed the
idea of using airplanes in the remote
areas to provide medical help. (By 1920
Qantas Airlines had started service—
adding to the idea and definite possibil-
ity of successfully merging medicine,
airplanes, and the primitive Australian
rural lifestyle.)

After Darcy’s appalling incident, it
took Flynn another 11 years of collect-
ing other horrifying medical stories,
traveling, writing impassioned articles,
giving speeches, and persevering until
ultimately a flying doctor service was
launched. In 1928, when he was 48,
Flynn was appointed the first superin-
tendent of the Australian Inland Mission
(AIM) of the Presbyterian General As-
sembly. (He later had an aircraft named
for him, and is featured on the Austral-
ian $20 bill).

The first flying doctor, Kenyon St.
Vincent Welch, took off with pilot Arthur
Affleck on May 17, 1928, in a medically-
equipped aircraft, a Qantas DH 50A

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