After several fantastic days in Broken Hill it was time to return to Sydney. I decided to take a few photographs from the plane to show how the landscape below changes. The plane flew first to Dubbo and then on to Sydney. The photos are collected in a video montage below…

But, just before leaving…

Flying Doctors

Right next to the Broken Hill airport is the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) base. There is a huge network of flying doctors servicing the outback and remotest areas of the country. I can still remember first learning about this amazing service at school on the other side of the world. That was way back when I was Dani’s age – some 50 years ago! It fascinated me then and still does…

The flying doctor service began in 1927 when a Presbyterian Pastor called Reverend John Flynn came up with the idea. Now there are 23 Flying Doctor bases and 77 aircraft around the country.  The original name was the Australian Aerial Medical Service but that was soon changed to The Flying Doctor Service of Australia. It was when Queen Elizabeth II visited this very base at Broken Hill in 1954 that the service was given Royal assent and was thereafter known as the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

Return Flight Video

When I booked the train to Broken Hill I realised we couldn’t take the train back to Sydney as we were not going to spend 8 days there – the trains only run there on Mondays and back on Tuesdays. So I booked a one way flight back to Sydney. Great for saving time but not cheap.

I later realised that for the same price (or less) we could have taken a one way car hire to Dubbo and then taken the daily operating train from there. We could have driven back and stopped off at a few places – one for the night. Isn’t hindsight great eh? Maybe next time.

Anyway here is a condensed video of the return flight made up of photographs of the changing landscape from Broken Hill to Sydney – in 3 minutes . Enjoy…