Flying Doctor Book Review

By Eileen Kocherlakota

 

            The “Flying Doctor” series by Michael Noonan is a must read! Michael Noonan captures the urgency and need of the Royal Flying Doctor Service started by Rev. John Flynn. The Royal Flying Doctor Service was started in 1928 for Outback people who needed a doctor quickly and the only way to reach them was to fly. Michael Noonan started the series in “Flying Doctor” by writing a fantastic adventure fiction starting with an unknown boy marooned in a salt desert followed by a crazed opal digger threatening the quiet town of Rainbow Ridge. Ruth Kennett, the School of the Air Mistress, always has her hands full trying to keep control of her classroom when the she’s trying to teach children are scattered all over the Outback. The School of the Air is a school for children that might normally not  go to school since they live too far away from any town. In this school the children communicate by radio. There is then Dr. Jeremy Janes who is trying to prove that he is a good enough doctor to take Dr. Saxon’s spot as a Flying Doctor. Which brings me to Dr. Henry Saxon who is soon going to retire from his position of Flying Doctor. Then there is Monty Marsh the radio operator who operates the radio at the Mustard Creek base. There is also Nurse Barbara Wright who is a very talented and attractive, young woman. Stephan the Polish mechanic is the person who fixes everyone’s planes but especially the Drover, the Flying Doctor plane. Finally there is Copper Kennedy the dry mannered pilot who flies the doctor to the emergency. Together all these characters form the Flying Doctor Service of Australia.

            You will meet all these characters again in their adventures in “Flying Doctor on the Great Barrier Reef”, (the second), “Flying Doctor and the Secret of the Pearls”, (the third), “Flying Doctor Shadows the Mob”, (the fourth), and “Flying Doctor Hits the Headlines”, (the fifth), which I haven’t read yet. These books give you a glimpse of what it was like to live in the Australian Outback.